She closed her eyes. She hummed so quietly I could only feel it from our contact, not hear it. This was as far as she’d go, until we returned to our room.

“Oh Ronniiiiieee,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you just move in with me? I could parade around naked all you want. I don’t care what people would think anymore, living with a man and not marrying him. I actually like, um, doing it with you. Haven’t you corrupted me enough?”

“That’s not just your house,” I muttered. “It’s Hal Fenton’s house. It’s yours because of the divorce.” I was getting impatient with this long-running debate. I wasn’t as easygoing on this subject as I thought I would be. “If I move in there, I’d be, like, nothing more than a new piece of furniture.” I bit back terms like gigolo and rent boy. I didn’t want to hurt LuAnn.

“Haven’t we had fun there?” She opened her eyes and leaned up to fix them on me. Alluring eyes, a rich blue. She was well aware of their effectiveness at close quarters, as she was of the middle-distance power of her curves.

“Of course we have,” I said, unable to stifle a smile. “But I’m not like your last boyfriend.” For whom the term gigolo fit like a condom.

The pool/jacuzzi/fitness complex was a glassed-in extension of the ’90s-built suburban business-travel hotel. A blast of wind stirred a riot of earth-tone leaves through the air above us. They settled onto the mat of leaves already on the ground, flattened by rain three days ago. This hotel, like so many others in the coronavirus era, had cut back on things not immediately affecting guests, like landscaping.

“No, you’re not like him,” said LuAnn. “You don’t bother to hide your evil.” She smiled and leaned her breast into my hand, a rare concession to mischief, for her.

I smirked and said, “You like where you’re sitting?”

“I’m fine, thank you very much,” she said, smile gone. We had been together for seven months, and I knew that this huff was mostly fake.

“I wasn’t suggesting my lap,” I said. There was a jet between us, below the surface. I leaned my hip to send the flow into her hip.

“We’re in public!” she whispered, aghast. There are jets in the tub in her master bathroom. I was amazed to find that she had never directed them between her legs. She was still flustered about how they made her feel, and the fact that I suggested them.

“There are maybe six other rooms occupied in this hotel.” I said. Then I waved my free arm to indicate the pool complex. “Nobody has been here at all.” The rates here had plunged. From a lifetime in marketing, I knew how to exploit a struggling business’s weakness.

“I’d know that for sure at home,” she said. “And I’ll never move into that pig sty of yours.”

We’d gone over this plenty, so I didn’t repeat that a condo was all I needed in my retirement. I had hired a maid service after LuAnn first complained, because I have enough money and the only thing I’d use it for is to help out my kids and grandkids. But my approach to home decor is to do nothing, and Lu is comforted by her girlied-up surroundings. So my side of our shacking-up was now staged in hotels. This time, it was also part of a road trip.

“Besides,” she went on, “you’re going to be a productive member of society again. Your masculinity isn’t in any danger.” And so, without warning, the perceptive and intelligent part of LuAnn Murchison popped up, from wherever she stored it during a life that mostly hadn’t required it.

“I haven’t said yes,” I insisted. “Making Halloween pop-up stores survive during a pandemic is definitely a challenge, but that doesn’t mean I want to take it.” Except…I kinda did. My dalliance with LuAnn had put some spring in my step. The old Marketing Master Ron Corbett was burning through my apathy and, probably, my better judgment. I had a video meeting scheduled for the day after this trip ended.

Ah yes, the trip. Maybe good preparation for a return to a life of stress. A gathering of my children, their spouses, and my grandchildren, with pandemic distancing. Their first meeting with my new lady friend. And, oh yeah, my ongoing need to hide the fact that my late wife never loved me, and cared only about breeding with me.

We left the jacuzzi before we could become lobsters. Once LuAnn had her sneakers on, she entered the exercise room. I snickered. She gave me a dark look. “I’ll just encourage you,” I said, all innocence.

COVID-19 had curtailed Lu’s mad social whirl, so her affair with me was about the only thing she had going on. I credit her for having found something other than sex to keep her occupied. She bought exercise equipment and signed up for a meal-delivery plan. At 63, she may have looked and felt better than she had in thirty years. I helped a little, because I had invented The Personal Trainer Game. Here, I’d use only the vocal part of the game, and stop even that if somebody else showed up.

“That’s it,” I said as she paced on the treadmill. “Look at yourself. Think about how great you look now. How much everyone wants you.” She gazed at herself in the mirrored wall, and picked up speed.

“Yeah, work those thighs,” I said, with an amorous rumble that wasn’t all fake. “Could any of your old sorority sisters look this good? You know they couldn’t!” We had been in the same class at Langdon State. She still had college-era buttons that could be pushed.

She was mouth-breathing, and not just from the exertion. I picked up a couple hand weights and stepped into her line of vision. I alternated curls and bedroom-eyed her. “All those guys who are after you,” I hissed, “are gonna have to get past me first!” I got into college on a track scholarship, and forty-plus years later I was still a mesomorph. I sucked in the gut, to make the abs even more prominent in the overhead light. She whimpered.

“Now I’m chasing you, Baby,” I said, stepping closer. “Better not let me catch you. Keep me behind you!” I clanked the weights together. She jolted, her butt twitching. The desire in her look was matched by fear, probably of discovery, so I couldn’t keep this up much longer.

“Haven’t caught you yet,” I said. Then I mic-dropped the weights. “Maybe it’s time for you to chase me.” I pulled the sleeping room key card out of my trunks pocket, showed it to her, and dashed away.

I had the deadbolt on when she got to our room. “Ronnie,” she said. Then, with rapid knocking, “Ronnie!”

“What’s the magic word?” I crooned.

After a couple seconds, I barely heard, “Sex.”

“What was that?”

I heard a strangled cry and a foot stomp onto thick carpet. Only a little louder than before, “Sex!”

I relented, while her excitement was still stronger than her anger. She hurried in and grabbed me, half-whispering “Gotcha!”

“Your workout isn’t over,” I said. “Neither is mine.” I got thumbs inside the straps of her one-piece and yanked down. Her freed breasts pressed into my abs, sweat and chlorinated water moving in both directions. She fondled my back and even my butt, but outside the trunks. I had to haul my suit down as I did hers.

“Leg lift!” I said, shoving her onto the bed on her back. She giggled, because I was keeping up the game. Standing at the foot of the bed, I set her raised legs against my torso and leaned in, but with my prick on top of her mons. I slid back and forth slowly, balls rubbing against her labia.

She tried to stifle a moan, and to keep her hand from grabbing and guiding. I didn’t make it any easier on her, concentrating on pushing her legs back towards her, heedless of our naughty bits. I licked an ankle, which made her shiver.

“I have,” she said, “more muscles…” She turned her head away, licked her lips. Finally: “…for you to work on.”

“With what apparatus?” I asked. I was now erect, and rubbed against her vulva more firmly. This wasn’t to make her a libertine, but to get her to take responsibility for her desires, and not later claim that her lover took advantage of her—when he had given her what she wanted. LuAnn now accepted this in theory, but had spent decades averting any accusations of sluttiness, and the reflex was hard for her to shake.

