The Games People Play

After spending nearly an entire Saturday playing 'Monopoly', we spent the evening going through the rare books library that she had collected over her lifetime. Signed Hemmingway's and Faulkner's, early Shakespeare folios, English poets, and all of the Bronte sisters and Jane Austin's works. Early American authors, to the latest mysteries and action adventure novels; every book you would pick up was a surprise. Lily was eclectic and opportunistic in her reading.

They had climbed mountains with Edmund Hillary (after his Everest climb) and scuba dived wrecks with Jacque Cousteau. They had clubbed in the late 1940's and early 1950's with movie stars from the Golden age of Hollywood; they had gone to all of the legendary old nightclubs and restaurants in Los Angeles. Not to mention New York; Paris, and lord only knows how many other cities.

I can't say that I had fallen in love with Lily, but I was certainly head over heels in fascination with her, and after six months, spending our time together, she was my best friend, bar none.

We were discussing going to check on one of her other houses in the spring. She thought that it would be a good time to open the apartment in Venice, although we might stop in Vienna as well, if we were so close.

It was then that things went kind of sideways for me.

One day Lily came to my office to fetch me for lunch. I didn't think about it twice when she was shown into my office and we left together. She looked as beautiful as usual (I had succumbed to her charms and saw her as beautiful, despite her age.) It was when I returned that I had the scales lifted from my eyes.

Several of the guys in the office cornered me upon my return.

"Dude, what are you doing? It's like you're dating some old lady. A cougar. I mean, like she must be close to forty years old!" they told me. I was gob smacked, flabbergasted, astonished! But not for the reasons that they thought.

I didn't say anything to them, but I went back to my office and closed the door to think.

They thought that she was so old, estimating she was in her late thirties. But I thought back. Just six months before, when I hit her with my car, I thought that she was at least eighty-years-old! What was going on? I mean explanations about Botox and Swiss face creams and all of the makeup in the worlds could not make an eighty-year-old look like she was forty. Could they?

I realized that something very strange had been happening, and I had been cooked like a frog, or a lobster. You know: you put a frog into boiling water and it immediately jumps back out. Put it in tepid water and turn on the heat and it doesn't notice how hot the water is getting and before it knows it, it's boiled.

That is what had happened to me. Not with boiling water. But the gradual change sneaking up on me.

When I first saw her, she was old. But she and I started seeing each other all of the time, with such frequency that I missed all of the small changes that were taking place with Lily. For example her hair: it went from a gray to now a solid Titian red. Her wrinkled face was now smooth, the age spots gone, the excess sagging skin on her neck and arms a thing of the past.

I was going to confront her that very night.

As it happened our plan that night was to meet up for dinner at the Caretaker's house that I was living in. I went to a barbeque place and picked up some pulled pork sandwiches with a small salad and an order of their greasy, delicious fries. I had a collection of beers in the 'fridge, everything from Fat Tire and Blue Moon, to Modelo Especial, Anchor Steam and even some Guinness.

We ate, and as we ate I examined Lily closely and objectively for the first time since I had first met her. She sensed that something was wrong.

"Okay, Trent. You seem distracted and upset tonight. Just talk to me and I guarantee that everything will be all right."

"Just like you, Lily," I replied, thinking about how to start this difficult conversation, "Grab the tiger by the tail." We both laughed.

"Lily, I'm sorry, but telling me stories about expensive creams and going for topical treatments for your wrinkles just doesn't cut it. There is something going on that I don't understand. It is as if in the six months that we've known each other, you've actually gotten significantly younger. And there is no plausible explanation for that."

Lily smiled gently at me.

"I knew that this would happen eventually. I'm surprised that it took this long.

"Trent, I will explain everything to you. But I want you to take me to your bed and make love to me first, and then we'll talk."

And that is what we did. We made love. Nothing kinky or adventurous; a simple joining of two people in the most life affirming of acts. Facing each other, each of us looking into the other's green eyes, watching the other's face as we reached le petit mort, the 'little death.' If we had not completely belonged to each other before then, we did afterwards.

One thing was certainly revealed to me that just confirmed my suspicions: Lily, naked, had the body of a twenty-something-year-old model! She was perfection incarnate. Not a scar, a blemish or any sign of the little traumas that are normal, even on young people.

The time had come.

"Lily, you know that I love you and if that love is not returned I will never love again in this life. But you have to answer me: Who, or what are you?"

Lily had a serious look on her face, but it was clear she was thinking about how to frame her answer.

"Trent? Do you remember the story in the Old Testament of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden?"

I responded with a nod of my head.

"First, to assure you, I AM, as I told you, Lilith. I was Adam's first wife. Yes, THAT Adam."

