“ Food for thought,” the soldier said.
“ But thinner gruel than the food for thought you four have provided. Lust!”
“ Our topic,” the priest said, “and it did set the stories rolling.”
“ How I lusted,” said the old man. “How I longed for women. Yearned for them, burned for them. Of course those days of longing are long gone now. Now I sit by the fire, warming my old bones, neither awake nor asleep. I don’t long for women. I don’t long for anything.”
“ Well,” the policeman said.
“ But I remember them,” the old man said.
“ The women.”
“ The women, and how I felt about them, and what I did with them. I remember the ones I had, and there’s not one I regret having. And I remember the ones I wanted and didn’t have, and I regret every one of those lost chances.”
“ We most regret what we’ve left undone,” said the priest. “Even the sins we left uncommitted. It’s a mystery.”
“ In high school,” the old man said, “there was a girl named Peggy Singer. How I longed for her! How she starred in my schoolboy fantasies! She was my partner for a minute or two at a school dance, before another wretched boy cut in. I couldn’t possibly remember the clean smell of her skin, or the way she felt in my arms. But it seems to me that I do.”
The doctor nodded, at a memory of his own.
“After graduation,” the old man said, “I lost track of her entirely. Never learned what became of her. Never forgot her, either. And now my life is nearing its end, and when I add up the plusses and minuses, they cancel each other out until I’m left with one irreconcilable fact. God help me, I never got to fuck Peggy Singer.”
“ Ah,” the soldier said, and the policeman let out a sigh
“ Women,” the old man said. “I remember what I did with them, and what I wanted to do, and what I hardly dared to dream of doing. And I remember how it felt, and the urgency of my desire. I remember how important it all was to me. But do you know what I don’t remember, what I can’t understand?”
They waited.
“ I can’t understand what was so important about it,” the old man said. “Why did it matter so? Why? I’ve never understood that.”
He paused, and the silence stretched as they waited for him to say more. Then the sound of his breathing deepened, and a snore came from the chair beside the fireplace.
“ He’s sleeping,” the priest said.
“ Or not,” said the doctor. “Neither asleep nor awake, even as you and I.”
“ Well,” said the policeman.
“Does anyone remember who’s deal it is?” the soldier wondered, gathering the cards.
No one did. “You go ahead, Soldier,” said the doctor, and the soldier shuffled and dealt, and the game resumed.
And the old man went on dozing by the fire.