1

The thing about Doris is she's a busybody with her nose up in everyone else's business.

You know the type—the first to offer advice, the last to take it? She's been like that for as long as I've known her, which is almost fifty years.

Doris waltzed over here the other day, pounding on my front door, and when I opened it, she said,

"You need to get out more, Marge—socialize. You can't stay holed up in your house like a terrified rat, judging everyone and—"

I stopped her there. "We are just fine the way we are, thank you very much."

Harold was seated in the living room in his favorite easy chair. He needs help getting up and down the stairs, and ever since the accident two years ago, he's lost the ability to speak, but that doesn't mean he isn't listening.

"Marge, why don't you find a new hobby—other than staring out your picture window at Bob and me all day?"

You see? That's pure Doris right there—dispensing advice no one ever asked her for. She's always going on about how to "max out on life,"

as if the rest of us are just squandering our time on Earth, which according to the great guru herself is a capital crime.

"What's the point if you're not going to live life to the fullest? Live it or lose it, Marge."

That's what she always says.

If Doris's constant barrage of advice isn't galling enough, her flamboyance, flirtation, and attention-seeking behavior makes her even harder to tolerate. For goodness' sake, she is my age—seventy-five years old—and yet these days, she carries on like a randy teenager. It goes to show you that contrary to popular opinion, wisdom does not always come with age. If anything, it runs the other way a lot of the time.

Harold, my dear husband, has never liked Doris. In the old days, he avoided her, said she was a floozy and didn't treat her husband at all well. I've always been determined to love my neighbor, though Doris has never made it easy. As for her husband, Bob, he's Doris's polar opposite. He's the kind of man who wouldn't hurt a fly. Lately, he's slowing down, sicker than usual, a bit more wheezy and unsteady on his feet. The poor man's allergic to everything—shellfish, cats, eggs, peanuts, and even evergreen trees. But Bob, like my Harold, is never one to complain.

I still remember the day, nearly fifty years ago, when Doris and Bob moved into the bungalow across the street from ours. I was watching from our picture window when the moving van pulled up. Behind it was a woman about my age, driving a lime-green convertible. A bespectacled, pale bald man sat in the passenger seat beside her.

"Looks like the new neighbors are moving in,"

Harold said. I joined him in the picture window where he stood, surveying the scene.

Doris stepped out of the driver's seat wearing a yellow poodle skirt, red pumps, Jackie O cat-eye glasses, and a checkered kerchief over her bottle blond bouffant. Bob emerged from the convertible next, wearing thick glasses, beige slacks, and a plain golf shirt. Upon exiting that showy convertible, Bob started lugging boxes from the back seat to the front door while Doris barked at him as though he was her personal Sherpa.

"Bob, don't drop that! Bob, go tell that handsome young mover where to put the credenza. Bob, as soon as we're moved in, you're painting our front door a real color."

And so it began.

All the houses on our street are modest, tan bungalows with taupe eaves troughs and beige porches—dignified and discreet—but Doris's house has a bright-yellow front door.

"Why is everyone around here so drab?"

she opined to me a while ago when she stopped by for her weekly nosy-neighbor check-in. "The living dead. Just like my husband. I keep telling him, if you act dead, the reaper will find you faster."

Cheating death: that's been Doris's recurring theme for the last few years—that and refusing to grow old with any semblance of grace.

"When I grow old, I shall wear purple,"

she pronounced on her sixty-fifth birthday, and true to her word, she's worn purple regularly for a decade—and red sequins, and polka dots, and fringe, often at the same time. I always thought that once she became a pensioner, she'd mellow out and turn down the volume on the kooky Mrs. Robinson act, but if anything, it's become more shrill in recent years.

I have watched from the comfort of this picture window as Doris has taken up hobby after new hobby in her dotage, claiming she's on the hunt for "inspiration."

First, it was tai chi—private lessons in her living room with a strapping young man called Master Tim. But when she learned the master had a boyfriend, she quit tai chi instantly.

Next, she took up life drawing—"Nudes,"

she pronounced, "the passion of the flesh."

An easel appeared in her living room, and a stream of strange men visited regularly, posing for her—shirts off, muscles bulging. I caught glimpses from my window, and when the curtains were inevitably drawn midsession, I got a pretty good sense of what was happening in that living room, and let's just say I suspect it was more than art. Bob—oh, poor old Bob—was conveniently sent away on errands during "art time,"

only to return once that day's hulking Fabio was long gone.

But "art time"

didn't last long, either, which I was grateful for, since Doris was flipping more beefcakes than In-N-Out Burger on a busy Friday night. Then, out of nowhere, a few months ago, she showed up on my doorstep to announce her latest hobby.

"Please tell me it's bird-watching or stamp collecting," I said.

"Flamenco dancing,"

she replied, striking a pose that resembled not so much a graceful Spanish dancer as a snappy sand crab. "And this time,"

Doris added, "Bob's taking lessons with me."

"What?"

I replied. "Your Bob?"

"Of course ‘my Bob.' Which other Bob is there, Marge?"

Doris haughtily replied.

I was genuinely confused. Bob has always been a homebody who enjoys organizing and labeling things. His idea of socializing is waving from across the street while watering the lawn. Moreover, Bob is a wheezy, nearsighted asthmatic as allergic to physical activity as he is to everything under the sun. The older he gets, the weaker he's become, to the point where it's worrisome.

"Flamenco,"

I repeated, still trying to imagine Bob doing any kind of dance.

"I've endured him and his excuses far too long,"

Doris explained. "He's asthmatic, not dead. He needs an activity that will build his stamina and strength—not to mention his libido. It's about time he livens things up, ignites some passion for a change. And if he can't, well ..."

At this point, she ran her manicured index finger across her neck, a gesture I took to mean only one thing.

"You can't be serious,"

I said. "After all these years, you'd consider a divorce?"

"Who said anything about a divorce?"

Doris replied. Then she nattered on about how her new flamenco teacher, Antonio, had a passion for castanets ... and for many other things besides.

The moment she left my house, I reported the entire conversation to Harold, who as usual was seated in his easy chair in the living room. "Flamenco, at her age,"

I said. "Can you believe it?"

I'll admit I do miss the sound of Harold's voice. But I can practically read his mind, and what he's not saying out loud is that he'd prefer I didn't fraternize with Doris at all. But what am I supposed to do—ignore her? Send her away? "She's our neighbor,"

I tell him. "I can't pretend she doesn't exist."

A couple of days ago, Doris popped by my house yet again, pounding on my door, then walking right in like she owned the place. As usual, she failed to greet Harold.

"We're going away, Bob and me,"

she announced out of nowhere.

"Away? What do you mean?"

Now keep in mind that Doris and Bob haven't left the country in all the years I've known them. Bob's asthma is aggravated by airplanes, and his food allergies make travel to foreign lands nearly impossible, much to Doris's chagrin. It was for this reason that, at first, I wasn't quite sure what Doris was nattering on about.

"I've booked Bob and me a special long weekend in Spain. We'll be studying flamenco with one of the world's foremost dancers. And if that doesn't get Bob's juices flowing, that'll spell the end for sure."

I was struck speechless. Her mention of Bob's juices produced a most unwelcome image in my mind.

"Spain,"

I managed to say. "For how long?"

"Three nights,"

she replied.

"That's it?"