“This one,” she whispered, lifting my prick with two fingertips and a thumb.

“Then get ready for reps!” I really wanted to get on with it, so I picked up my shlong and guided it between her folds, where some moisture came from inside. “That’s one! Squeeze on it!”

She flexed, at some level buying in to this still being exercise. I drew back, then thrust in again. “That’s two!” I growled.

When my count got to ten, I reached around her legs and filled my hands with her breasts. “Now work those pectorals!” I squeezed them together, thumbs pressing the nipples inward, then letting them ease back, in time to my fucking. She started to whimper, quickly, with an operatic soprano.

I was digging all of this enormously, including her improved conditioning, but the fact remained that we were both past our prime. LuAnn had shed the double chin and obvious excess in her arms, gut, butt, and thighs, but her breasts were wrinkled and veined, and prone to sagging. A couple months ago she had wept as we made love, regretting that I had never enjoyed her big bosom at its most beautiful. I had praised the breasts as they were now (and I did, in fact, enjoy them), and said nothing about how she teased and flaunted them when we were in college. (On a date in junior year, she let me feel them up, then told her friends that I had first gotten her drunk, which I hadn’t. In our relationship now, she had apologized for that.)

Damnit, I couldn’t think of college without remembering Myra. How honest she seemed, compared to the calculating LuAnn. How interested Myra was in me, as opposed to LuAnn’s interest in herself. How eager Myra was for us to couple, while LuAnn played a field that included much of the student body. How I had fallen deep in love with Myra, thinking that she loved me.

I shook that off and, in September 2020, pumped into LuAnn faster, still squeezing breasts.

LuAnn’s face looked paralyzed, mouth wide open. “There’s nobody else on this floor!” I grunted, getting annoyed. “I checked! Nobody can hear us!”

She grabbed my wrists. Her spine bucked up. She howled like a werewolf, her legs shaking hard against my torso, blond tresses a 3-D map of chaos. I cut loose and gave a yell of my own, relishing the heat flowing up from my groin.

My knees were bent slightly, to align our crotches. As my spasms subsided, both calves shivered. I still jogged now and then, but my days as a serious athlete ended before the years that start with ‘2.’ I got my hands away from Lu’s boobs and braced my weight against the bed. “Gotta pull out,” I said quickly.

“Yeah,” she said, calming down.

I flopped out of her, and my knees slipped to the floor.

“You okay?” she asked.

I responded with something between a chuckle and a wheeze. “Uh huh. I lost count of how many reps that was.”

She laughed, and patted my cheek. “Trainer, condition thyself.”

And there was the sharp, witty LuAnn again. Was the other LuAnn there just to get people off guard?

I regained enough leg strength to lean up and kiss her.

This was a pretty exhausting fuck, and once we were showered and bedded down, I was close to nodding off. “Hug?” she asked, burrowing in close.

“For a minute,” I said, realizing that I sounded put-upon.

“Oh, Honey, why not all night? It feels so much nicer. And then waking up, still in a hug.”

“I can’t sleep well that way,” I said, now facing the resumption of another long-standing disagreement. “I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“I know that,” she said rolling her eyes from the same fatigue. “It’s how it feels. Even when the mind knows that it’s loved, the body likes to feel it.”

I didn’t say anything about the love from me that her body felt a while back. “Big day tomorrow,” I said, with a brief extra squeeze. “We need to be at our best. I need my sleep.”

“All right,” she said, sighing. She kissed my forehead, her way of releasing me. I kissed her forehead as I got myself loose.

***

My oldest son Marty is doing well, even with the dip in his dental practice because of COVID-19. When the whole brood gathers, it’s at his place, a six-bedroom on a rider-mower expanse of land. It’s a three-hour drive from where I live, so I overnight both ways, this time in the hotel. LuAnn and I were both a little nervous as I took her, an only child who had never given birth, towards a tsunami of almost-in-laws. “Remember,” I said, “six-foot distancing and our advanced age will help keep everyone polite. Nobody expects you to remember everyone’s name. You don’t have to try to win everyone over, or be like Myra.”

“I know.” she said. A moment later, “How many grandkids?”

“Seven.”

She rolled her eyes.

At a stoplight three minutes from his place, I texted Marty of our impending arrival. At the curb, he met us along with his 12-year-old son Daniel, who held a large canister and a pair of tongs, and looked very serious and responsible. After we all went through waves and hellos, Daniel reached the tongs into the canister, lifted out two face masks, and solemnly offered them to Lu and me. The masks matched the ones worn by Marty and Daniel, with a colorful design and the legend ‘Corbett Barksdale 2020.’

“All the kids got involved with the design, for two weeks,” said Marty. “I sterilized the masks this morning in the office.” With a chuckle: “I have a lot of free time there.”

“Thank you!” Lu said to Daniel, showing the smile between removing her own mask and donning this one. Daniel smiled back, despite the importance of the job given to him by his amused father.

It was a bit chilly, but there was no rain, so Marty had lawn chairs spread around in the back yard, facing an inflated viewing screen.

Twenty-some years ago, I first allowed Marty to use the camcorder during some of our family events. Otherwise, I was The Lord Of VHS. Myra was all in favor of me shooting home movies, but she never wanted to do that herself. It could interfere with her Mom role, which was often that of a helicopter parent.

Thus, there was a lot of footage of Myra, and eventually some of me too. And a little with us together.

The tapes continued to accumulate for the next few years. Once Myra got sick, no more tapes were added.

Eventually I gave the camcorder and tapes to Marty, who had left the nest like the other kids. Also on the way out was the VHS format.

A couple years ago, Marty told me that he’d found a place that could convert everything we’d shot to a digital format that would last longer than stretchable, shredable tape. I cut short his pitch about letting the grandkids see grandma, and said sure-go-ahead, giving this very little thought. That was my approach to most things at the time.

A few days ago, I got a call from Marty. “Dad, can you come over on Saturday? I can set up a screen outside and show everybody the old home movies. If you’re there, you can give everybody some details.”

By this time, I was in a much better place with regard to my past, thanks to LuAnn. I thought that I’d be able to look at Myra without breaking down, or saying something I shouldn’t. “Sure,” I said. To be honest, I was as COVID-crazy as everybody else, and just being within shouting distance of the kids and grandkids appealed to me.

Marty added, “Please bring LuAnn along. We’d all like to meet her.”

“Sure thing,” I said, now with an excuse to hook up with her in a different hotel.

The meeting and greeting went just fine. Weirdly enough, LuAnn and my daughters Sarah and Ginny found that they were huge fans of the old TV show ‘Hill Street Blues,’ and could gab away on that endlessly. I eased into business-speak with their husbands, Joe and Terry. Lu and I also circulated among the third generation of the Corbett-Barksdale gene pool, watching the active games rather than joining in. Tasty stuff came off the grill steadily.

