The Most Beautiful Woman In New Orleans

I looked out the car window, admiring the scale of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway as we headed towards New Orleans. It seemed endless, like a bridge that might one day take us to the other side.

“Will you still want me when I’m an old lady?” 

“Old? Your body will age, but I could never imagine you being ‘old’.” Liam replied as he kissed my hand. 

It’s true. I couldn’t imagine that I would change from who I was? My interests may shift and I might value different things in the future, but surely I would still be me?

In New Orleans we stayed with some dear friends of ours who had moved from New York a year earlier. Karl was a colleague of Liam’s and his wife and I had become close friends when we were Brooklyn neighbours. I would often spend time with her and their twins, strapping a baby each to our chest and walking through McCarren Park in Williamsburg, talking about life and love and her experiences of motherhood.

I never shared with her that we were non-monogamous. Her sleep deprivation contrasted so heavily with my circumstances it just never felt like the right time.

After an hour of catching up, looking through their beautiful home and sharing stories from our road trip,  they told us that they wanted to introduce us to their neighbours. 

“We want you to meet Haydee and John and we hope that you don’t mind but we have organised for you to have a friend date with them this afternoon. They are the most amazing couple. Haydee is known as ‘the most beautiful woman in New Orleans’.

She is 80 and her husband is 93. You two will love them. We have told them about you both. She is an artist and John only recently retired from being a barrister a few years ago.”

I felt taken aback. I had never heard the words, ‘the most beautiful woman’ and ‘80’ in the same sentence. And retiring from being a barrister at 90? Who were these people? I was intrigued. 

As the New Orleans evening crept closer we headed over to Haydee and John’s place next door.