When it arrives, Nyeg is painting the sycamore that droops over his veranda. It’s the beefy middle belly of the night; about three hours till sunrise. He’s positioned LEDs around the base of the tree, such that its trunk and flourishes of leaves are lit in an eerie palette: lime greens and various shades of dun, against a backdrop of sky that’s as dark and consummate as a blackhole. Nyeg is pleased with the effect. The starkness reminds him of a thriller, a tension-packed film. He squeezes a brush between his fingers and works furiously at a square centimeter of space that’s not quite right. Then withdraws it. Wriggles its bristles through a puddle of turpentine.

One of his brushes, a tiny thing meant for the dotting of bird eyes and crescents of distant seagulls, rolls off his tray and onto the floor. Nyeg stoops to get it. When he straightens back up, grunting in a way that’s become customary in his old age, he senses something behind him. Something that wasn’t there before, as if a piece of furniture had erratically moved.

He realizes all at once: It is the creature. The tub of salts in which Nyeg was soaking his feet feels chilly. He pauses all motion of his toes. He can feel the bristling of the creature’s haunches; its liver-scented breath on the rim of his ear. Nyeg’s arm is still extended from where it was poised to revisit the canvas.

The creature issues a directive, in breathy, half-growled English:
Send an e-mail to that one woman.

“Huh?” Nyeg gurgles, aiming at a tone of unconcern. He turns his torso toward the creature slightly, but doesn’t let his eyes rest upon its form.

That one woman. The one with the rosacea and giddy laughter.

Nyeg knows which woman it means. It’s referring to Tina, the librarian he met at a Seniors without Senioritis potluck. She’s from northern Arizona. She has a twin sister who rides broncs at rodeos, and is usually trailed by two yappy Shih Tzus. Nyeg doesn’t like her much. She’s not his cup of tea.

“She’s not my style,” Nyeg informs the creature. “She laughs at things that aren’t funny and wears floppy hats indoors. At the potluck, she kept using yoga terminology in conversations that weren’t about yoga.”

Do it anyway, the creature screeches. It paces the floor, nails clacking on Nyeg’s hardwood. You don’t know how good it will feel to have an email waiting for you every time you boot up your computer, but I do. Your phone, always blinking with a voicemail. You will never feel gloomy. She will distract you, such that you never feel gloomy.

Nyeg informs the creature, curtly, that he does not feel gloomy. That he is doing just fine.

Do it anyway! comes the creature’s reply.

There’s an art print that hangs just beyond Nyeg’s easel. It’s of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and Nyeg purchased it himself while traveling through Tokyo. He likes to become absorbed in its aesthetic whenever he’s not experiencing success with a painting. It helps him rally; figure out how to proceed. He considers it the paragon of artistic accomplishment. Mountainous navy-blue waves with frothy, curling tips, and fine details as if outlined in felt pen. And that one, looming wave in utter mid-crash position. Just about to wreak havoc. Just about to have its way over everything else.

“What do I say?” Nyeg grunts, rising from his painting stool and shuffling to his computer, which is a box the color of mucosal beige.

If her social life is as sparse as yours, the creature says, dipping a claw into Nyeg’s tub of bath salts and filing it fastidiously on an adjacent pumice stone, it won’t matter. Say you recently had your fiftieth thoracic mole removed. Ask her about the last time she was intimate with an upstanding gentleman.

***

In a matter of a single month, Tina becomes inflamed. She orders Nyeg a set of bath salts all the way from Germany. They show up on his doorstep with a smattering of custom stamps. They’re pearlized and fuchsia-hued, in the shape of bubbled hearts.

She also insists on visiting Nyeg’s flat and observing him while he paints.

“Don’t know how much I’ll be able to accomplish with you sitting there, dear,” Nyeg says with a fluttery chuckle. The chuckle is meant to ward her off. It’s meant to communicate: I am not comfortable with you coming over, but I can’t tell you that directly, so I’m presenting you with this patent opportunity to retract your plan. I’m showing you the route through which you should backstep.

But Tina does not backstep. Says something about monitoring the tension in his vishuddha region and adjusting his drishti if need be. Suggests she might provide him with a manta for future use if he finds that anxiety is clouding his artistic mind. The flush of rosacea in her cheeks reminds him of a child with a fever.

