Coe Review

I decide to go over and pay my respects to Steve Borwick. The birthday
boy is talking to a thin man with pasty legs and a plaid bathing suit that looks
from another time. Steve takes me around and hugs me and I hug him back
and wish him a happy fortieth.
"Can you believe it?" he says. "Me. Forty. It just doesn't make sense."
Looking at him, it makes sense, but I don't say a word.
Steve introduces me to the thin man. He's a partner in Steve's firm.
Steve tells the man I'm one of his old college buddies and a great actor. I'm
hoping the man will throw me questions about college and not acting, if he
questions me at all. There's a lot to say about acting, but the questions are
always about what I've done.
"An actor," the man says.
"Hey diddle dee dee," I say sarcastically, my most current line of diversion.
"So birthday boy, how do you feel?"
"I still feel like a kid," Steve says.
A little girl runs up to Steve and starts saying Daddy, Daddy and I remember
Steve is a dad. I sent the kid a present when she was born, but I've
never actually met her. The kid wants to have another ginger ale and she's
asking Steve if it's all right. The thin man is smiling stupidly at the kid. I
look across the pool. Jenny and Ryan are still at it.
"Excuse me a second," Steve says and walks with his kid to the bar.
"Nice meeting you," I say to the thin man and escape.
I make up a plate of shrimp at the raw bar for myself. I don't bother lining
the bitten-off tails in a row. A breeze blows over the grass, over the pool,
over me. All of a sudden it smells fishy, more than a raw bar should. Maybe
it's the sushi in the sun that makes the smell too ripe. I have two shrimp
left, but I put the plate down. I make a muscle for myself and it's rock hard.
I press my fingers into my stomach and it's flat. I look at all the people, my
age and older, looking older and much older, and I feel like the kid. I always
feel like the kid. Whenever I meet people I automatically assume they're
older than me, more settled, less strong, closer to death. That's how I feel
here. Lined eyes, thin hair, potbellies, stooped shoulders, that horrible look
of resignation that the apex of their lives is over. Once they held the world
in strong hands, but now their grips have loosed, they're sliding away, falling
apart. Me, I still have potential. Up close I still have potential. Steve can't
believe he's forty, but I can believe it. I'll be forty in three months and that
I can't believe. Nobody can. Nobody.
"How do you know Steve?"
She's young, probably about nineteen. She must be a new arrival at the
party. I didn't see her before and she's the kind of girl you see. Great body.
Great skin. The clearest blue eyes. Lustrous brown hair that belongs in a
70 The Smell of Mortality