A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (84)

And now, more than ever, she was compelled to whip up more fantastical bouquets and place them at Old Harlem hot spots. It felt like an offering. Like small thank-yous to her adopted city for being so welcoming, so nurturing, even if for a short time. And now Ezra accompanied her on these early-morning missions. Hand clasping hers, he’d divulge insider anecdotes about each place, small details that made her captions pulse with vibrancy, making the Harlem Renaissance feel alive. It was manna for Insta history buffs.

When they were home, they talked and talked, stories spilling from each other in an ecstatic tumble as time folded in on them. They often realized they had the same thoughts in their brains, or Ricki would articulate something out loud that Ezra’d once thought, verbatim, and vice versa. There was an energetic crackle between them, and the charge never abated.

The other thing they did a lot of? Fucking. They’d discovered that truly transformative, life-altering sex made them feel like everything would be fine. It was a heady drug, lulling them into a sweet sense of security. So they kept doing it. They did it on every surface, in increasingly creative positions. They did it half-asleep. They did it after downing two bottles of dry white. They did it in the 145th Street Community Garden at 2:45 p.m. They did it, perhaps, a bit too much.

When they awoke on the twenty-fifth, they were tapped out. So Ricki closed the shop for the day. And the two declared they were taking a sex break. They were enjoying a languid, lazy morning all tangled up in her rumpled linen sheets, warmed by the sunrays beaming in through the window, a porcelain tray of half-eaten croissants and coffee cast aside on the nightstand.

“I don’t know why I wasted so much time hating hugs,” murmured Ezra drowsily. Ricki was little-spooned in his strong arms, her legs tangled with his. Save for panties and boxer briefs, they were in their preferred state: naked. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the minty scent of her shampoo. “What’s not to love? Hugging is the cat’s meow.”

Ricki smiled widely, burrowing into his embrace. “It’s extremely the cat’s meow.”

“It’s incredible—I don’t feel self-conscious about linguitching around you. It’s nice not having to worry about tripping myself up with extinct slang. Usually, I open my mouth and I fear a pterodactyl will come flying out.”

“I’m just waiting for you to call me a jive turkey,” Ricki said, laughing.

It was a sound now more familiar to him than anything lodged in his endless memory. He let his eyes shut, soaking in how deliciously safe and secure he felt holding her. Memorizing the moment. Basking. This was the only place he ever wanted to be. Time seemed to yawn and stretch, and then, for the first time in the last four days, reality started to creep in.

She must’ve felt it, too. She stiffened a little in his arms.

“Ezra?”

“Little Richard?”

“I can’t die before I’m thirty,” she whispered, barely audible. “I can’t leave you here alone. Without me. And I’m… just not ready to go. It’s not my time.”

It was The Thing They No Longer Discussed.

“I won’t let you,” he said simply. “I won’t let you leave my sight. I’ll check you in to the ER on the twenty-eighth. I’ll do something.”

“Short of committing a blood sacrifice, there’s nothing you can do. We’re not killing anyone.” Ricki turned herself around in his arms so that they were facing each other, almost nose to nose. “I had a thought, though. What if you make me a Perennial? Then we could both live forever.”

“Can’t,” he said, his brow pinched. “It doesn’t work like that. Immortality is something done to you; you can’t seek it out or ask for it. Dr. Arroyo-Abril told me that the day we met.”

“How did she become immortal?”

“You really want to know?”

“So badly.”

“Well, she was a grifter. Too bad this all happened in 1883, or I reckon she’d be the subject of a Netflix docuseries. Anyway, she conned her way through Europe and then somehow ended up in Florida. Saint Augustine. Heard of it?”

“Yeah, it’s where that Spanish explorer, Ponce de León, decided some little spring was the Fountain of Youth,” said Ricki, putting her minor in American history to good use.

“That’s the place,” said Ezra. “By the 1880s, locals no longer believed the well had magical anti-aging properties. But tourists did. And Pilar sold them bottles of the spring water at a roadside stand. One day, she accidentally fell into the well, broke her neck, and drowned.”

“Stop.”

“Well, she should’ve drowned. Instead, she came to, popped her neck back in place, climbed out the well, and she’s been fifty-seven years old ever since. Turns out the Fountain of Youth? Not fake,” he explained. “Trying to game nature rarely works out in your favor.”

“Is she still a grifter?”

Ezra kissed the tip of Ricki’s nose. “Depends on if you believe in life coaches.”

He looked at her for a long time, trying to reconcile the depth of his longing for her with the grim reality of their situation. It felt impossible to face. Maybe he should’ve been used to loss by now. All that practice should have made it easier. But this pain was excruciating, like nothing else. He was going to lose her. Just like his family, and like everyone he ever knew.