The Wait

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The copy of People magazine on Alicia’s lap was standard waiting room fare, dog-eared and four months out of date. It had been open to the same place for several minutes, far longer than it would take anyone to read the single simply-worded paragraph captioning the two-page photo spread.

“Is this your first time, dear?”

Alicia blinked, then looked uncertainly at the woman sitting next to her. “Excuse me?”

The woman was what some of her friends would call a foxy granny. A trim and well-maintained late fifties, maybe even older, with long moonlight gray hair cascading over her shoulders. She was casually dressed in jeans, sandals, and a loose forest green silk blouse. Her long fingers worked a crochet hook with almost mechanical precision, pulling fine blue cotton thread from a bag at her feet and turning it into tighdy woven fabric.

She smiled, revealing a lifetime’s worth of laugh lines around her eyes. “I asked if this was your first time.”

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