What To Get A Girl On Her 50th Birthday by Sandra McDonald sandra1012@mediaone.net August 24, 2008 San Diego, California Tessa Noel wakes up and thinks, "I'm fifty years old." The turret room is charming and full of sunlight. White walls, antique furniture, a poster bed, a breeze off the ocean. Duncan snores softly on his side of the bed. His dark hair, short this year, holds no trace of gray. She slides her hand across his bare back. He stirs but does not waken. They spent most of the night making love. Frantic love, she thinks. Love to prove something. Someone knocks. One of the hotel stewards stands atop the private staircase leading to their room. Tessa has given strict instructions to friends and family ones regarding today, and they have completely ignored her. A bouquet of white roses from Connor. Ten minutes later, pink and yellow carnations from Richie, who lives with his girlfriend CeCe near Mexico City. Tessa leans out a window as she reads the accompanying cards. She is a fifty-year-old princess, high in a tower. From here she can see the ocean, the white sandy beach and the garden gazebo where weddings take place every day. She examines herself in the bathroom mirror. The cost of having her hair cut, colored and treated has increased with every passing season. Boutique facials no longer work their same magic. A tiny wattle hangs under her chin. Soon she will have cataracts and liver spots, too. But things could be worse. Tessa rubs her scars and reminds herself that most people who get shot in the chest don't get a second chance. "Tessa?" Duncan is sitting up against the headboard, the sheet only casually draped across his nude body. He stretches like a large cat. "Happy birthday, sweetheart." She has promised herself not to pout, sulk or otherwise ruin the trip. San Diego has become one of their favorite destinations over the years, but this is the first time they've stayed at the famed Hotel Del Coronado. First time she has turned fifty. She slips into bed beside him. "Connor and Richie sent flowers." She fits against his chest as surely and snugly as ever. "I told them not to. No gifts, remember?" "No gifts?" Duncan sounds puzzled, but the smile on his face gives him away. He slides a gold and blue box from behind his pillow. "Guess I'll have to return this, then." "Mac . . ." she warns. "Go ahead. Open it." Tessa takes care not to rip the paper. Inside the box is a new digital camera, a top-of-the-line model that feels cool and heavy in her hands. "It's wonderful, but you shouldn't have." She gives him a thank you kiss. He returns the favor and moves lower, his mouth hot and moist against her throat, her collarbone, her breast. He loves her. She knows that. But fifty is, after all, only ten shorts years away from sixty, and sixty to seventy is a mere blink of an eye. Anything past seventy is too painful to contemplate. "I have an idea." She grips him by the shoulders and pushes him away. "Let's go play tennis." While she can. Before her bones turn brittle and she needs a wheelchair just to get to the bathroom. They play on a clay court. The sky in San Diego is different than the one in Seacouver or Paris. Wider, bluer, higher, unblocked by buildings or mountains. The red and white hotel looks like a great castle. Duncan loses both games. He is notoriously bad at the sport, which she finds amusing. They eat breakfast at one of the restaurants on the lawn while seagulls whirl overhead. "You're awfully quiet today," he says. Tessa forks a bit of fruit salad. Pineapple, watermelon, strawberries - all of her favorite fruits. She wonders when she will have to start drinking prune juice. "I'm not sulking." "I didn't say you were. I think you're handling this very well." A glint of amusement in his eyes. Fifty is nothing compared to four hundred and sixteen, but he has eternal youth on his side. No wrinkles or varicose veins. No diminishing stamina or memory loss. Maybe all Immortals think aging is a joke played on the unfortunate. "I feel the same today as I did yesterday," she says, a lie. After they finish, Duncan proposes a walk to explore the hotel. Presidents and celebrities have stayed in its rooms. Ghosts haunt the halls. Marilyn Monroe made a movie here and her male co-stars wore dresses. Part of their reason for picking the Del is an interest in its colorful past, but today Tessa wants nothing to do with looking backward. Princesses need their illusions. "You go ahead," she says. He reaches for her hand. "Come with me. It'll be fun." "I don't feel like it." "I thought you weren't sulking." "I'm not. I want to sunbathe for awhile." She goes to the pool in her old-lady bathing suit, which has a frilly skirt to hide her cellulite. From her lounge chair she can see the curve of the coastline. Brown hills, worn by time and tide. None of the Northwest's green and white beauty. She wonders if Duncan would consider moving to San Diego. Seacouver has become too gloomy for her, too crowded with coffee shops and earnest environmentalists. Voices interrupt her daydreams. Three girls barely past their teens stake out territory not far from Tessa's spot. They each have glossy hair and high, firm breasts. Not a single ounce of flab hangs from their thighs or