Yes, Corbett-Barksdale was our umbrella identifier, with Myra having kept her maiden name. Spouses Joe Fioretti, Karen Doyle, Terry Murkowski, and Monica Curzon may have been resigned to using their surnames elsewhere.

At dusk, Marty had us gather, with separation, to watch what he had distilled from the old movies. The large screen showed up well, even from far away.

At first, it was fun. I remembered just about every scene, and called out then whens and wheres as needed. When ten-year-old Sarah climbed eagerly to a high-dive platform at the town pool, and then looked down, there was a huge laugh as her eyes bugged and her jaw dropped. When she scampered back down the stairs, I called out, “That’s your Mom, Chrissy!” Sarah snarked, “Thanks a lot, Dad.”

In a while, though, I saw too much of Myra. She was always great with the kids, and with them she looked happy and energetic. I missed her, then wanted her, then cared about her, then remembered too sharply that she didn’t care about me. That stayed true as the cancer spreading from her pancreas took her away from her only love, the children she had borne.

I had to look away from the screen. To my right, I saw my granddaughter Brenda, now 18. She had short hair and an eyebrow piercing, but in that profile, the curve of the nose, the line of the jaw, the eyes, the lips, the cheek…she looked exactly like Myra.

LuAnn must have sensed my shiver as I turned to face front. She put a hand on mine.

I looked her way, and saw concern in the eyes above the mask. She was the only person who knew. I wanted so much to keep it that way. What would it do to my kids and grandkids, to hear that Myra never loved me, and wanted me only to sire her offspring?

I gave LuAnn’s hand a little squeeze.

When the screen went dark, I called out “Thanks Marty,” and started a standing ovation. Everyone else joined in. As a successful marketer, I knew the value of truth, and the importance of using it sparingly.

After that, the evening wound down. I was ready to play the Tired Old Man card, so we could skedaddle. But Marty came up, well within six feet, and said, “Dad, do you have a minute?” He leaned his head away from the house. into deepening night.

“Sure,” I said, and walked with him.

“Dad…I never noticed this before, but when I was editing the video…there’s not much going on with you and Mom, even when you’re together. In one shot, you’re both looking off to the left. You’ve got your arm around her, but she has her arms crossed, like she’s not even aware of you. It’s like that in other scenes, too. She never looks at you for more than a couple seconds, and that’s when you two are talking. She almost never touches you. I gotta ask…did you two fight a lot?”

I used the truth sparingly, sticking to the physical definition of ‘fight.’ “We never fought at all.”

“I mean, I know what it’s like. When you have kids you focus on them. But it’s like you two had nothing left for each other.”

Now I had to trot out the old dependable lie. “You know this is tough on me, don’t you, Marty?” My stricken look was real, at least. “It’s great that your kids get to see their grandma, but after what she went through…”

“Right Dad,” he said, relenting. He put an arm around my back, and squeezed. “I’m glad you’re happy with LuAnn, I really am.”

I smiled and nodded, showing relief, which was really for Marty finding his own way to change the subject.

On the drive back to the hotel, I made light conversation about everything else that day, and LuAnn went along with it, praising the grandkids and saying what a nice place Marty had (which she’d also said to him). With my mood, I faked it till I made it, I thought. Our sex that night was pretty much our usual late-night bang. LuAnn didn’t wheedle me for cuddling, maybe thinking that I’d gone through enough that day. And so, not in contact, we drifted off.

***

“Ron.” The voice was warm.

The face was relaxed and content. I had seen that often enough. But seldom focused on me.

“What is it, Myra?”

Her eyes twinkled in amusement. “Did you ever wonder if you were wrong?”

We were together…but where? I could see nothing around or behind her, only her face. At peace, it seemed. Smiling at me.

“Wrong about what?” I asked. My voice sounded flat, toneless.

“I never left you, Ron,” she said. “I was taken away.” Now I could see her neck, her bare shoulders, her auburn hair. “Find me, Ron. I’ll be here.”

I did not jerk upright in bed, bathed in a cold sweat. But waking up disturbed and disoriented were quite enough, thanks. I could discern nothing in the room’s darkness, but in a few seconds I recognized the slight buzz of LuAnn’s sleep breathing. At my back I felt the bunching of blankets from her left side. I inhaled the sanitized waft of the hotel pillow. I moored myself to these sensations, and slowly grew calm.

***

Bloodstream full of caffeine, I logged in to the video meeting. I knew two of the five guys from earlier gigs with this pop-up store chain. There was space in what LuAnn called my pig sty for me to fake a studio. I had the lights set up to make me look ten years younger, and the backdrop was festooned with the company’s logo. I was stoked.

Was all of this taking me away from the settled, stress-free guy who was okay with loafing around with LuAnn?

“You already have leases on seventy-nine spaces for this year,” I pitched. “Stockage points and logistics are locked in to support nearly all of them, and short term deals can be made for the rest in less than a week. In a normal year, great. In 2020, you either don’t open at all and go broke paying rent, or you open and hemorrhage money on daily expenses.

“So here’s what you do. You don’t just sell stuff, you stage Halloween parties every day. Instead of one visit per fam per season, you get four or five because of the parties. Bring in different stuff each week to get repeat business. This slide has a sample schedule. Big outdoor decorations, then pumpkins, then lawn projectors, and so on.

“The employees’ costumes will include dependable face masks. You hand out sanitized trick-or-treat bags from product-placed snack and candy producers. Hold games that keep everyone six feet apart. Spray cobwebbing on Pop-a-Shot and console games. We can get them cheap, from that kid adventure chain that just went belly-up.

“If necessary, limit the number of people inside, which gives you lines outside that everyone driving by will see. If they’re desperate to give their kids something to do, they’ll remember. There’s still time to get local TV ads. In the spaces that are big enough, put up partitions and have two parties, one for the little kids and another for 13-and-older. Use the same piped-in music from before. Haunted house mazes work even better now, because distancing makes kids go through one at a time.

“Yes, you’ll spend extra for this, but on this slide, you’ll see that it isn’t much, compared to what you’re going to lose if you do nothing. If you decide in 48 hours, we can make it happen. Any questions?”

When I logged off, an hour later, I had what amounted to a blank check.

When the caffeine wore off and the Asian Fusion delivery was ingested, I got a fleeting regret that LuAnn had decided to leave me alone that day, so I could concentrate. I guess that worked, but now having gone from Once to Future Master of the Universe, I was ready to ball, like I used to do at trade shows, when I was a non-grieving widower. I always respected my feminine quarry, but never cared.

“That’s how you loved, after me,” said Myra, laughing.

How, where—

“There’s so much love,” she said, from swirling mist, “so many kinds.”

“Myra…why?” I might have become more than a voice.

The mist blew away. Myra was nude. Unseen sensation told me that I was too. Rarely had I seen her this way, exposed and happy, after the fourth childbirth. Her breasts sagged slightly, with dark, distended areolas, but they still thrust outward. Her hips and thighs were thick, and the sight stirred me.

