What follows is a transcript of a conversation that might have happened. Once. Or that probably will happen. Eventually.

It takes places in the laundry room of a retirement community.

There are two participants. The man is strikingly handsome, but very, very old. His name could be Gary or Randolph or Charlton or Aldo. We’ll call him James. He has silver hair, an aquiline nose, and a gaunt face deeply lined by age, weather, and sun. His shoulders are slightly stooped, but it’s clear from his posture that he was once so tall he loomed effortlessly over other men. He has piercing blue eyes and a bone structure worthy of being embossed on a coin or carved into the side of a mountain.

The woman is in her early thirties. Her name could be Sally or Jennifer or Maria or Anne. We’ll call her Eve. She has a small nose, green eyes, long eyelashes, and a beautiful neck. Eve does not live in the retirement community. She is doing her mother’s laundry while the older woman takes the afternoon off to have her hair done. Eve adores her mother. Her mother adores Eve.

When she walks into the laundry room, Eve sees James trying to fit a dollar bill into a machine that converts paper money into quarters. After the dollar is spit out three times, Eve approaches James and says, “May I?”