Eighty-three years old.  

     Adam and Wendy got married because, at the assisted living facility where they lived, that was the only way they'd be able to share a one-bedroom and split the rent.  

     Wendy got the bedroom.  

     Adam slept on a foldaway in the living room.  

     They'd been living in that cramped space together for three months and still hadn't had sex.   

     "The others are talking," Wendy said. The two of them sat alone in their living room. "They keep asking." 

     "Okay. Okay." 

​     "I suppose we could shower together." 

     Adam made a face. That sounded like a lot of work, but, yeah, okay, whatever they had to do to get everybody to stop talking. 

     They met in the bathroom in their robes. 

     They both wanted the other person to hang up their robe first. ​

      Wendy said, "We could..."

     "We just..."

     They removed their robes at the exact same time.

     These were two very old people.  

     Whatever hair they had on their bodies was white. Their muscles were all but gone. People never look more simian, less divine, than when they are naked and old. Their torsos look like any other human being's, young or old, but the joints and the extremities, the hands, the knees, the feet, the elbows, the neck, that's where the wrinkles bunched.  

     Adam's ears had grown over the decades until they were now the most pronounced part of his head. His toenails were like claws, yellow and hard. Adam found it nearly impossible to keep them properly clipped.

    They got into the shower together. Adam watched Wendy clean herself, and then he took his turn.

     He felt not the slightest sexual tingle.  

​     As Adam dried himself, Wendy went for a soul kiss.  

     Nothing. Her dry little snake-like tongue felt funny in his gummy mouth.  

     They touched each other's bodies a little bit here and there, but, no, it just didn't  feel right. 

     Dry and naked, they went into Wendy's bedroom and sat on her bed, hips touching. 

     Then, 

     "Coffee?" Wendy asked. 

​     "Sure." 

     She put on her robe to go into the kitchen. 

     Adam went into the bathroom to pee while she was gone. He had to pee, like, every twenty minutes anymore. 

     Wendy returned with two steaming cups of coffee. 

     She hung her robe back up before sitting back down with Adam on the bed. 

     Wendy said, "Would you mind if I asked you something personal?" 

     An odd question, seeing as how they were naked and married, but, on the other hand, the whole damned situation was odd, so... 

     "Go ahead." 

​     "Did you and Norah have a good sex life?"  

     Adam shook his head. "Our marriage was never about sex," he said. "It was about love, about being parents to Cassie at first and then just loving each other. We had sex, and there was one period, about twelve, thirteen years into our marriage, where we just couldn't seem to get enough of each other...but, no, sex was never at the core of what we meant to each other, no."  

     Wendy nodded. "Norm was consistent, I'll give him that. He made the same exact moves every single time for thirty-seven years. That worked out over the long run, really. I could almost plan my own orgasm down to the second."

     She gasped then, although Adam sensed it had little to do with any thoughts about Norm. An old memory had obviously hit her like a hammer hitting a gong. She clutched Adam's arm.    

     "There was this one guy, though. I met him the summer before Norm and I met. You know what his name was?" 

     "I have not one single clue, no." 

​     "Thor." 

     "You have got to be kidding me."

     "I'm not. He let me see his driver's license once."

     "Did he look like Thor?"

     "A little. And he had a..." She pointed to Adam's penis. "...too." 

     "Ample, huh?" 

     "Please. And he had this...this power...oh my God. With Thor, foreplay was a waste of time."

     "You're making me jealous."  

     "I have no idea what he did for a living, but, all night, every night, it was nothing but women. You almost had to make an appointment."

     "Which you did."

     "Of course."

     She squeezed his hand, and, as she did, his penis moved as if awakening from a long slumber.   

     Adam said, "No, when I think about sex, I don't think about Norah, although I loved her dearly, more than I've loved anyone or anything else in my life. My first real girl friend out of high school. Angel. Our first year together, we explored our mutual sexuality in every way we could think of. We were kids, too, not even twenty-one yet. We got drunk with our friends every weekend. We'd get naked in parks. We'd drop our swim trunks and rub against each other with people swimming all around us. Our first six months together, it was like we'd work, have dinner, then go find somewhere to have sex."  

​      "My whole twenties, I was insatiable."   

      "Had to have it, huh?" 

      "Honestly, it had a lot more to do with feeling alive and having fun, but, yes, I 'had to have it', as I assume you also 'had..."  

      "Okay. Okay."

      "It was so easy to fall in love back then, wasn't it?" 

​      "It sure was."

     Adam's penis hardened. Wendy stroked it almost absentmindedly as they continued to talk about their favorite sex partners. 

     Adam talked about his afternoon with Rainbird.  

     Wendy talked about a married man she'd met at a weekend business retreat.

     "His name was Ray, Ray Spackley, and it wasn't like he was a particularly good lover, but we were both wildly in the mood, and he was the kind of guy who liked plenty of foreplay, so the sex just went on and on and on. When we were finally able to get our clothes back on, we didn't go out to have breakfast, we went out to have lunch, and I mean a late lunch. You know what it was about him, and I hate to say this, but it's true: he had the exact right-sized penis. It was big enough to almost hurt but not quite, and it sure did fill me up. Thor hurt, but with him you didn't care. There was this other guy. Chet. He told me he had a hard time ejaculating, and he was right about that because it took about two hours to work him up to it, but by that time I was on my third climax, and each climax was stronger than the one before, and...whew!" 

     Adam had a full hard-on by this time, but he assumed that, as soon as Wendy stopped massaging it, it'd go limp again.

     He said, "Would you mind if I just...if we just..." They stretched out on the bed so that they could explore each other's bodies with their hands. Her breasts were the size of apples, but they weren't wrinkled at all, and her nipples were hard. Adam's balls were the size and shape of pickles. Both their fingers and toes looked twisted and brittle and undernourished, almost like they were ready to loosen and break off. 

     He slowly massaged her clit with his fingertips while she continued to fondle him. Adam's mind wandered, as it had a tendency to do anymore. He thought about all the pussies he'd seen and touched over his lifetime. He remembered Beth Brogan's seventeen-year old cunt, how she'd make him lick at it and lick at it when they were both still only doing oral. He remembered Amparo's furry black cunt and Althea's black, almost clenched pussy and Rainbird's cunt so open and inviting to kiss it was like kissing a lover's mouth. Adam  touched between Wendy's legs to find that she was wet, and he was hard and staying hard, and he entered her, and stroke, stroke, stroke, he went for it, he went for the orgasm, and Wendy held tight to his shoulders, and Adam gasped as cum exploded from the end of his dick like a gun going off, and he looked down at his wife, and, in that moment, he loved her as much as he'd ever loved anyone before in his life.

     And that's when the red flame engulfed them. 

     Wendy gave him a final look filled with love and despair, and then her body, still attached to Adam's, dissolved into ash, then dust.  

​     Now, only Adam and the crimson flames remained.  

                                                   CONTINUE