Nyeg tells himself that, at the very least, his relations with Tina should pacify the creature. He hears from Tina three or four times a week. She pegs him with voicemails, emails, snail mail. She’s even pressuring him to unearth the small cellular phone he received from his nephew, so she can send him messages in pure text form, without any audio component. Apparently, these messages are like tiny emails you’re expected to answer within the day—sometimes within the hour. Nyeg astutely dodges her on this front, explaining that he would be open to using the small cellular phone, but he’s unfortunately misplaced the activating chip that’s required to operate it. It’s a shame they design those chips to be so tiny. One could easily slip through the cracks of an air vent; pop down a shower drain.

In spite of Nyeg’s uptick in socialization, the creature returns. Nyeg is painting one evening, the world around him feeling soundless—as if a vacuum had come and sucked all acoustic energy from the air, or as if he’d spontaneously gone deaf—when he notices a clump of fur that’s floated up and stuck to the wet paint on his canvas. He immediately understands the implication. He raps his paintbrush onto the tray and turns on his stool, arms crossed.

“Okay, now what?”

The creature is lying on the arm of Nyeg’s loveseat. Its back is in a gymnast’s U, its spine following the tight curvature of the arm. Its eyes are closed.

You’re not feeling satisfied with Tina’s company, it whistles through jagged, jaundiced teeth. You’ve been snippy lately. More snippy than usual.

“I told you she’s not my cup of tea! I told you from the very beginning.”

The problem isn’t Tina, the creature responds, measuredly. The problem is that you still have too much dead time in your schedule. A single companion isn’t enough for you.

Nyeg rocks back on his stool, rolling his eyes up at the skylight overhead. A single companion is more than he’s had in twenty years.

You need to contact another woman, the creature declares.

In The Great Wave off Kanagawa, there are a few boats at the base of the painting’s center. From the way they’re positioned, Nyeg has always been certain that they’re about to be overtaken. Plunged underwater and split into shards. Rendered driftwood for some far-off shore, the rowers likely drowned beneath the surface. Nyeg ventures a glance at his sycamore painting. The forest greens and glaring limes aren’t quite gelling tonight. He’s feeling off.

What about the woman who beads? the creature asks. The one who tried to sell you that rosary? It shifts and buries its muzzle, the source of its putrid breath, into the armpit of the loveseat. Nyeg grimaces at this and averts his gaze. The loveseat retains smells so easily.

Nyeg doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches for his walker and begins the long trek to his utility closet. He’s got his fabric freshener in mind. Steadying himself with both hands on the walker’s grips, he scoots and steps. Scoots and steps.

As he inches out of the room, the angular shadow of the hallway overtaking him, he barks over his shoulder:
“Cynthia. You’re thinking of Cynthia.”

***

Nyeg now has four rosaries: one with ceramic indigo beads, one with translucent red beads, and two with simple black beads. Nyeg, himself, is a Buddhist.

Almost invariably, when he swings open his front door, the voicemail light on his telephone is blinking. He’s become wary of turning on his small cellular phone, because when he does—a new activating chip now gifted to him and secured into place—it buzzes for upwards of fifteen minutes, the messages all rolling in. Three from Tina, two from Cynthia. Four from Tina, another from Cynthia. Why do they write in multiple messages what they could easily convey in one?

Nyeg mentions his troubles, offhandedly, to his once-a-month hairdresser. His hairdresser is a mother of five and Indonesian. She has a bob. She interprets many things that aren’t literal (“under the weather,” “pulling his leg,” “a dime a dozen”) literally. She surprises Nyeg when she nods, knowingly, at his account:

“Ah. Loneliness animal.”

“No, no,” Nyeg corrects. “No. Creature. It’s a creature.”

She trims a hedge of hair that she’s isolated between two fingers, just north of his left ear. “Many times, loneliness animal visit you, yeah?”

Nyeg takes Cynthia to a diner for roast beef sandwiches. On their way out, Cynthia stops to use the ladies’ room, and Nyeg somehow manages to be spotted by one of the few living friends he still has. Anthony Rastrilla—though they haven’t talked in ages. Anthony’s wife was diagnosed with ALS a few years ago. His daughter has had much trouble with the law, and trouble with life in general, and essentially bequeathed her children to him shortly after they were conceived. Anthony is always headed somewhere. He wears fatigue like a scent.