“You made me very happy, Ron,” she said, approaching, reaching for me. “Because you made me this way. I gave life, because of you.”

Was it real blood that rushed to my groin? I wanted the Myra that I had made, that she had made me make.

“And you were as good a father as any child could ever have.” Her hair still had luster. I buried my face in it.

Her hands pressed on my back. I was erect.

“Join me now,” she said, “and you’ll find the love I always had for you.”

This one ended fuzzily. It seemed as though Myra was kissing me, slowly and deeply, but it resolved to me in bed, whining “Damnit, Marty!”

***

A week later, after I put in a string of 15-hour days, the stores opened. Every night, whether I slept alone or with LuAnn, whether the sleep was fitful or calm, I dreamed of Myra. Some dreams were vivid, some were vague, but they all had the same theme: That I should go to her, and stay forever.

I was being haunted by my dead wife, and we were getting really close to fucking.

The most vivid moment was when she had both hands on my dick, slowly stroking, and I was kissing her left tit, which was warm and smelled of milk.

Not one of the dreams was wet. I woke up twice with wood, but that’s pretty much my average in a week without being haunted.

When I write it like that, it seems like a total freakout. But It didn’t bother me once I was entirely awake and getting on with my day. They were dreams. They had no staying power. I wasn’t aware of them when I was, for instance, banging my girlfriend, or arguing with her (about sex practices or sleep hugging or where we should live).

***

I had sold the investors on this party-in-the-store concept, but honestly had no idea if it would work. On opening night I took LuAnn to the biggest one in the metro area, in a defunct big-box electronics store.

On the way there, she brought up one of our issues, but took a different approach.

“Maybe we’re not made for each other,” she said sadly. “I thought we’d have smooth sailing after that first time together. But we haven’t. We keep running into problems. I was hoping that opposites attract.”

“LuAnn, I love you!” I said, too loudly. “I’m glad that we’re together!”

“And I love you too Ronnie!” she said, with histrionics matching mine. “But maybe we’re too old, and set in our ways, to be really happy.”

I sure thought that this was true of her. I considered myself flexible. But was I, really?

“Maybe we can make ourselves for each other,” said LuAnn.

I looked at her, alert for the smart side of LuAnn. But I didn’t get what she meant, and said so.

“For Halloween,” she said, “I could be a devil, and you could be an angel.”

I could tell that she meant this not just in costume terms. “So we’d each, like, try to see things from the other person’s side?”

She was still thinking this through herself. Her smile both intrigued and worried me. “I think I have the legs for a she-devil outfit. And, oooh, think of what I could do with a pitchfork!”

It was trite and unimaginative, yet also brilliant. At least as something to keep us occupied for a while. We just happened to be going to a place where we could buy the trite, unimaginative costumes we’d need.

My notion about the line out the door seemed to be holding up. Lu and I stood dutifully six feet behind a clutch of two adults and three kids, themselves spaced behind another family group near the entrance. A teenage girl in a princess dress worked the door, waiting for groups inside to leave. The lights were bright and there was plenty of little-kid noise from inside. The past week had worn me raw over this gig, but seeing it in action gave me a smug grin.

It was getting chilly, but I didn’t pull rank and cut in line. I was a contractor, so I didn’t really have standing in the company. And I wanted the customers in front of us to get in there and buy.

We moved in soon enough, as harried-looking parents hauled out whooping kids with swag bags and still-wrapped costumes. The princess at the door wore pink leggings that matched the dress. I asked, “Are those your leggings?”

“I bought them at a real store,” she said, shivering.

“I’ll get the manager to pay you back,” I said.

She smiled, and so did Lu, who told me, “See? You’re an angel already.”

The manager, one Paul Turazian, had pushed through a modification that both the chain bosses and I were skittish about: Splitting the store into three zones instead of two. It had the all-ages party and the 13-and-up party, but also an 18-and-up party. No liquor would be served, but the merchandise and ambiance might go beyond gross, to sleazy.

One reason I was there was to see if the plug should be pulled on the 18-and-up.

We checked out the other spaces first. Black drapes, with vague ghost shapes painted in gray, hung from the ceiling to cover bookfold partitions with portals edged in orange and black crepe. Thus were the spaces divided, with all-ages at the front, 13-and-up next, and 18-and-up beyond it. The workers, mostly high school kids, enforced distancing and age ranges, and looked pretty ragged from the effort. A space that might normally be used for face painting was now used for painting jack-o-lanterns and black cats on single-use kid-sized face masks.

I noticed one issue right away: The music and console-game noise made it hard for workers and customers, all masked, to make themselves understood. I’d deal with that in the next video chat.

The adult-size costumes were in the 13-and-up. I advised Lu to get the largest size available, assuring her that this wasn’t about her current silhouette, which was excellent. It was about third-world sizing and production, and corner-cutting by what I loosely referred to as manufacturers. Then I got hold of Turazian, identified myself, got him to compensate the princess at the door, and hauled him with us into the 18-and-up, which had yet to see its first customer.

All three workers in the 18-and-up were male, and they weren’t in nearly as much horror-movie make-up as the kids working in the 13-and-up. They were also older, likely in college. One guy was quite fit, with werewolf muttonchops and a torn shirt open to the waist. His mask was painted with fangs which, if real, would not allow a mouth to close. Behind him, a guy in something like an Elizabethan doublet and hose, with gray makeup on all of his skin (and mask), stared intently at LuAnn. Another guy, done up as a fancy-dressed vampire, delivered the entry pitch: “Are you ready for real excitement? Step this way if you dare!” Then he edged back, seeing that his boss was with us.

LuAnn giggled, looked at me, then looked again at the werewolf. I half-smiled for her sake, but mostly checked out the displays. They held pretty much what would be in naughty-nightie stores: peek-a-boo peignoirs and below-the-boobs corsets. I was on the alert for serious bondage gear, with strong leather and metal spikes, which to me would go way too far for this venue.

Fortunately, all I saw were the usual cheesy materials and shoddy workmanship that have been hallmarks of packaged Halloween costumes for decades. A thin, probably harmless imitation of a riding crop was included with a woman’s black vinyl outfit that was given the evasive label of ‘sorceress.’

I asked Turazian, “Are there female employees on this side?”

He shook his head. The scariest thing about him was his comb-over. “They’ll work all-ages and 13, but don’t want to be in here. I’d like to have one or two. You know, to help women decide on what to get.”

He sounded just defensive enough for me to ask, “And what else?”

He hesitated, then drew me aside and said, “Look, this isn’t going to happen, so don’t worry about it, okay? I hoped to get some women to model these outfits for customers. Just a runway walk. Maybe with these guys out of the room.”

Before I could say anything, I heard snippets from ‘these guys,’ in a far corner of the space. Vampire said, “Now that’s what I call a GILF!” Werewolf, laughing, said, “You perv!” The other guy, I guess a romance-novel ghost, snapped at them, “She’s a nice lady!” They probably didn’t realize how their voices carried in that space. Turazian, I think, was too intent on me to notice them.

