George had traveled widely, lived in several European countries, declared himself a Socialist, once owned a house on a Greek island, had strong opinions about everything and remembered most of what had happened to him. As for me, I could still walk without a cane, had just published a book and my friends told me I looked young.

Things moved apace, and it wasn’t long before I had moved into his house in the Florida Keys. Well, I’ve always been impulsive. And why not? My children and grandchildren were far away, involved in their own lives, and my lease was almost up. And by then I found George impossible to resist.

What astonished us was that the electricity we generated was as strong and compelling as love had been 50 years before, that it scrambled the brain every bit as much. Yet more surprising was that we had a rousing and delightful sex life. The few obstacles seemed easy to get around, and we spent a lot of time in bed or skinny-dipping in the secluded pool.

I didn’t really wish I had met him at 25 or 30; he liked women far too much and believed in “open marriage.” He was still an indomitable flirt. Without the physical limitations of age, I suspected he might have wandered off after some 60-year-old.

When my head had cleared a little, I had reservations about this early retirement. What was I, a lifelong New Yorker, doing in Key Largo? Bogey and Betty were nowhere in sight; instead there were strip malls, mosquitoes, pelicans, snakes and hurricanes. No beaches or sidewalks. A lot of booze and drugs, when all I had was an occasional martini, and George didn’t drink at all.