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Show 22 Five The clutter from the dinner is enormous: empty dishes and empty glasses and empty bottles of wine litter the table, and it is clear that the meal which has taken place here has been a significant one. But there is evidence of something else too: the fringe of Polly's napkin has been braided, loosened, and rebraided during the meal; the silverware at Max's place has been rigorously, meticulously aligned, as if these dear friends had listened to a long and difficult tale. Even Robeck has fingered a row of breadcrust particles into an unintended design, though when he noticed what he had been doing he had dispersed them with an irritated flick of his hand. Then, however, the dishes have been pushed aside, and Annis has reached over to a drawer in the sideboard: the hard part is over, and they are ready to laugh now. The drawer is what Annis and John have always called their "Golden Years" drawer, and from it she produces all the retirement literature which had been forced upon them in the last ten years or so: handsful of slick golden-living brochures, charter airline advertisements for islands of unending sun, glossy folders trumpeting in ornate tones the elegance and security of this rest home or that one. "For instance," she mocks, "'Magnificent seaside residence for the youthful elder.'" She pronounces the words with the coaxing whine of a vacuum-cleaner salesman: "the active liver." The brochure displays tanned, athletic couples playing doubles on a palm-fringed tennis court, and the only hint of age lies in the fact that their hair is gray. "Youthful elders," Annis sneers, "in fact, nine out of ten people in places like that are widowed |