Chuck 1978 "You might," the naked woman said to me, "make model airplanes." "Ah," I said, as I caressed her firm, sweaty belly, an essential of afterplay as I had learned long ago. "You always wanted to make them when you were a kid." The full moon illumined the dome of St. Peter's in the distance and bathed us in its glow, as though it were doing us a favor. Over there the cardinals were doubtless spending a restless night in the uncomfortable beds in their stuffy rooms. None of them had a bedmate like Rosemarie with whom to play, worse luck for them and for the Church. "You said…Don't stop, Chucky Ducky, I like that…You said that you were too poor to buy the kits." "I did not!" I insisted, as I kissed her tenderly. "You did." She sighed. "You don't have to stop that either." My lips roamed her flesh, not demanding now, but reassuring, praising, celebrating. "I did not!" There had been a time, long years ago, when I would have tried a second romp of lovemaking in a situation like the present one. "Or you could take up collecting sports cards. You told all of us that you couldn't afford that either." "I never said that!" "You did too!" She giggled as I tickled her. "I guess I'm in my midlife identity crisis," I admitted. "You can't be, Chucky Ducky darling." She snuggled close to me. "You haven't got beyond your late adolescent identity crisis." One of the valiant Rosemarie's favorite themes was that I was still a charming little boy, like the little redhead in the stories she wrote. "Mind you," she whispered, "I like you as an adolescent boy." "Oh?" "Only an adolescent boy would be so nicely obsessed with every part of a woman's anatomy." That would be a line in her next story. I wondered how the New Yorker would handle the spectacular lovemaking that preceded the line. "A man could become impotent at the possibility that his bedtime amusements would become public knowledge." "Ha!…I don't know about you, Chucky Ducky, but I'm going to sleep now." She pillowed her head on my stomach. "Chucky love," she sighed, now well across the border into the land of Nod, "you're wonderful. We really defied death this time, didn't we?" That would be in the story too. I had become a character in a series of New Yorker stories--a little red-haired punk as an occasional satyr. Rosemarie Helen Clancy O'Malley had found her midlife identity as a writer. Her poor husband had found his identity as a character in fiction. On that happy note I reprised in my imagination some of the more pleasurable moments of our romp and sank into peace and satisfied sleep. Copyright © 2003 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Inc. Excerpted from Second Spring: A Love Story by Andrew M. Greeley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.