But I can't take this in. I want the conversation to move on. "And the women next to us," I say, "how old are they?" I had been looking at them, wondering if I were there yet.

He looks. "They're in their fifties," he says. For a moment I feel relief: I look younger, Oh good, I'm not there yet. But I can't erase the sound of the word "fifties"-the tone, the mild disdain, the dismissal, as if those women had crossed over into another reality, so that I can't for long glow in the knowledge that I look younger than they do. In their fifties : it speaks volumes of resignation, another country, a depressed, uninteresting region where older women are supposed to go.