When Dominic Ross overhears his adult children talking about his end of life care, he makes a vow to himself to live his one last wish: to meet death as the woman he's always wanted to be.
What follows is a strange odyssey as an eighty-two year old with Alzheimer's remembers his life, the dresses his wife sewed for him over the years, and their last vacation in Key West where he learned make-up from the best drag queens on the coast. When Dominic's final night runs out, will Death meet him on a white horse alone, or will his children be with him? And how will he be dressed for the final departure?
When it came time to have another vacation, he suggested Key West again. "But without the kids," he said. "They would much rather stay at home, anyway."
"And have a party, ruin my furniture," she said.
"Maybe. But they have to make their own decisions soon enough."
"What about my decisions? No one ever asked me if I wanted this."
"I did," Dominic said. "I asked you if you wanted to marry me. Did you not?"
"I did. I just ... didn't know a lot of things back then."
"What do you know now?" he asked, wanting to hear, because he, too, had wished he'd known so much when he was younger. He understood that regret, as he sometimes felt it in the middle of the night, when he looked at the men dressed as women on TV, and saw the types of friends that Amy sometimes brought over to the house, was not true regret. He did not wish to undo his life and try again another way. It was a mere pang, a mere itch that he could not quite scratch, a feeling that he should have been born in another era, but still loving what he had now, accepted his own limitations.
"I don't know," Martha said. "I'm tired."
They went to bed. In the morning, when he went to the travel agency, he asked if she wanted to come. She did. They got breakfast after making the arrangements, and she said in a quiet, yet determined voice -- one he could see her practicing in the mirror before they left in the morning -- that she wanted him to keep this part secret, still. "You can go out, we can go out," she said. "But don't tell the children. Don't tell our friends. I like this being just the two of us."
"Do you?"
"I do. There is ... something nice about it, as much as it sometimes scares me. Like you're my best friend."
"I am your best friend," he said.
But she looked at him with her blue eyes, and combed a piece of greying hair over her ear. "You know what I mean. Not like that. Not like husband and wife. I like it when we can talk about the girl things, the fabric and the make-up, but I can't see that you're my husband at the same time. I love both of you. Just not at the same time."
"And I love you," Dominic said, though his stomach flipped. He felt nauseated after breakfast, chalked it up to eating too much at his advanced age, and took a Tums.
They went on vacation; he spent almost the entire time there as a woman, finding so many more accouterments for his collection, shoes that actually fit, makeup that could go over razor burn, colors that were bright and vibrant and full of life. He even took lessons from a drag queen while Martha went to a Jimmy Buffet impersonator concert.
It was the best vacation they'd had in such a long time.
