I’d seen this coming. Reading these lubricious pages, Dad, you may imagine that the prospect of nineteen more days of the foregoing would appeal to me, especially with the added sweetening of their being therapeutic for Jeannine. Her visit had been an unexpected little bonus; possible incest or not, I could muster no more guilt about her seducing me than a small salt of extra pleasure. If the past two days had been good for Jeannine, they’d been as good for me: a chance to bid leisurely good-bye to her and to another of life’s delights. At 69, however, I am not imperiously sexed; what’s more (for Jeannine would no doubt be willing to dispense with our copulation), I looked forward already to solitude. There were other last things to think of. The fact was, I’d had about enough.

Then how to set her down gently? I kissed her (on the behind: she’d stood to wipe my leaking semen off her with a Kleenex, and perhaps to not watch my expression as she wound up her plea) and asked her to give me overnight to think about it. I really did have my reasons, I reminded her, for planning a solitary cruise; on the other hand, she was a terrific pleasure and a great convenience to have aboard. Let’s sleep on it.

Through dinner she was subdued (lamb chops barbecued off the taffrail, Caesar salad, and a young Beaujolais, which she put away most of). After cleanup we swam again under the first stars — no nettle stings, but no noctilucae either — while lightning from a distant local thundershower flickered southwest of us. The night was stiff and sticky, the cabin uninviting. We sat up late on deck, stripped to our underpants for comfort and sprayed with Off, sipping gin and tonic and tisking tongues at our unexpected privacy: I’d rigged the anchor light, but it was apparent that no other overnighters were going to join us in Red House Cove. Though it was a touch early and partly cloudy, we looked for Perseid meteors, but saw only two in an hour. Jeannine seemed to be holding her liquor and tactfully did not reraise her proposition; her self-control encouraged me to hope that she might after all “settle down” into a more meaningful life in the plenty of years ahead for her. We spoke little, enjoying the stillness and the dew. When the latter finally chilled us (just as Perseus himself rose out of the Bay), I took her hand and led her below.

In fact, sleepy from alcohol and the long day outdoors, I was simply saying Let’s turn in, but she understandably mistook my gesture: once in the cabin she slipped to her knees and popped Old John into her mouth. I stroked her hair and let her go at it for a while, half wishing the chap would stand lest she feel rejected, half hoping he wouldn’t so she’d get the message, and mainly hankering for sleep. She scolded him playfully, tried a few testicular and rectal accompaniments; neither he nor I could’ve been less interested. I raised her up, chuckled something about old folks needing their sleep. She tensed in my arms, first time since the Dorset lobby, and turned her face away when I said good night.

Not much sleep. I heard her drinking and smelled her smoking cigarettes in her berth off and on through the night: two Verbotens on my boat, but there was no point in making a fuss. I wished heartily our berths were reversed; tried to stay awake lest she go up on deck without my hearing her; but fatigue overcame me. Near dawn I woke alarmed that she might have gone overboard, deliberately or accidentally. On pretext of using the head I got up to check and found her heavily asleep, a full ashtray and the empty gin bottle (it had been only a quarter full) on the cabin sole beside her. She’d turned in naked; the cabin air was wet and chill, the sky gray in the first light, my head dull with solicitude and short sleep. I drew her bedsheet up, disposed of the butts and bottle, turned off the anchor light, and went back to my own berth, wondering what I’d have to deal with later in the morning.

But to my great relief, she behaved herself. We stayed abed late for two old sailors; at nine I heard her pumping the head and took the opportunity to enter the cabin, discreetly pajama-bottomed, and light the stove for coffee. She stayed in there awhile, but there are no toilet secrets on a small boat: I was gratified to hear no vomiting, just the cozy sounds of female urination and, more and more cheering, the turn of magazine pages. I put out apple juice and aspirin; put the aspirin back as too obvious. Let her ask for them. She asked instead, from the head, neutrally, for her blouse from the hanging locker and clean underpants from her bag, also a cigarette from her purse if I didn’t mind. When I handed the items in to her, she herself suggested, without looking up from her magazine (an old New Yorker) that I radio the yacht club about cabs and flight times; she had an open ticket, and was sure they wouldn’t mind calling the airline and radioing back the information. That way we wouldn’t have to rush. But she’d like to get started as soon as possible. Never mind breakfast for her; all she wanted was coffee.

I made the call; no need for her to leave the island before noon. Jeannine came out, looking not very fresh-faced, and began stripping her bed and assembling her gear. The sky refused to brighten; the air was clammy; there was nothing to say. I went up the companionway in my shorts, swabbed the deck, and took a swim to ease the strain, proud of her and a bit ashamed of myself. Presently Jeannine came on deck too — the air temperature was shooting up — still in her blouse and panties, another cigarette in one hand and a beer can in the other. She considered for a while, then flicked away the butt, skinnied out of her clothes, and let herself carefully down the ladder, not to get her hair wet.

Now, Dad: your old son is a prevailingly benevolent, even good man. But he has never presumed to moral perfection. My relief and pleasure in Jeannine’s behavior, together with the knowledge that upon her departure (in an hour) I would not likely see her again — and the further knowledge that the comely woman before me was the last unclothed female I’d likely ever lay eyes upon — inspired me to a lust that was undeniably, though not altogether, perverse. As, our positions reversed, I stood dripping in the cockpit now, a towel around my waist, and watched her paddling glumly, cautiously, pinkly astern, I not only desired Jeannine one last time: I desired her specifically a tergo, puppy-dog style, the way I’d first seen myself in the act of coition, in the mirror of my bedroom in your house, with Betty June Gunter, on March 2, 1917, the day that young woman relieved me of my virginity.

I plead by way of extenuation only that, had Jeannine genuinely protested, I would not only not have insisted; I’d’ve been quite unable to carry through. But when she came unsmiling up the ladder — and, as she’d left her towel below, I removed mine, began drying her with it, then embraced her from behind, pressing into her cleft my half-erection — she only stiffened, gave me one sharp and tight-lipped look, then let me have my way. Which was to lead her below, return behind her, draw her down to hands and knees on the cabin sole, apply saliva in lieu of more natural lubrication, rise to a full, fine, and culpable hard-on as I entered her, and bang in six or seven deep strokes to ejaculation: the last sex in this letter and my life.

I held her a few moments by the hips, Dad, breathing hard and wishing mightily to fall atop her; then withdrew, postcoital remorse surging in like the tide through Knapps Narrows, and rose to wipe myself on our beach towel. Jeannine lingered discomfitingly on all fours, her hair loose and head and shoulders down, a smear of semen across one prominent buttock and along the back of one thigh. I would get the dinghy ready, I murmured: easier to row over to the club than to unanchor Osborn Jones. I slipped into go-ashore shorts, shirt, and boat shoes and fussed about on deck, wondering what to do if she simply stayed where she was, arse to the breeze, a wordless reproach to my abuse of her. But just as time began to grow tight she came up with her purse and flight bag, dressed as when she arrived, but with disheveled hair and tear-swollen face. My practice has included legal counsel to the recently raped. Jeannine looked recently raped.