Tully wants to get laid.
This is both a lust and a love story, a brief interlude before the final curtain draws. We should all be so zealous to rut, especially at his age, nearly 80, and in his current predicament, wobbling on his last legs, Viagra-free.
The early morning unfolds, a comforting, snuggling blanket for the busy bees still dreaming of buzzing through their day. For Tully, a life worth living remains beyond his reach in the hospice ward. His county-run coffin is shut tighter than a nun’s knees. Tully has a glorious story about innocence lost, a wayward sister, rosary beads, a bit of sacramental wine, and staying late after catechism—he always felt sinful about that holy-Moses afternoon. Still, happily, he never made a habit out of it.
Tully has told that tale, with that punchline, a thousand times. He constantly pondered the interlude at church, smiled wickedly, often considered it beyond the shadow of the looming cross, and worried about the final call on judgment day. His mind often wandered like that—never really present but constantly aware, always an echo, a ripple, a knot tying and untying itself—himself—in thought.
Tully is a talker. His knuckles found the ruler's wrath for the offenses of his lips at Saint Anne’s Catholic School. But today, there is no one to regale. His roommate, Mick the mick, Tully would tease him, contracted Covid, and died quick. All visitation privileges were revoked by Governor Broadmoor, a dull suit he never voted for, a purple-nosed paper-pusher and glad-hander who made it into Yale as a legacy admission. Governor “Badmoor,” as Tully has tagged him, follows any science that is politically expedient or validated by the party apparatus. So, Tully and the other fading husks are now kept company by anonymous voices in the hollowed-out hallways and the suffocating indifference of four invading walls. The ceiling doesn’t give two fucks, either. He spends a lot of time staring at his feet, thinking of dancing, and romancing his one true love, Vivian.
What an ass. Tully emits a raspy bellow as he stirs, searches for Vivian, and slashes through a persistent haze of great pharmaceuticals and fragmenting delirium. Tully has been up to his ass in alligators before—literally—as a kid, he used to fish wayward golf balls out of the water traps at East Shore golf course in Sarasota. So, undaunted, Tully hatches a plan befitting a fading but stubborn candle that burned both ends for years.
First, he will have to stand up. That will be a chore. He has not been upright in days. A failing heart, a fog of emphysema, and creeping arthritis have kept him bedridden. Tully is an ailing Frankenstein, pallid, sunken cheeks, eyes dripping. Electrodes, wires, and tubes connect, poke, prod, and his catheter dangles. Then, a lightning storm brews—in his eyes—and Shelley's beast stirs again, his ass hanging out of a blue striped gown. This is what passes as life-support now.
But this is also child’s play for the old man. He partially severed two fingers at the mill while distracted by the racy pin-up poster tacked above his drill press. The Doc said he was surprised there was not more blood. “It was all in my dick, I guess,” Tully said matter-of-factly. "C'mon, Doc, do what you have to do. I need to get back to work.”
The first step that Tully takes is the first step of a hundred men who have been walking on a hundred broken feet for a hundred days. Tully counts the number of each dull linoleum tile out loud between him and the window: 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,9, 10. Each tile measures 12”x12.” He learned how to eyeball things accurately working one summer as a surveyor’s assistant. The girls in the convertibles never escaped his gaze or his estimates—34B, easy, maybe 36. Tully cracks the window open and then treks back to his bed. And then he sends the last text he’ll ever send, with 911 at the end. After being married for 47 years, Tully and his wife, Viv, know how to read between the lines.
“Viv, I cracked the window. It’s been too long. Bring some beer, too. 911.”
Soon, there she was, his Viv, climbing through the window, dressed in red, a randy Mrs. Claus with a six-pack of Coors. Tully quickly unpacks both and has his fill. His slack-jawed jailers would find him dead a couple hours later. He looks content. And no one could begin to explain the empty beer cans or the woman’s underwear draped on the thorn bushes outside his window.