underarms. If she said "hot flashes" or "vaginal dryness" or "mood swings" to them, they would think she was speaking a foreign language. "We should go back to Tijuana tonight," Blue Bikini says. Green Bikini drapes herself dramatically across her chair. "Don't talk to me. I'm still hungover." Yellow Bikini smoothes lotion over the flat plane of her stomach. "At least the guys were cute." Tessa turns a page in her novel but stops paying attention to the written words. Boyfriends, sex, fun - these are the bikini girls' concerns. They have the carefree tone of women just coming into their prime. Once she was the same way, but that was at the other end of a thirty-year tunnel. If only she had realized then how fleeting years are, how time consumes everything. She needs more sunscreen. Or more agescreen, a defense against birthdays. Tessa is pondering the multibillion-dollar market for such a product when Duncan appears. He's worn his black bathing suit. The tight one that leaves little to the imagination. The bikini girls whip their heads his way. "How's the water?" "Come in with me and find out." She shows off in front of the girls. She can't help it. Mine, mine, mine, she thinks as Duncan takes her into the deep end. She has paid the price for this sword-bearing prince. Blood on her towels when he returns from killing someone. Gut-gnawing worry whenever he is just a few minutes late. They make a happy and prosperous couple, but they are also a couple without children or marriage vows. Duncan catches her around the waist and swings her through the blue water. The subject of marriage has never really come up again since her shooting. Maybe her near- death frightened him off the idea. Maybe it frightened her. Why fix things that aren't broken? Tessa presses her check against his and smells his cologne. "I'm glad we came," she tells him. "I love you, Tessa." "I know." She gives him her best impish grin. "It's why I put up with you." They sun themselves. Duncan's cell phone rings, which annoys her. Jonathan is the twenty-year-old they left in charge of the store. Duncan has assured her that Jonathan is not a pre-Immortal the way Richie was when they took him in so long ago, but she is not sure she believes him. Tessa pulls her wrap higher. The scars do not like the sun. The night she and Richie were shot remains mostly blank to her, but she knows Duncan kept her from dying. CPR, begging, the sheer force of his love - something tethered her to life during emergency surgery and a week in Intensive Care. Richie needed no such medical intervention. How unfair, that he'll remain young forever. Depression catches her again with a big black net. Ten years to sixty. Twenty years to seventy. She imagines herself toothless, balding and incontinent. Pity is the one thing she never wants to see in Duncan's eyes, but she doesn't think she's courageous enough to drive him from her life before then. In the afternoon they return to their room and shower. "The harbor cruise leaves at four," Duncan reminds her. "Dinner and dancing under the stars." Tessa knows the plans. They made the reservations before leaving home. Now the cruise sounds terribly dull, entertainment for old people. "Let's do something else instead. Let's go to Tijuana." "Tijuana?" She tosses him her towel. "It's a big city south of the border." "I know." He picks a fat green grape from the fruit and cheese tray they ordered from room service. He pops it into his mouth. "Why do you want to go to there?" "Something different." "The cruise is different." "I want to go to Tijuana," she says, and she knows she will win because today is her birthday. She gives him a look that tells him as much, but he hasn't surrendered yet. Stubborn Scot. "We could go tomorrow. Spend the whole day there." Tessa takes a handful of clothes from the closet. Right before she closes the bathroom door she says, "I want to go today." She puts on her blue pantsuit. She looks like her grandmother. Tessa changes into a short skirt and low-cut top instead. She leans close to the mirror and uses cleanser, moisturizer, eye cream, skin tightener, concealer, foundation, eyeliner, mascara, blush for her cheekbones, blush for her cheeks and three shades of light brown on her eyelids. She carefully outlines her lips and then fills them with coral gloss. The entire effect is designed to be light and simple, as if she's wearing barely any makeup at all. She dries her hair and pins it up. No, better long and loose, like a girl. When she emerges from the bathroom a half-hour later, Duncan is just returning to the room with a brochure for the border train in hand. He is dressed in khakis and a white shirt and looks contrite. "Whatever you want is fine with me," he says. "Good." "But the cruise - " "Mac." He holds up his hands. "All right. Close your eyes." "Why?" "Humor me." The box he gives her is long and slim and shiny. Inside is an antique silver locket on a thin chain. She has never seen such a pretty design. The etching is faded and worn, but when it was new, it must have been exquisite. Tessa protests, "The camera was more than enough." "You deserve more." Duncan fastens the locket around her neck. "You deserve everything." Who is she to argue? end of part one