Her rudeness surprised me because old women are supposed to be really grandmotherly and nice, so I lost my cool and cursed her out really badly, calling her some pretty nasty things, which made her smile, which was weird, but led to my having a kick-a.s.s idea: turn the common room into a word-battle arena where hope dukes it out with despair once a week, which sounded crazy loopy at first, but I've always trusted my visions, so I pitched my idea to some of the older men-who were always putting their arms around me and squeezing my shoulders-and they ate the plan up and made it happen.

Because she loves being evil, Joan of Old agreed to play her part right away, and it has really improved morale at the home very much-or at least that's what the residents tell me anyway.

The front of the Methodist Retirement Home has these huge slavery-times plantation columns and a porch with wooden rocking chairs that look out over a big old rolling lawn, but I use the back entrance, where you have to sign in and pa.s.s through security, which-on Wednesday afternoons-is pretty much Door Woman Lucy.

So I park Donna's bike behind a bush-hiding my ride, so it won't get stolen-grab BBB, and then walk into the visitor's entrance with my pup in one hand and the hot chocolate in the other.

"Ain't no dogs allowed in this building," Door Woman Lucy says from behind her desk, shaking her head slowly, staring into my eyes. "You know the rules, Ms. Appleton. I don't make 'em, and I need to get paid, so that funky little rat's gonna have to stay outside."

"DWL." That's what I call Door Woman Lucy to her face, and I think she likes the nickname, because she always smiles when I say it. "It's cold out."

"Sure is."

"Too cold for a dog to be outside."

"Wouldn't know."

"Bet it gets cold every time that door opens."

"Sure does," Door Woman Lucy says, lifting one eyebrow.

"I just bought this hot chocolate here, but I'm not really feeling much like drinking a delicious wintertime beverage right now. But it would be a shame to throw it away. I'd really hate to chuck a fresh cup of hot chocolate."

"Ms. Appleton, as you know, I'm not allowed to accept bribes from visitors, but if you left that drink on my desk, knowing that it won't change the fact that that dog of yours must stay outside the building, I'd maybe see it don't go to waste."

Very slowly, I place the cup on her desk, lay the Snickers across the lid as an added bonus, sweetening the deal-because I really do dig Door Woman Lucy-sign the clipboard with all the lines and names of people who have visited today, record the time of my visit, and then I step away slowly, making my way into the building, BBB under my arm.

"Thanks for leaving that dog outside, Ms. Appleton. I'm sure you understand that rules are rules," Door Woman Lucy says.

"Oh, I understand," I say.

BBB barks once to convey that he understands as well.

And then B Thrice and I both walk through a second door and into the home.

We make our way through some depressing hallways with dusty fake plants in the corners, but we don't see any staff members.

There is a great cheer when I walk into the common room.

I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm sorta like a rock star to these people.

I slip BBB to Knitting Carol, who hides my pup in a lap full of yarn. B Thrice loves to sleep in yarn, so no worries. Knitting Carol loves dogs, so it's a match made in heaven. With B3 in her lap, she's smiling like a little girl on Christmas morning. True? True.

"All right, kid," Old Man Linder says to me, ma.s.saging my shoulders from behind. "The old broad has been mumbling nasty things about you all week. She's coming at you hard today. Don't let her rattle you with any low blows, because the wrinkly bag's br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of 'em, as you are well aware."

Old Man Linder is my manager. He's something like a hundred and fifteen years old and has to drag around an oxygen bottle that pumps pure air through these clear tubes that are stuck up his nose. His breath stinks and he has spots all over his face, but he is a kick-a.s.s manager, and he hasn't thrown in the white towel on me yet. He's tough as nails, so I trust him to manage my corner.

Big Booty Bernice has shut the common room doors, so the staff won't hear the cheering and come break up the battle in the middle of my exchange with Joan of Old.

All of the old people are slowly pushing chairs and wheeling the wheelchair-bound into position, so that everyone can see and hear, which means that everyone has to be really super-mega close to the battle, because old people don't see and hear too well. Word.

White hair abounds, along with homemade sweaters, no-name dress sneakers, cough drops, ear-hair, yellow fingernails, shaky limbs, wrinkles, diapers, and an intense hospital smell that dries out your nasal pa.s.sages in-like-ten seconds.

Joan of Old is in her wheelchair, front and center, staring me down with her wrinkly pink eyelids, trying to psyche me out. She might weigh eighty pounds if her clothes were soaking wet. She's wearing all black like always, still mourning her husband who died-like-thirty years ago. True.

Joan of Old wiggles an old pink finger at me and then shakes her head so that her black bonnet falls a little to the left, so she straightens it with her bony shaky hands.

Joan of Old has no manager, mostly because everyone in the home hates her. She is such a downer most of the time, and she likes to quote depressing Nietzsche 24/7, which, of course, wins her no friends.