I kept my voice low but my intent clear. “Do you honestly think you’d keep your license if the city found out you paid women to expose themselves? What’s in here right now might just barely be okay, but I don’t know that yet. If this is how you operate, Turazian, next year you may have to take your hustle elsewhere.”

I hated to say all that, but I’m a libertine only in my personal life. So much for my earlier belief in my flexibility. If this was my angelic self, it was a bummer.

Having ripped Turazian a new one, I began closer inspection of the wares and presentation. While I was trying to assess the room’s sleaze level, I overheard LuAnn talking to the Ghost about the nighties displayed along one wall.

She asked, “Would you like to see a girl in something like this?”

“My lady,” he replied, going well past the limits of his English accent and speech pattern, “I would gladly serve a woman in such finery as this.” Then he gave a slight bow. LuAnn tittered, eating up the attention.

By this time there were seven real customers in the room, two of them women. The other two workers did their shticks for them and chatted them up about the merch. The Ghost stayed with Lu. He bowed to her at least three more times, and even she thought he was going overboard. She showed him that she already had an outfit from the 13-and-up, but thanked him and praised his salesmanship and behavior. By that time I had confirmed that nothing in this room Went Too Far, and we were able to take our leave.

***

In the car on the way to her place, she asked me, “What’s a GILF?”

I showed her a crooked smile. “You really want to know?”

Alerted to expect the worst, she slumped in her seat and said, “Go ahead.”

“It’s a porno acronym, for Granny I’d Love to Fuck.” I then rolled out the full etymology to make sure she’d be sorry she asked. “First, the term motherfucker was morphed to produce Mother I’d Love to Fuck, or MILF. It was actually a recognition that women can still be hot after they have kids. Now the term GILF has extended that recognition.” I glanced her way. “He probably meant it as a compliment.”

“I’m not a mother or a granny,” she said. Sitting up straighter, she said, “I think Diego was very sweet, saying what he did.”

“Diego?”

“The boy who was the ghost. He told the others that I’m a nice lady. He was very polite, and respectful. And cute too, I think.”

I let that stand. Makeup or not, he had Virginal Nerd written all over him.

In LuAnn’s mid-century modern house, she had us to go to different bathrooms to try on our costumes. I had taken one for the team, paying full price for a pair of white wings on a chest halter, a wide-sleeved white knee-length tunic with vents in the back for the wings, and a gold-glittered halo affixed to a headband. I went barefoot, since my shoes and socks wouldn’t contribute to the effect. Also, because of what I hoped would happen, the angel went commando.

I went to the master bedroom. Seeing that it was empty, I called at the closed door of the master bathroom, “I’m ready to appeal to your better nature.”

“Just a minute,” came the reply, amid the sounds of sliding fabric and crinkling plastic.

I was hardly the first man ever to wait for a woman to finish getting dressed. I sat on the end of the bed. After a moment, I heard a quiet “Ooooh,” and rustles that might have gone with turns to pose in a mirror. Then the door opened.

What I saw first was her jolly grin as she barked “Booo!” Then I saw why she was so hyped. This crummy costume looked terrific on her. The satiny red bosom-covering corset was like a second skin. The fishnet hose flattered what she had done lately to improve her legs. She twirled a black and red plastic pitchfork like a baton. Dark red horns curled up from her golden hair. A pronged tail swayed behind black shorts. She had added a pair of her own black heels. She strutted towards me.

She looked me up and down. “Goody No Shoes!” she said, laughing at my bare feet. I was trying to think of something angelic to say, but I was enjoying her enjoyment so much that I got nowhere. Whether we would actually switch roles or not, this moment of fun for her made these antics worthwhile.

She poked the pitchfork under the hem of my tunic and lifted it. “Oooooh!” she said, eyes widening. “What a naughty angel!” She jabbed the fork to within an inch of my johnson. “Can that dance on the head of a pin?”

That cracked me up, and her too. It took a couple breaths before I replied, “You could dance on it.” I wasn’t going to be able to keep up an angel act.

“I’m going to corrupt you first!” she declared. She tossed aside the fork and flopped on the bed on her back. “Give me—oh, wait.” She rose up enough to get the tail out from under her. “Give me your nasty kiss!”

“Yes, oh Princess of Darkness,” I said, still laughing. I knelt and, knowing plenty about these costumes, gently slid the shorts down her legs—and then also the frilly white panties she’d kept on. After a few arm shakes to get my sleeves out of the way, I slowly separated her outer labia with my thumbs. The tip of her clit appeared behind the hood, gleaming with moisture. I set my tongue flat against it, then rolled the tongue to enclose it. From her throat came a moan combined with a trill.

In our months of lovemaking, LuAnn had become less skittish about cunnilingus, and enjoyed it greatly once it was happening. But she rarely sought it, expecting me to offer it. I couldn’t recall a time when she had demanded the ‘nasty kiss.’ How could I refuse such a request? With tongue, lips, and thumbs, I nastied every surface in what she still called Down There.

Sex on a regular basis had also increased her lubrication, although we sometimes added lube if we didn’t start with oral slobbering. I was providing plenty of saliva, while tonguing her swollen bud against my upper lip. “Oh more, please,” she said, sounding anything but devilish. “Just a liii—YEEEEEHHH!” I was ready when her trunk jerked, averting injury to my jaws and teeth. I kept licking as she flexed, and stopped when she put her hand on my head, reaching through the halo.

I fondled her torso slowly as she calmed, partly to see what the costume would endure. There were wires holding the corset over the breasts. If I pulled it back it might break. I settled for fingering slightly inside the fabric, nowhere near nipples. She shivered.

“What’s next in your diabolical plan?” I asked.

She raised her head enough to look down her body and make eye contact. “Won’t you try to get me on the path of righteousness?”

“Oh yeah, right. Righteousness.” I stood up. “Go get dressed, then pray for the next twelve hours.” I headed for the door.

“Wait! I haven’t danced on it yet!”

I looked back. “What will you do to earn that?”

She sat up. “I’ll…umm…taste its purity and goodness?” She winced.

“If you insist.” I returned to the bed.

The wings hinged enough to go flat as I lay on my back. I would have rather stripped, and stripped her, because I always prefer full skin contact. But she was grooving so much on us being in costume that I let this play out. She hiked up my tunic. As usual, she handled my shlong like it might electrocute her, and tentatively took it into her mouth.

She wasn’t much of a fellatrix, and never wanted to finish me orally, but now she was enjoying her devil role. Her licking and sucking weren’t enthusiastic, but soon she had me close to pinning the meter. I warned her by gasping, “Purity is on the way.”

