Memories of his past friends and loves flooded him, an enormous tessellation of people and events, sights and sounds and sensations. Ronnie thought about the rich mosaic he had lived; and about how for some of those people, he was the common connection; and how for others, he was but a way-station on the path to somewhere, or someone, else.

He opened his eyes, or thought he did, and saw Tomiko’s face hovering over him, her dark hair falling to her shoulders and framing her face like a halo. Tomiko. He pictured her slender body, her long limbs; he heard her voice calling to him — what was she saying? He sensed, rather than felt, that she was moving back and forth; he felt her hands on his chest now, compressing rhythmically: press, relax; press, relax. He could almost look down on the scene, rather than up towards the ceiling, past Tomiko’s loving hands and small, perfect bare breasts — breasts that bounced gently while she rocked above him. Ronnie opened his eyes now and raised a hand, grasping one dark nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Tomiko moaned, continued rocking, leaned down to kiss his mouth.

Ronnie felt her tongue, strong and sure, slide between his lips. Her breathing became almost ragged, short bursts between thrusts of her tongue. He opened his eyes: there was Tomiko, beautiful Tomiko, her hands on his face. His eyes closed again, and he was back in the mosaic of his life, and Tomiko was every woman he had ever known: first in succession, a flip book of faces and bodies pressed gloriously against his own; and then a pastiche, a composite Everywoman who was all of them and none of them. She embodied the best of all, the uniqueness of each, and a serenity that was hers alone.

Tomiko raised herself up now, leaning back to stimulate herself against his hard cock, rising and falling quite deliberately, coaxing him along and teasing him while she pleasured herself with his body. There was a universal quality to her play and even to her joy, and yet there was something else, too, something new and unusual and emphatically individual.

He reached out to her, touching her breasts and her belly, slipping his hand between her legs, pushing his wet finger into her mouth and then pulling her down for another kiss, tasting her with all his senses. His hand stroked her throat and coaxed low growls of greater pleasure. His hips, pinned down as he was, could not thrust forward easily; and Ronnie did not want to rush things, anyway. He watched the parade of faces and bodies and experience in his mind, opened his eyes again to Tomiko and saw his outstretched hand against her throat still, pulled her down gently to him for another kiss. Her hips rose up and down seemingly on their own, and he found that by altering the pressure and angle of his hand he could control her thrusts.

Tomiko’s breath was shallower now, and Ronnie sensed that he too was nearing the end of his lifetime procession. “In my life,” John Lennon was singing in his ears, “I’ve loved them all.” He had, he did. He closed his eyes tightly, climaxing almost in the moment he felt Tomiko arc over the top of her own parabolic trajectory, and he pulled her down close and kissed her again, a long and deep and abiding stroke that chased the ghosts from his mind.

Afterwards, as she lay slumbering on top of him, the faces were all gone. Instead, he counted the cold tiles at his back, while the floor warmed to the heat of their bodies.