Nightworld

Until tonight, Carol had made love to only two men in her life, both of them husbands. Bill was the third and by far the most anxious. His hands trembled as he undressed her, as he helped her remove his own clothes, as he caressed her.

"I'm a virgin," he told her when they were lying skin-to-skin, and even his voice trembled. "Alive for half a century, and I'm a virgin."

"I'm not," Carol said, and drew him into her.

What he lacked in technique he more than made up for with the intensity of his passion. Their lovemaking rocked the mattress. It was hot, it was fierce, and it was over too soon for Carol, but somehow it left her as breathless as Bill. She hugged him tight against her, reveled in his being warm and wet within her.

And then she heard him sobbing softly on her shoulder.

"Bill? Are you okay?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. It's just…I keep thinking…what a waste. This is so wonderful. I've never felt so close to another human being in my entire life. I'm fifty, Carol. We can all count the rest of our days on one hand, and I'm just learning what it's like to make love. All those years—wasted! My life—wasted! What an idiot!"

"Don't you say that, Bill. Don't you ever let me hear you say that!" She shared his hurt, but she was angry at him too. "You did not waste your life. Maybe your beliefs were misplaced, but not your actions. You spent your life being a father, a real father, to hundreds of lost and abandoned boys, the first and maybe the best father they ever knew. You couldn't have done that as well if you'd had a wife and children of your own. You couldn't have been there twenty-four hours a day for them like you were. So it wasn't wasted at all. You made a difference, Bill. A big difference. A lot of grown men are walking around who still remember you, who still have a warm place in their hearts for you, who are maybe good to their own kids because you were good to them, because you showed them how it's done. That's a legacy, Bill, one that might have gone on for generations if Rasalom wasn't trying to bring all our generations to an end. So don't you dare say you've wasted your life—at least not in front of me."

After a long pause, Bill lifted his head and kissed her.

"I love you," he said. "I puppy-loved you in high school and then buried it in an unused corner like a bone. But it never went away. I think I've always loved you."

"And I think part of me always loved you, a little bit. But now all of me loves you—a lot."

"Good. Does that mean we do this again? Soon?"

"How soon?"

"Now?"

And then she realized that he was hard again inside her.

"Oh my."