But he brightens perceptibly when clapping Nyeg on the back.

“Cynthia? God, I thought I heard at church that you were seeing Tina.” He rubs his head, laughing at himself. “Really can’t trust the brain these days.”

Nyeg explains—antsy, hands in pockets—that no, he heard correctly. He’s been spending quite a bit of time with both Cynthia and Tina.

Anthony hooks his lower lip to the side.

“Sure that’s something you want to be doing, bud?”

Anthony listens, with good eye contact, to Nyeg’s account of the small cellular phone, the vacuum-like quiet in the middle of the night, and his distinctly casual, no-strings excursions with Cynthia and Tina. Then he suggests a solution:

“Simple way to avoid this is to hang with the guys. You’ll have plenty of company, plenty of people to talk to, but you won’t risk any of the collateral damage that comes with, you know,” Anthony drops his voice to a whisper, eyeing the door of the ladies’ room, “spending time with multiple women.”

Both he and Nyeg are smiling fondly when Anthony’s own small cellular phone rings, loudly, with the same tone as a house phone. Anthony pushes his glasses down the bridge of his nose and retracts his neck to read the written message—no audio component—that he just received.

The features of his face droop downward. He tells Nyeg that it was such a nice accident to bump into him. Then he hurries out the door.

***

Nyeg doesn’t want to hang with the guys. Yes, there are guys in the Seniors without Senioritis group, and yes, he probably wouldn’t be snubbed if he looked into joining them for billiards or Sunday brunch, but he prefers the company of Tina and Cynthia. Guys his age are always griping. Griping, farting, perseverating on money-related topics. Forking up fingers between their eyebrows as they carp about that property that needs a new HVAC system; that daughter who needs help paying for auto work. It’s different with the women. They may have financial troubles, and they may have gastrointestinal troubles alike. But they keep those matters to themselves, under an aura of knit sweaters, and spritzed bangs, and ‘Sunday in the garden’ attitudes. They still want to be adored, after all these years. They don’t air their unpleasantries.

Also, historically, a few of the guys in the Seniors without Senioritis group have criticized his foot care regimen. They’re not nice guys.

Still, Nyeg finds himself, at various points during the day and many points during the night, drumming his fingers on his kneecaps. Slumped over his painting stool, gazing at the floor rather than the canvas, no longer compelled to continue working. He can’t hear his watch tick, but he’s confident that if he possessed the ears of his 40s, he’d be able to. Nyeg once witnessed a ray of sunlight migrate from a twelve o’clock position, near his living room stairs, to a four o’clock position, where his print of The Great Wave off Kanagawa hangs. Full-mast to half-mast. By the time the ray had faded altogether, the sun outside eclipsed by the horizon, Nyeg had capitulated and left a message on Tina’s voicemail. He ended it with: “Well, okay.”

In The Great Wave off Kanagawa, there is action everywhere. Nyeg supposes that it reminds him a bit of his youth. There is palpable risk. Drama. Sometimes an engulfing fear of not knowing what the outcome will be; not knowing that things will be all right. But the positive side of that, the side Nyeg found impossible to concentrate on when he was actually in his youth, is all the activity. The busyness, the frenetic quality. Events swarm around you, thrash at you. There’s always something you have to respond to; something that requires your immediate attention. That can seem intimidating when you’re young, but when you’re old—you simply view it as a hearty engagement with life.

The creature returns. It is adamant, once again: the solution to Nyeg’s problems is more conversational partners.

It stands in Nyeg’s periphery as he does his very best to ignore it, pretending to be absorbed in the delineation of a sycamore leaf against the darkness in the background. He even hums. The creature has its joints locked into their utmost upright position, giving its legs the appearance of wooden rods; giving it the appearance of a Trojan horse, wheeled into Nyeg’s flat. It seethes, its head dipping with each forced exhalation.

You must do this! You will never be happy if you don’t!

Nyeg hums.

Let me tell you how everyone else lives their life, it hisses at him. All the normal people. They have a constant influx of messages on their small cellular devices. Voicemails always waiting for them when they get home. Letters scattered across their welcome mats from loved ones who miss them. Invitations rolling in for barbecues, game nights, b’not mitzvah. Messages sent to them from all corners of the World Wide Web!

