Burt was not an extravagantly flamboyant flirt. He did it on the qt so he could keep plausible deniability.
He wasn’t ashamed of his actions but he liked his flirtations under the radar.
He always flirted, in a quiet what do you think way.
Years ago, in what I’ve been calling the before, Burt told me that our neighbor JL told him to stop flirting with his wife. An off hand no drama confession, as if I hadn’t noticed.
In the years we’ve lived here with dozens of the best neighbors, he met women in the laundry room. He took offense when one of his laundry friends told him she’d tell her husband he was flirting with her. He harumphed this at me, but I was willing to bet on the way it went; very unlikely he hadn’t.
He flirted with all the pretty young doctors, his occupational therapist, his at-home dentist, his psychiatrist. He lamented not marrying his aide, he told me.
In the last decline, one of the things I missed most were his flirtatious connections with the new nurses who came in for evaluations. I anticipated his turning up the charm, but he no longer could.
During the early Capgras days, he flirted with me, thinking I was a new girlfriend. I heard lots of his life stories lots of times.
The first day I told him we were married and he said, you’re very nice but I don’t remember you, it was a gut punch. You come to ride with those punches.
this is our life 