Friends on Zoom wanted us to play a song. Me on rhythm guitar, Tony on lead and Floyd on sax. But the acoustics were so bad, nobody could hear us in the far-flung locales where time had distributed us all. Research indicated we needed better mics than webcams provided. In the menatime, I decided to practice.

Alone in our bedroom, I placed my iPhone on the night table by the bed where I hadn’t slept in a year, tuned my guitar, and as I bent over to press the red button on my Voice Memos app, I saw my previous recording: “Barbara & Peggy with Virginia.”

I put down the guitar and pressed Play.

The recording captured a visit to Virginia’s hospice room by two of her oldest friends. I remembered her reluctance to see them. She didn’t want suffering to be their final memory of her. But we scheduled it for the late morning, when her morphine drip seemed to be most effective and after some encouragement from me, she agreed.

They had all been members of the same Park Slope book group since 1979, habitués of the women’s bookstore on 7th Avenue there, and so they reminisced about the times of their lives, when they were young and everything seemed possible. Only five years their senior – but a gap that seemed so much wider to those in their mid-20s – Gini, as she preferred to be called back then, was a role model. They would often meet in her sprawling, beautifully decorated rent- stabilized apartment, with two (two!) baths, and a husband – about to be divorced – banished to his room. They marveled at Gini’s keen fashion sense and her self-assurance. As a civil rights litigator for the federal government supervising male attorneys, she was proof that they could fly high and be what they wanted to be. But more than that, Peggy told her she was always so helpful, so encouraging, so sympathetic to their needs.

Then they remembered the night in 1985 when Gini arrived late and announced, “Ladies, I have a new Beau.” That was me. I heard myself talking about the evening I spotted her on the subway, reading a John Updike hard cover. I was coming home from a dreary blind date, she was returning from a lecture about brutal architecture. As I told the tale, Gini would interject funny corrections and observations until it felt like we were acting out the “Ah, I remember it well” scene in Gigi.

Now Barbara was complaining about a book she was reading with her new group upstate, a self-published snoozer written by a member’s friend. An American Western Epic was its ponderous title. Gini groaned. Her friends thought she was in pain, but it was disdain and sure enough, here came Gini’s verdict, delivered by a lover of literary fiction in staccato deadpan fashion:

“American. Western. Epic. Every word says NO!”

All too soon I was announcing the pre-arranged hour mark had been reached, the time to end the visit. One could hear chairs being moved, followed by soft tearful goodbyes. I said I would see her friends out. The door closed but I could still hear Virginia sighing in the empty room. I must have forgotten to turn off the recorder.

Minutes later I was back.

“I need more morphine, Joe.” I left to summon the nurse. I returned and told Virginia she’d be there shortly. Virginia asked me to give her eye drops, then to lower the bed. I held a straw to her mouth and she sipped.

“No water, Joe.”

I filled the cup with the pitcher but I poured too quickly and it splashed the paper lunch menu on the tray near her bed.

“Joe, you’re such a klutz,” she said. It was a phrase she often used when I was clumsy, the ying to her yang of “Joe, you’re my hero,” whenever I was helpful. Both offered with the appropriate dollop of sarcasm. We talked about the visit and she said it was nice but she sounded weak.

“I need more morphine.”

A new voice could be heard. It was the nurse. She said my request for a morphine pump was approved and she was going to install it.

“You need to move the phone,” she said.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

I found myself hoping I wouldn’t turn the machine off.

There was a ruffling noise.

“Don’t turn it off!” I shouted to myself in the past. “I want to keep hearing her voice…”

The recording ended.

Screenshot