From Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Detroit, from Denver, Seattle, and D.C., Jill wanted to talk dirty. “Whisper the latest sweet nothings of Mr. Rogers in my ear,” she’d say. Once, she stopped by the home late at night on her way from the airport. She marched in bright and chipper with her roller bag as if she hadn’t been working constantly for the past week.

“Where is he?” she asked. “Can we spy on him?”

Reluctantly, I agreed, hoping he would become not so intriguing. We took the elevator up to the Butternut Wing (each wing was named after a different kind of squash) and tiptoed past Mr. Rogers’s quarters. He had dozed off to a novel, reading glasses nearly tipping off the cliff of his nose. Jill watched him for a couple minutes, then left without saying another word.

Around the time she visited, a newly admitted convalescent, Mr. Sullivan, also joined the phone sex squad. He was special in that we couldn’t find his conversations amusing or exciting, merely pitiful.

OPERATOR: I jump in topless and giggling into the hot tub. I can’t wait to get my hands on your giant erection hiding under the bubbles.

MR. SULLIVAN: Can I call you Anne?

OPERATOR: You can call me whatever you want.

MR. SULLIVAN: My wife’s name was Anne.

OPERATOR: Anne is a pretty name.

MR. SULLIVAN: I shouldn’t say “was.” She’s alive, but in hospice care at my daughter’s house.

OPERATOR: I’m sorry.

MR. SULLIVAN: She and her husband didn’t feel they could take care of us both once her mother was diagnosed as terminal. I’m in a geriatric facility until there’s a better plan.

OPERATOR: How awful.

MR. SULLIVAN: I’m worried they’ll forget I’m here once my wife dies. Sometimes I want her to hurry up and die so I can get out of this place. It’s one thing to imagine where you’ll end your days, another thing to know. That bed, this chair.

“I can’t keep listening to him,” Angie said. “It makes me sad.”

“I’m curious what kind of people dial phone sex hotlines nowadays, in the age of internet porn,” Wally said. “Is it just a bunch of grandpas who never got comfortable using a computer?”

“No idea,” Angie replied. “Maybe it’s nice to have somebody who’s participating with you.”

“What do you think our generation will be like when we get to that stage? Will dirty old men be jerking off to money-shot montages instead of calling up asking women to behave like nymphomaniac nurses? These are questions of our times.”

I had read a photo caption about eldercare strategies tested around the country. One of them involved giving every resident a plushie unicorn they could cuddle and that would make vague horsey noises of delight. More than a few of the men and women bonded so intensely with their unicorns that they opened up to them as they never did with the staff or even their friends among the residents. The researchers knew this, since there was a microphone hidden beneath the red tongue of each placid unicorn. They hypothesized that people in that late stage of life found it safer to reveal their deepest selves to an object, as it would never abandon them, never judge. Perhaps, they reasoned, the elderly would feel safer being attended by machines. I related this anecdote to my coworkers.