I take my place by the sunniest window in the room, and Old Man Linder says, "Remember, the crowd doesn't always get your newfangled MTV kid references, so keep your jokes age appropriate. You're battling for our happiness. This is the only thing we look forward to all week. Besides this weekly battle, our lives bore us to death. This is the one thing that's different and exciting, so don't let us down. You making that old crusty broad smile-this is something to believe in. It breaks the awful chain of days. So for us, please just keep going at her until she smiles. No mercy!"

I nod once and roll my head along my shoulders, crack my knuckles, and jab the air a little-like Ca.s.sius Clay. (Also known as Muhammad Ali, sucka!) All of the old people are seated and waiting for the battle to begin, so Old Man Thompson-who actually wears a bowtie every Wednesday, just to play the role-stands and turns to face the audience. He's hunchbacked but sprightly.

"Welcome once again to the Wednesday Afternoon Battle between Hope and Pessimism. To my left we have the indomitably hopeful one, the girl of unyielding optimism, the teen of merriment, the fan favorite, the girl you wished were your granddaughter or maybe even your great-granddaughter, the only minor who visits the home on a non-holiday, the undisputed Wednesday Afternoon Champion, Amber the Princess of Hope Apple-Tooooooooooooooon!"

I raise my hands in the air and hop a little.

The people clap and all the old dudes with front teeth left whistle.

"And now the challenger," Old Man Thompson says, and everyone starts to boo. "This woman needs no introduction. The woman in black. The constant mourner. The self-proclaimed nihilist. The one who says the building is too cold and forces management to keep the thermostat so high that we have to dress as though we are all back in the spring of '36 when we had that record-setting heat spell. The woman who once faked a heart attack because she thought we were having too much fun at last year's Christmas party. You know her well. You have no doubt suffered her insults at least once in the last twenty-four hours. The brittle broad you love to hate. Joan! Of! Old!"

Boos abound. Someone throws a crochet hook at Joan, but misses her head by at least four feet.

Joan's little raw bony hands swat at the many booers, whom she cannot identify-because she is blind.

"All right, ladies," Old Man Thompson says, "front and center."

Joan of Old wheels herself over, and I step to her.

"Now we want a clean battle," Old Man Thompson says, his breath smelling like he powdered his tongue with the dust found at the bottom of a Tums bottle. "Politics and religion are off limits. This is a Methodist home, so let's keep the cursing to a minimum. You know the rules. Joan of Old smiles and the young lady wins again. Amber Appleton cries, and the old broad wins her first battle. The challenger calls the flip."

"Tails," Joan of Old says.

Old Man Thompson flips and catches a quarter, smacking it down on the back of his spotted and veiny hand. "Heads!"

"How do I know you're not lying?" Joan of Old asks. "I'm blind, you know."

"Feel the top of the coin for all I care," Old Man Thompson says, offering the back of his hand to Joan of Old.

She feels his hand and the coin, and then says, "d.a.m.n it!"

"You kicking or receiving?" Old Man Thompson asks.

"Kicking," Old Man Linder answers for me, and then slaps me on the b.u.t.t before saying, "Go get 'er, kid," and then he sits down.

"Let the battle begin!" Old Man Thompson says, and all of the old people clap and hoot.

"The problem with women of your generation," JOO opens with, "is that you waste all your time doing community service, harboring dreams of a college education, when you should be trying to find a husband who will put a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator. Smarten up, chippie. Coming here is a waste of time. We'll all be dead in a few weeks anyway. The time to find a husband is now, while you're still skinny, because you'll be a heifer in less than ten years. Do you really want to end up a spinster?"

"Ooooo!" the crowd says, and Joan of Old nods confidently.

"Okay. Okay," I say. "Joan of Old is so ancient."

"How ancient is she?" my manager yells, just like I taught him.

"She's so ancient her elementary school teacher had to chisel her report cards in stone, and Joan had to ride a dinosaur to school every day."

"Hey!" the crowd says, and cheers, repeating my silly joke to each other, nodding their approval.

This joke may not be funny to you, but you have to consider my audience-old people love safe corny jokes.

No smile from Joan. Nothing.

"When I was a young woman there were no dinosaurs about, but there were lonely plain homely girls who never got asked to dance by handsome promising boys. All of these ugly girls ended up living lonely virginal lives in depressingly small government-subsidized apartments, because no man would have them. When I was your age, we usually found these dinosaur-faced girls at the old people's home, doing community service."

"Oooo!" the crowd moans.

I swallow hard. That one sorta cut me.

Do I really have a dinosaur face? And how would she know, since she's blind? Did someone tell her I have a dinosaur face?

It's true that boys don't ever ask me to dance. I'm not all that jazzed up for boys or anything-why would I be after seeing what A-hole Oliver and company did to my mom-but I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life either, after all of my boys (The Five) marry stupid women, younger versions of Joan of Old.

