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one man with another.
    “It’s nice to see your ass and Al’s ass while you crawl through the house,” Connie admits as she drops her head into her hands and blushes.
    Daniel laughs almost as loud as his wife.
    “You think we’re hot?” he manages to ask, swaggering a bit and hoisting up his pants.
    “Hot is a bit much, honey,” Connie says, lifting her eyes and laughing at the strange sight of a testosterone-motivated Daniel. “Truth be told, dear friend, it’s been so long since I’ve seen
any
skin, besides my own, a gorilla could crawl through here and it would excite me.”
    “You slut,” Daniel says, leaning in to plant a kiss on top of her head. “You know, Connie, you are sweet and smart and attractive. You should start dating again.”
    Connie’s heart stops at the mere thought. Today the butt crack, tomorrow the whole banana; it’s not going to work for her no matter what is on her list.
    “All this because I saw the top half-inch of your white butt? Honey, imagine what would happen if I held a man’s hand. Go,” she orders him. “I’m focusing here. And for God’s sake, keep your pants on your fine ass and tell Al to do the same thing.”
    The Irishman has thrown Connie temporarily off course. She is tempted to make Al and Daniel leave immediately so that the singing house, which has given her great courage, will continue to push her forward. She knows there are items on her list about sex, and men, and love, and Connie cannot imagine when in the hell she’ll put those numbers in her pocket and start living them. It took her nearly three glasses of wine to even
write
those items on her list of dreams; actually
living
them makes her want to roll back into her bedroom with a very sturdy eraser.
    Frannie has already mentioned that it was not the house that started Connie moving towards living her list, but her well-rounded and -designed plan to retire early. That way, Frannie reminds her, she can begin sorting through all the other “shit” in her life.
    “Not just the physical shit either,” O’Brien had admonished. “You are so take-charge at work, and with at least two of your daughters, but you do have some other shit going on, baby.”
    Like Connie didn’t know. Until the house started singing, she had been unmoved, terrified, and content to just plan her simple retirement party and procrastinate selling the house, which would force her into moving more than just a few boxes. She’d have to move the rest of her life as well.
    By the time Al and Daniel hoist up their pants and leave, Connie has worked herself into a panic. Men. Sex. The unfinished speech. An old job and a new job. Days and weeks and months of unstructured time. The numbers in her jeans pocket from the list that seems to be laughing at her. Whimpering, she calls O’Brien and tells her she needs a house call.
    And, of course, Frannie O’Brien makes house calls.
    They talk for a long time and O’Brien makes Connie lean back and remember the parade of decisions that actually brought her to the kitchen table, the retirement speech, the singing house, and the men with the lovely butt cracks. Frannie pushes her, asks her to just talk, to simply process the journey. Even in friendship, Frannie O’Brien’s skills as a psychiatric nurse flood to the front of everything she does, everything she is, everything she hands to the people she loves.
    Connie remembers and is embarrassed by her frightened heart.
    Frannie leans forward as if she is waiting for something that she has never seen before to fly out of her friend’s mouth—an African snake, three blue pigeons, naked dancing men, ancient explorers, Annie Oakley.
    What comes out instead involves a new hospital administrator, a series of horrid deaths on the unit, her aching ankles and the discovery that she could indeed afford to retire and work part-time if she downsized, if her life really did change.
    “And…?” O’Brien presses, impatient, eager for this part of