"Wow!" I thought, "This is getting really deep. Either I am being conned like no one before, or I am being exposed to one of those things that the Masons or the Knights Templars will kill you to keep secret." I looked around just slightly paranoid.

"God created us and placed us in the Garden. But unlike Eve later, I was never seduced by the Serpent's false promises and I rejected partaking of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

"But Adam was like a child in his naivety. He was kind of a jock, running all over, wrestling with all the animals. He was the original Alpha male.

He rejected me — I still don't really know why — and God placed me in another part of the Garden and created Eve to be Adam's second wife. You know the story from there. She ate of the fruit that the Serpent offered her, and both she and Adam were cast from the Garden and became mortals.

"I, on the other hand was left in the Garden and remained immortal."

Lily paused, obviously caught up in her memories.

I had to ask, "If you didn't eat of the fruit, does that mean you can't tell good from evil?"

"I learned later. After some period of time, God released me from the Garden and I went into the world, which was populated by then. So I learned of good and evil, but only secondhand, by observing the behaviors of others. That was when I began to understand hypocrisy as well. "

"Eventually, I met a very special and unique man, who became the King of the small country where I had been released. He was the first of many who I have loved and married. But alas, I was immortal and he was mortal.

"Eventually I learned to use my powers to greatly extend my mate's life. He would remain the same age as he was when we married, for about 300 years. Then he would start ageing over the next 40 to 50 years, and he would finally die. It has always broken my heart, for I have always loved my men. During those later years, I would allow my appearance to age as well so that we would seem to be of a close, appropriate age. When you and I met, I was still mourning my last husband and maintaining the facade of an older woman.

"But then came the accident. When you rushed out to help me, after I first rebuffed you, I looked into your face. I saw your face and your eyes and I knew immediately that fate had put us together and you would become my next beloved."

"That is quite a fairy tale," I said, "and coming from anyone other than you I would dismiss it. But how can I deny my own eyes, my mind and my heart. So where do we go from here?"

I couldn't deny the truth, I was besotted by Lily and we would be together for the rest of my life.

Things moved quickly from that day on. Lily, it turns out, never wasted time when she wanted something to happen.

There was an obituary published for one 'Anne-Marie Lilith Van der G...' age 85 years, a wealthy but reclusive widow whose husband had passed away 2-years prior. The services held were limited to close friends and family members, and her ashes were interned in the crypt along with her husband at the Hollywood Cemetery close to her home. Her will gave all of her assets to her recently rediscovered nephew, and only remaining relative, Trent Edwards, currently residing at her estate in Brentwood...

It goes without saying that I had to quit my job. A lot of the people I was working with seemed to resent my newfound wealth. There were also mummers around town of my using my youth and charm to endear myself to an old, very likely non-compos-mentis woman and stealing away her fortune. I was thought of, in a word, a fortune hunter, a gigolo, a confidence man, a swindler. Evidence be damned! It was clearly time to leave Los Angeles for other, more tolerant climes.

It was a month later, after the announcement appeared that recent heir, Trent Edwards was to marry Lily Smith-Jones, a young former model (although no one was successful in finding any past photographs of the very lovely woman.) The wedding was held on a private beach on the island of Molokai. The bride wore a wedding dress that would be the envy of an Italian Princess (worn once before by one named Medici), with gold and silver thread and pearls woven into the fabric. The word is that the happy newlyweds will be leaving for a yearlong cruise around the world for their honeymoon.

Actually the deliciously happy couple flew from Hawaii to Venice, where we quietly ensconced ourselves into the apartment overlooking the Grand Canal that had been owned by Lily, now owned, technically, by Trent.

Now that isn't quite accurate either.

All of the properties and investments that Lily had acquired over not just centuries, but over several millennia were held by corporations domiciled in the Channel Islands, Lichtenstein, and other tax friendly, government allergic locales. Our investment advisors might reside in New York, Hong Kong or London, but they were paid for their advice, and other parties handled the actual transactions. That is why Lily and I left such a small financial footprint with any government in the world. And whoever owned the stock in the holding corporations actually controlled the assets. Oh my! The Inland Revenue and IRS be damned.

After their brunch on the balcony, Lily continued to explain how life was going to be, to me.

"So we can live one life for thirty-five to forty years before we have to begin the process of disappearing and starting over again. But given long enough, we can go back. For example, I haven't actually lived in Berlin or Paris for so long that no one is still be alive there who might recognize me. But I'm afraid we probably need to sell the Brentwood and Doheny Drive estates and pick up some others. Provence? An estate in the Scottish Highlands? Do you have any thoughts?"

I did.

"Yes, my love. Let's put that aside until after dinner tonight and go make love."

With a large smile on her face, Lily could only agree as we raced each other to their bedroom.