And I really don't want to end up like my mom.

I swallow once and look over at my manager. Old Man Linder has the white towel draped over his shoulder, but he is nodding confidently, showing me his old pink palms, saying, "Relax," so I roll my head along my shoulders, look out into the crowd, and can see that they look very concerned.

"Joan is so old," I retort, "she farts dust."

"Hey!" the crowd roars, and I lift my hands in the air.

But Joan of Old is undaunted. She's not smiling.

"Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote," JOO says, " *The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.' I offer that little tidbit to you as a form of future consolation, when we are all dead and buried and you are all alone in some federally funded box of an apartment-manless and childless-thinking about your barren womb."

"Below the belt!" my manager yells.

"Watch yourself, Joan," Old Man Thompson says.

"Joan, didn't you used to date Nietzsche, back in the 1800s? After your husband died," I say, and a few old men cheer, but most of the old people moan, so I know my joke didn't go over so well. Spoofing on dead husbands is sorta off limits around here. Unwritten rule.

"Watch yourself, Amber," Old Man Thompson says. "Let's keep this wholesome. Good clean fun."

"What do you know, child?" Joan of Old says. " *Life always gets harder toward the summit-the cold increases, responsibility increases.' Also Nietzsche. You haven't even begun to feel pain, young woman, but you will. You will feel pain. Life is h.e.l.l, and your life has only just begun."

Joan sorta stares at me through her pink wrinkly eyelids, and suddenly, this old Nietzsche-quoting woman chills my bones. Maybe she's right. Maybe there is nothing but pain in my future. Endless pain and then you die. Can this be what's true?

The room is dead quiet, and I haven't got a joke left in my head. I feel that this might be the end, that I am about to be defeated by Joan of Old for the first time, and that hope is going to die shortly in the Methodist Retirement Home along with everything and everyone else.

But then I remember that I have G.o.d on my side, so I pray silently.

Come on, JC. Just one little joke. Let me keep hope alive for these old people who are all about to die. Let me give them a little hope-enough so that they can keep on believing until they croak.

And then I have it!

I walk over to Joan, say, "That's okay. Be as pessimistic as you want, JOO. I'll still love you anyway," and give her a big sloppy kiss on the cheek. Joan's mouth opens wide in this very dramatic way, and then I know I have her. Everyone howls with laughter. "You cute little old wrinkly incredibly depressing kook-I love ya!" I give her another big sloppy kiss on the other cheek, and then Joan is blushing, and- "She smiles!" Thompson says. "Joan of Old smiled for the briefest of seconds. Do we have a witness?"

Half of the old people in the room yell "Aye!"

"That's my girl!" Old Man Linder says as he lifts my left hand into the air, proclaiming me victorious once again.

"Amber Appleton is the winner and your undisputed champion!"

The old people who can stand do, and all of them begin to congratulate me, which quickly yields to stories of grandchildren who never visit-these tales are accompanied by endless wallet-fold pictures that show the grandchildren at various stages of their lives and are presented (usually) in chronological order, one picture per each year the child has attended school-talk about the cost of grocery items fifty years ago, the weather over the last eight odd decades or so, homemade arthritis remedies, the inadequacy of social security checks, who died this week, and, of course, recapping the trickier jigsaw puzzles recently a.s.sembled.

Before we leave the community room, Bobby Big Boy visits the lap of almost every old person in the building, and they all smile as they pat BBB's head and scratch his belly. My dog is great with old people-so gentle, so calm-it's like he actually knows that old people are brittle and fragile and about to die.

Just before I bust out of the old folks home, I walk over to the far corner where Joan of Old is sitting all alone facing a wall, which she thinks is a window.

"Joan?" I say.

"What do you want, Ms. Hopeful? Come to gloat? Come to rub it in?"

"Do you want to pet my dog before I go?"

"That filthy beast? Ha!"

"You almost made me cry back there. That bit about no boys liking me. That really cut to the quick, as you old people like to say. You couldn't see it-because you are blind-but my bottom lip was quivering. True."

"Truthfully?"

"Yeah. It was a close call. I felt the tears coming."

"You're just saying that to make me feel better."

"I'll probably cry about it later tonight, when I'm all alone."

"You don't have to say that," Joan of Old says, "but thank you."

"You really are pretty mean and depressing, JOO."

"Well, I try. And I really hate to admit it," Joan of Old says, "but you're pretty hopeful and funny, Amber Appleton. But that kiss was a cheap trick, and I'm going to protest the battle, just so you know."

I catch her smiling again, but I don't call her on it.

The smile vanishes like a flame in the wind, and Joan of Old says in this very sad voice, "Do you know that you are the only person who has ever made me smile since my Lawrence died back in '82?"

This is depressing news, even though I realize it is a weird sorta compliment.