“Appreciate the concern, but I’m content as is,” Nyeg answers lightly, in a line that sounds rehearsed and is rehearsed.

Baloney! the creature screams.

It stalks over to the fabric freshener, which Nyeg has placed, conveniently, next to the loveseat. It swipes a paw at the bottle in one isolated movement, which causes the bottle to pinwheel across Nyeg’s hardwood floor, knock into a wall, ricochet toward the mouth of the stairs, and then tumble down the steps, one at a time, one thud after another, until it crashes into the dresser that lies perpendicular to the stairwell. There is a subsequent period of silence.

Nyeg arches an eyebrow at the creature, the way he would with a misbehaving child. He suspects that it knows he can no longer go down the stairs without assistance.

***

Cynthia wants to see the Marine band play at the WWII memorial, downtown. Tina wants to have dinner at the restaurant with the balcony that’s waterfall-adjacent. Misty, the retired real estate agent, wants to peruse an antique store on Thursday evening. Shania, with the granddaughter now in her custody, wants Nyeg to accompany the both of them to a matinee showing of Our Town. Sorren would like to install a work desk next to Nyeg’s easel, so she can découpage while he puts the finishing touches on his sycamore piece. Winona is bringing Nyeg shepherd’s pie at some unspecified time on Sunday. Anne is coming into town next week. She didn’t mention which hotel she’s staying at.

Nyeg’s age gets the better of him.

One evening, he’s so worn out from hearing how Cynthia’s daughter—her rose-cheeked, tiny-waisted daughter—has been diagnosed with colon cancer, he doesn’t return a missed call from Gigi. The call came in on his small cellular phone. He’d actually told Gigi he’d call her that evening. After saying goodbye to Cynthia, who’d called on the house phone and was still weeping at the end of their conversation, he clicks the handset back into its receiver and stares at the floor for a while, clutching the edge of his kitchen counter. Just a pup. Only in her 30s. Then he retires for the night. He holds down the power button on his small cellular phone until the lights cut out. He places it back in the packaging it arrived in, and nudges it under his bed with his walker.

Two weeks pass, rather unremarkably. Then come the ticked-off emails. At first, they’re mild and tentative. Playful inquires as to where he’s been. Messages about how he was missed at a certain outing; reassurances that everyone enjoyed themselves in spite of. But after two weeks, the playful inquires devolve into steely declarations. The temperatures turn icy. The words become figurative slaps to the cheek. Tina informs Nyeg that he’s to never contact her again; he’s to never so much as speak her name aloud. Should they cross paths at Seniors without Senioritis, he’s to do an about-turn and chose another path. Shania writes that it’s best to conclude their friendship. Engaging with a man who doesn’t respond to her texts in a timely manner sets a poor example for her young, budding granddaughter. It sends a message about what’s condonable and what’s not, she writes. It sends a false message. Misty sends him a three-lined email in which she remarks that if Nyeg is genuinely interested in antiques, he has but to look in a mirror.

In The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Nyeg is one of those bodies he’s always imagined—one of the floating, ballet-like bodies that have drowned underwater. Suspended in the still aftermath of the wave that exerted its all of its horsepower, overturning on itself and collapsing inexorably downward. Subsuming the boats and rowers within. No one likes him right now. Everyone is rankled. But, while Nyeg waits for the creature to reappear, pausing each evening to scan his canvas for bits of fur, expecting to detect a sudden presence in his periphery, it does not. Night after night, Nyeg receives weightier confirmation that he is indeed alone now. It’s just him, his canvas, his delicate brushes, and the consequences of his own decisions. Nothing materializes to insist that he curb his ways.

One night, after handing a delivery man bills for the Balkan dinner he’d ordered and cupping the resultant change in both hands, he inches past his sycamore painting. He stops his walker for a moment, the takeout bag swinging from his wrist. He examines what he’s done: the effect of a million microcosmic choices—each space in the painting its own little world, to which he dedicated painstaking, whole-hearted attention. Attention to the tiniest of spaces. Everything his eyes roam over is in a state of agreement. Every feature is in concordance with every other feature. The amorphous shapes of jet black, lime, jungle green, emerald—they’re exactly as they ought to be. They could not get closer to the ideal. He won’t pick up a brush and alter it again.