Quickened by fear of a mouthful, she rose and straddled. I guided the prick as she lowered onto it. Her fishnets rubbed against my hips as she rode, and the odd surprise of that sensation launched me. I spazzed and flexed at least as much as she had earlier. I hadn’t been able to hold back and try to get her a second cum, but she now looked as exhausted as I suddenly was. We settled for a costume-careful kiss, then laughed through a brief duel between the halo and the horns.

We undressed carefully. She prefers baths to showers, and this one was without the jets. “That was fun,” she said drowsily, giving me full skin contact. “Let’s keep the costumes. There’s still time before Halloween.”

“Sure,” I yawned.

As we dried, she said, “I think I was more devil than you were angel.”

“I told you to pray.”

“You’ll have to do better than that next time.”

As noted, for me sex gets body contact, and sleep doesn’t. We were both zonked before she could ask for cuddling.

***

Myra was already embracing me.

“I always wanted you,” she said, and kissed my neck. “You pleased me more than you ever knew. So many women fake orgasms. I tried to hide mine.” She slid a leg around my hip, raised my prick, and pushed it against her vulva. “Our souls sang together through our bodies. That’s how I knew it had to be.”

Our skins were warm and firm, the air enriched our lungs. My heart pounded, as it always had done when I held her nude flesh. If she were a succubus, I had no defense against her.

This seemed so real. I felt weight, moisture, sleek skin. In terror I thought, will I die in the real world the moment I enter Myra in this one?

“Yes, I wanted your sperm, more and more of it, and if you kept going, thinking I wasn’t satisfied, I’d get it.” Then she gave a high gasp as she enveloped my prick. Wet heat found all of its surfaces, below the glans, along the duct. I clenched. It’s not like I allowed it to happen. Refusal wasn’t an option.

“I could never let you love anyone else,” she went on hoarsely. “While I was pregnant, I had to keep you from straying. I had to have all of your life-giving power!”

I squeezed her left buttock as I drove deep in her tunnel. Rings of muscle flexed around my shaft, as I withdrew and advanced, over and over. “This can be our eternity!” she wailed. “I want you, need you with me! This is the love we’ll have forever. It’s our reward!”

“No!” I groaned. But I clutched her to me. I spewed into her, again and again, glorying in the release, feeling everything, her spasms, her heel pushing against the crook of my knee, her hair between my fingers, my other fingers splayed on her back ribs.

In the next moment, alive and awake, I whimpered, “Do I want to believe this?”

LuAnn slept on.

That dream didn’t fade as the day advanced.

***

Even with the stores open, I still had work to do. This was a nationwide operation, barely hanging together. I had insisted on safety within the workforce, but that meant I had to find replacements for opt-outs by truck drivers, warehouse workers, janitors, etc. I brought in temp agencies with people desperate for work, and maybe not worried enough about their own health and safety. I started disliking myself, and what I was doing.

A few times a day I had almost-serious thoughts about joining Myra in this great beyond of hers, where the fucking sure seemed real. I had to remind myself that my brain had been thrown into a sick fantasy by some home movies. LuAnn and I had each other, and it was wonderful, despite all our bickering.

I spent my days badgering people in video conferences and trying to shake off Myra dreams, some of which were vague and didn’t seem all that sexy. Four times, Myra didn’t make a coherent pitch for the eternal love she had waiting for me. One dream, though, had an overwhelming sensation. With both legs wrapped around me, Myra rode my swollen pole, and held her breasts to my face. I didn’t just smell milk, I tasted it. When I woke up, there was no more milk in my mouth than there was jizz in my lap. But I yearned for her.

How could she be lactating in that realm of death?

I did nearly all my work through my laptop, but LuAnn wanted to go a little further with the angel-devil thing, so on our next date we went back to Turazian’s store, in costume. I was still worried about the 18-and-up, and I used checking on the pumpkin delivery as an excuse.

It was a chilly night, deep in October. I wore jeans under the angel tunic, and warm socks with thick-soled shoes. LuAnn added nothing, saying it’d be warm enough in the store. I thought my achievement would be her comeuppance, because the repeat business was kicking in, and we were eighth in line to get into the store. But Lu was fine through the whole wait, winking at men without kids, flirting if she got a reaction.

At first, I thought this was just more or her devil fun.

Then I remembered who LuAnn Murchison had been.

Even when we got inside, in the store’s ‘spooky’ lighting, she looked great. I think she knew it.

This might have been a chance for us to do the role play in real life, and get a clear idea of the other person’s baseline thinking, but Turazian hauled me aside to plead for a higher limit on people in the store. As he was moaning about rain and snow and losing the people in line outside, I lost track of Lu. By the time I got through to him that he’d have to make a case to the health department on his own, I found myself alone, except for a gaggle of kinda-distanced six-year-olds laughing at a grown man in a dorky angel costume.

I made a cursory inspection of the all-ages. As I moved to the 13-and-up, I already knew where I’d find LuAnn.

It was worse than I thought. She was not only in the 18-and-up, flirting with the Ghost, but she had an armload of naughty nighties, sheer body stockings, and neon-color thongs. She cooed, “Will you get a commission for these?”

“Uh, no,” said Diego, who was on minimum wage with no benefits. His outfit didn’t have a codpiece, and now didn’t need one.

“Well, I’ll tell them at checkout what a great salesman you are.”

“Checkout,” he yelped. “Yeah, uh, before you go there, all that stuff has to go in a bag. Um, M’lady.” He scrambled to a counter and snatched open a box of the traditional plain brown paper variety.

“Good job,” I said, calling attention to myself for the first time, enunciating hard to be clear through the mask. “Nothing from in here should be visible in the other rooms.”

“Yeah yeah,” he said, nodding jerkily to me, holding out the huge open bag to LuAnn. “Uh, forsooth.”

“Oh don’t worry about that angel,” said LuAnn, dumping in all of her sleazy swag. Her chuckle was ever so devilish. “He’s no fun.”

Werewolf and Vampire laughed at that, at least as much as they laughed at Diego’s discomfort. LuAnn turned to them as she rolled the bag closed and said, “And by the way, if you must be nasty, you should call me a DILF. D for divorceé.” Then she strode towards the exit, turning there to wave to Diego.

At checkout, the cashier gawked at the bag. Turazian was next to her. She said, “How do I, uh—”

Turazian murmured, “Put the bag on the floor behind the counter, kneel down, use the handheld scanner.”

I couldn’t resist. I said to him, “You think the third room is really worth it?”

Looking haggard, he glowered, and said nothing. But I knew he’d keep it open.

***

In the car I said, “Enjoying yourself?”

She winked. “You wanted me more naughty. Now I can dress the part.”

“After giving a kid blue balls.” My grumpiness surprised me.

“He’s a good boy,” she said tenderly. “And see what it’s got him? He needs a bad girl.”

“Right now he needs a cold shower.”

“Worry about yourself, Mr. Righteousness.” She waited for the car to stop at a red light, then leaned over, pulled down her mask, and blew in my ear.

I’m not religious. Neither is she. We were going through a duel of Good and Evil without any biblical loading. I didn’t need holy writ, I had memories of Langdon State.

