"This is as good as it gets," said the old woman to her husband.

"This is as good as it gets," he echoed. He did not want to argue the point.

They had been saying this to each other for many years. Day after day, the same re-assurance to each other that this day was as good as it got, another optimum day in their long life together: a further time-capsule to cherish.

However, each must have continually feared that the next day would bring a suspicion at least that 'today' was not quite as good as 'yesterday'...that things were (the next day) on the slide at last. After a series of days that became increasingly impossible to better, suddenly the ripeness of old age turned inevitably to the rot of coming death.  A tipping-point.

"Yesterday was as good as it got," she whispered, a wry smile around her toothless mouth.

"Yesterday was as good as it ever will be," was his variation on her theme, if not an exact echo.

Each stared into the other's staring eyes, trying to reflect unblinkingly what they saw.  They kissed with century-cold lips.  And, as if upon some strange ignition, each of them wondered which the ventriloquist's dummy and which the puppet ventriloquist - and who worked whom; whose finger upon the clitoris of time.

(written today and first published here)