I went along with the fun as she tried on all the cheap crap that could give depravity a bad name. The ensuing sex was okay, although she could probably tell I wasn’t at my randiest. I gave her about a three-minute cuddle before separating for sleep.

The dream was mostly vague, but I remember desiring Myra more than before. And that Myra had said two words she had used in college to describe LuAnn. ‘Rich bitch.’

***

As October wore on, I was no happier with this gig than Turazian was. Eleven stores closed for various lockdown reasons, ranging from people refusing to wear masks in stores, to kids quitting their jobs in areas that were becoming hot zones. Business was strong elsewhere, and once the workers were accustomed to the party hosting, things went pretty well. I spent two grueling days, though, juggling the supply chain for the swag bags, when a big confectioner stopped production because of positive tests in its workforce.

I bought some non-prescription sleep aids. They got me down from the caffeine at night, and made the Myra dreams vague.

I read the sleep aid label carefully, and in doing so recalled the tiny fragments of kinesiology and body chemistry that I’d learned while trying to be a competitive athlete. I did a little searching, and found out how much had become commonplace in forty years.

The pills, among other things, got me past buildups of the stress chemical cortisol, which my brain brewed because of work. This search led to me some details about endorphins, associated with the ‘runner’s high’ which had kept me going, back in the day. My dirty mind then directed me to the connection of sex with dopamine and, more recently understood, oxytocin. The mere awareness of the existence of sex improved my attitude as I went back to work.

One day, with work stalled because people weren’t returning my messages, LuAnn texted me that she was going to meet Diego Robles for coffee, assuring me that they’d mask and distance and all that.

That didn’t stop me in my tracks, because I’d been sitting down for hours. It started tracks. I got up and paced, staring at the phone. Unable to decide what to say, or think.

I texted back: Why?

Her reply: Just to talk. Is that okay?

It took me several deep breaths to remember that LuAnn and I weren’t married, or bonded, or committed to each other beyond the effort to overcome our geriatric loneliness (with sex).

My next text: Talk is okay.

Which declared the non-okayness of everything other than talk.

Around dinnertime, LuAnn called. “Ronnie, could you please come over?”

“Sure” came out of my mouth before I could form the thought: Am I being dumped?

“Have you eaten? My dinner has already been delivered.”

“I’ll drive through somewhere,” I said. Harshly. What was wrong with me?

She looked distraught when she opened the door. She held my arm as she escorted me to the living room.

I wondered how many of the sleep aids I’d need to join Myra.

She sat us side by side on a loveseat, holding both my hands.

“Ronnie,” she said, locking on her baby blues, “I want us to be together. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t ever want to hurt you. Have I hurt you already?”

The knot in my chest loosened. I smiled for her. “I didn’t know what to think, that’s all. And work, and everything—”

“But this could hurt you, I know it,” she pressed on. “Today was just talk. And that helped Diego and me both, I think. And I think I could help him more, if it won’t hurt you.”

The knot started reforming. I tried to sound calm. “What do you have in mind?”

She raised our joined hands and kissed mine. “I think our angel and devil game has been really important. For me, anyway. More than just fun. I see some things differently. And how maybe doing something I used to think was bad, might turn out to be good.”

The knot was gone, and I thought it wouldn’t return. This wasn’t the selfish LuAnn of forty years ago. I already knew what she wanted to do, but I didn’t think it would hurt me. Still, I was uneasy.

She looked at me. “Has being an angel changed you?”

I hadn’t tried to behave differently, but there were plenty of times when I hadn’t been my old self. “I’ve been…more timid. Thinking about consequences.” I didn’t say that this was usually a direct response to her devilry.

LuAnn nodded. “At the coffee house, Diego was very nervous with me. I said that I just wanted to be his friend. As we got acquainted, he said that he has a girlfriend, and they’d like to, you know, be together. But she’s even more shy than he is. He also admitted that he’s never, um, done it, and doesn’t want to disappoint her.” She swallowed, and edged closer to me. “Ronnie, for eight months you’ve been the devil I needed. Now I can be the devil someone else needs, but only if you’re the angel who says that it’s all right.”

I sifted what little data I had on this kid, wondering if he could invent this girlfriend story just to get LuAnn in the sack. Could Vampire and Werewolf have put him up to it? “You didn’t meet his girlfriend,” I stated flatly.

She picked up her phone. “He gave me a picture.” She showed me a selfie of Diego and a probably-pretty young woman, maybe smiling under their masks, on what looked like any campus quad.

That cinched it. I smiled at her. “To prove that you’re enough of a devil for this,” I said, “You have to say, yourself, what you want to do.”

“And take responsibility,” she said, parroting what I’d told her many times. She sat up straight and said, “Ronnie, I want to have sex with Diego, and show him what you’ve shown me about sex.”

I then had to bring up what the world was living with. “Has he been corona tested?”

“His college tests all students once a week. He’s negative.”

“There’s a lot you won’t be able to do with him. You can’t kiss. You’ll need condoms and surgical gloves, as well as masks. You can’t get mouths involved, only talk about what mouths can do.”

My commonplace tone of voice, as I spoke about her having sex with another man, was what she needed to hear. She threw her arms around me. “Oh Ronnie thank you!” She pulled her head back with a smile. “But I can kiss you, my lockdown partner.” And she did, tongue getting devilish.

On her next breath she asked. “Is it weird if we, you and me, do it? Now?”

“No weirder than before,” I said, with a boob squeeze that wasn’t angelic.

***

This time Myra and I were lying on our sides, on something that yielded beneath us but didn’t actually feel, or look, like anything.

We were in light contact from the waist up. I think we had already fucked.

She stroked my cheek. “How much longer must I wait?” she asked.

Somehow it was different this time. I could think clearly. “I don’t care, Myra.”

Her placid smile vanished. With a confused frown she said, “But you love me!”

I did. Still. Stupidly, ridiculously. The self I had in this place was flooded with heartache. Yet I said, “My love belongs with the living. You never gave me your living love. If I need to die to have your love, it isn’t worth it.”

She looked stunned, mouth open. I stroked her cheek, mocking her. “I’ll die eventually. If you can bring me here then and fuck my brains out, go for it. Maybe not my first choice of afterlife, but I sure could do worse.”

I then saw on her face an expression I’d never seen before. I think it was helplessness. After that, I saw the kitschy flocked wallpaper in Luann’s bedroom.

***

In the next few days I had more dreams of Myra, all vague, and without her acknowledging that I’d talked back to her. These dreams were like the early ones. I shrugged them off by mid-morning.

All of the stores shut down for good on October 30. Turazian used Halloween itself to hold a party for the employees. I used my company involvement this time, to get LuAnn and me in. We went in our costumes, which were still intact, although I had to straighten my halo support.

The unsold merch had been boxed up and moved to the loading dock. The partitions had come down. Lu and I agreed that we’d stay no longer than when the canned music loop got to the third playing of Classics IV’s “Spooky.”

The employees stayed masked, but were clearly relieved and relaxed. Many of them had brought dates. Diego and his girlfriend were in high (non-alcoholic) spirits, despite having to limit their pandemic displays of affection. I think Lu and Diego exchanged glances only once. I’d never asked for details, and she’d never offered. I told myself that it was all good.

Our masks hid our enjoyment of the plight of Vampire and Werewolf. They didn’t have dates, seemed to get nowhere with the female employees, and hugely resented Diego’s situation.

Before long, LuAnn and I found ourselves getting more interested in each other. “Spooky” had played only twice when we ducked out.

In her bedroom, LuAnn looked me in the eyes. “Halloween is over,” she said. “I’m ready for us to be ourselves again.”

“Good,” I said.

She felt that she had to say more. “I liked flirting with Diego. And doing the rest of it. But you’re the one I want to be with. The one who makes me feel safe as I fall asleep.”

“Thanks,” I said, voice cracking. Yes, part of me had felt threatened. But now, most of me liked her openness about this.

To my surprise, she laughed. “You look so ridiculous in that getup!”

“And you look way too sexy in that one,” I said. “I should get it off of you.”

She gasped, I think affronted and aroused equally. “You’re no longer entitled to wear this!” she said, jabbing the pitchfork above my head and crumpling the halo.

Quickly I grabbed her tail and pulled. The sweatshop-made shorts showed their workmanship by ripping to shreds. Pink panties seemed to clash with the dark fishnets.

“That tears it, Mister!” she yelped, maybe meaning it both ways. She snatched my gown and hauled it up, pinning my arms and blocking my view. I stepped back, she pulled and tore, and I was down to mangled wings, boxer briefs, and walking shoes. I ducked in to get my hands around her and work the corset hooks. Her bubbly laughter infected me, exactly the way coronavirus hadn’t.

The main thing I was aware of in the next few seconds was the firmness of her grip, first on my underwear and then on my prick. Then I found myself banging deep in her hot, slick, no-oral-first pussy. We were side-by-side on the bed. One broken wing dug into my armpit. She wore one mostly-intact stocking. The clip holding her horns had rotated ninety degrees, making her look like a demonic unicorn.

“You’ve got to fuhh, umm,” she began. I was laughing harder when she said, “You’ve got to love, the devil out of me!”

Corrupting her speech pattern remained one of my projects for our golden years. “The love will be there,” I said, as her jouncing breasts lured my hands. “And the fuhh really likes the devil it’s found.” She’d never been this wet with me. I had a steel girder of an erection. Role-playing might be worth continued exploration. As for LuAnn banging young men…we’d discuss that some other time.

***

I’d never been the stereotypical male who falls asleep immediately after an orgasm. At least, not up through my late fifties. After then, I didn’t get all that much sex, or seek it out. I had been drowsy after a few of the sessions with LuAnn, but some of that was because we’d banged late at night. I guess this frolic was more intense and demanding than the others, because after we had finished each other off, I was on my side, she was on her back, we were kissing, I had my arms around her…and that’s how I woke up, with her still asleep.

We stank, and our points of contact were drying from stickiness, and I was glad to be no closer than the edge of her exhaled plume. I wasn’t sure that there were workable muscles in the arm I had under her. My eyes and throat were painfully dry. But the sight and feel of LuAnn gave me an odd combination of contentment and morning wood. I kept my contact with my lover as gentle as I possibly could, hoping that she would awaken only when she was ready. The hand on top stayed on her ribs, and didn’t rub the breast meat that rested against it.

It struck me, then, that I hadn’t dreamed of Myra.

Was I free?

Had I somehow convinced Myra to leave me alone?

I felt not the slightest desire to inject a pound of fentanyl and seek Myra in the spirit world.

So was another drug at work? Oxytocin, the ‘cuddle hormone?’ Did an all-night armload of LuAnn brew enough oxytocin in my brain to nudge me away from suicide?

With the job finished, I’d get no more daily doses of work-related cortisol.

All of this kept my mind occupied for a few minutes, until the gradual awakening of my body made me aware of what my bladder needed to do.

I stayed put, in ever-growing discomfort, until LuAnn stirred. Her eyes half-opened. I kissed her. She smiled, and wriggled, and said, “Is it morning?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Can I let go now?”

She blinked a couple times, and looked at me in surprise. “You really did it!”

“Sure did,” I said, “but I have to stop now. Be right back.”

Laughing, she let me disengage. I shed the remaining wreckage of the costume.

How much detail is necessary here? One hand kept the johnson steady over the commode while I shook the other arm back to operability. The important thing was that I was finished with the plumbing before LuAnn needed it.

Once she returned from the bathroom (which, excuse me, her presence had made into a powder room), we resumed the hug, although this time I got my other arm under her. We were still grubby and malodorous, but I wanted the hug as much as she did.

“Someday,” I said, trying to direct my breath away from her face, “I’ll explain why I’ve been weird for a while. I think the hugging may have helped stop that.”

“That felt so nice,” she murmured, stroking my side. “You’re not the only one who wants to feel loved.”

“So, I’ll hug,” I said, a bit awkward on the wording, “and I’m glad you like it. But it was a good thing for me too.”

The blue eyes searched mine. “So even though you’re my cuddling angel, I don’t have to be your licentious devil,” she said, “unless it’s a good thing for me?”

I looked away. “That would be fair.”

Her hand slid to my crotch. “I suppose I could get through quarantine boredom,” she sighed, “by amusing myself with this.”

The shlong and stones were wrinkled, with hair pasted onto them, and here and there were patches of gunk. Giving me a calm smile, LuAnn closed her entire hand around them securely, fondly, with no hesitation.

So…a certain affair wasn’t just good for Diego, but also for her. And in ways that were good for me.

“I don’t think I can describe,” she said, nestling into me, “how happy I am right now.”

She licked her lips. Slowly. Audibly.

***

I got a nice payday for fattening the Halloween stores’ bottom line.

LuAnn put her house on the market, and I did the same with my condo. We split the down payment on a three-bedroom that she thought had decor prospects, while accepting that one bedroom, available to visitors from my extended family, would look ordinary.

We’ve upgraded the master bathroom, getting a tub with jets.

She will still never be a libertine. But she happily dons figurative devil horns in the privacy of our new lovenest. She can now deliver an excellent blowjob, sometimes during a titfuck. She’s now openly eager to have her pussy licked.

By alternating arms each day, I can get through overnight cuddling.

I’ve cooked up several psychobabbles about my dreams. Like, by accepting what LuAnn would do with and for Diego, I came to value the happiness of others, and got over my selfish misery. So I could think and act for myself in the dream, and tell Myra that my love was for the living.

The thing is, I also like the effect of the oxytocin, on Lu and me both.

Whatever the reason, Myra’s ghost hasn’t returned. Maybe I’ve lost my chance for a hot afterlife. Guess I’ll have to compensate during my pre-death.

THE END