The light-headed feeling of reprieve that Mr. Rebeck had been allowing himself died in his stomach with a reproachful murmur. A trickle of rum got into a cut on his lip and stung.

"I've seen him," he said, "when I was here before. I saw him driving in the truck. I think you were with him at the time."

Campos was not to be put off. His huge hand closed on the bottle that Mr. Rebeck held and jerked it away. "Don't go slopping my rum like that. How come you're in here this time of night anyway? We close at five."

"I got locked in," Mr. Rebeck said promptly. He smiled appeasingly at Campos. "You know how time flies when you're visiting someone. And before I knew it—"

"You didn't come in here running around in no bathrobe," Campos said. He pointed at Mr. Rebeck's feet. "Nor in no carpet slippers. Walters wouldn't let you. I might, because I might be listening to my music and not noticing things. You might get past me, because I don't notice things sometimes, but Walters wouldn't let you in here dressed all like that."

He ended on a triumphant upbeat, and Mr. Rebeck twisted the hem of the terrycloth bathrobe and knew himself trapped. There was nothing for it now but to throw himself on Campos's mercy, and it had been Mr. Rebeck's experience of mercy that it had a tendency to buckle under the weight of a human soul. But he was tired, and it was three in the morning, and sitting side by side in a cemetery with this strange and suspicious man was aging him rapidly. If it must be, let it be now, before the rum and the appearance of friendship were quite finished.

"I live here," he said evenly. "I live in an old mausoleum and have for a good while. Now either call the police or give me back that rum. I'm too old for this sort of thing."

"Sure," Campos said. "Didn't even realize I had it." He gave the bottle back to Mr. Rebeck, who stared at him for a moment and then drank with painful-sounding gulps. Campos patted his back when he finally choked, and helped him to sit up straight.

"See, I knew Walters wouldn't let you in," he explained, "so I figured it was something like that." He reached out to finger the material of the bathrobe. "Catch cold running around in that. Catch a real mean cold."

"No I won't," Mr. Rebeck said. "It's a very warm night."

"All the same," Campos said. He turned the radio up louder and listened intently to a string quartet. It was a Mozart piece, or a Haydn. The little Mr. Rebeck had ever known about classical music he had utterly forgotten. But he saw Campos looking at him for approval, and he closed his eyes and hummed softly to indicate that he was following the music.

"Great, huh?" Campos's face was eager for endorsement of his taste. "All them fiddles. They make me feel loose."

"Loose," said Mr. Rebeck. He was a little afraid to make a question out of it. "Yes. Loose."

"Like I was twenty and not working for anybody and I could fly," Campos said. "Like that, loose."

Together they listened to the string quartet. The music was happy on top and sad on the bottom, and it warmed Mr. Rebeck's stomach as much as the rum. He lay back on the grass with his hands beneath his head and the bottle of rum balanced on his chest and looked up through the trees at the few stars there were.

This is very pleasant, he said to himself. It seems unusual to me because I haven't done very much of it, but this may be what a man is for. It may, of course, not be. It may be simply a very nice way to spend time, with music and something to drink and a friend—although he did not know if he could honestly consider Campos a friend. He was much too unpredictable, even for a friend—no more good or evil than the wind, and just as trustworthy. Still, there was a debt between them now, and drink shared, and this often makes a good friend-glue.

When he heard Campos's cheerful "Hello," he was sure that the big man was greeting another guard, and he pressed himself flat against the earth, feeling pinned and helpless. But when he heard the familiar voice of Michael Morgan answer Campos, he sat up so quickly that the bottle of rum rolled off his chest and would have spilled its contents if Campos had not snatched it out of the air. He looked up the road and saw Michael and Laura coming down together.

They looked extremely tangible, he noticed, extremely human. Part of that was understandable—their transparence was not evident against the blackness behind them. But there was more to it than that. There was an edged clarity about them, and a new sharpness of detail about their faces and bodies, as if they had looked at each other's eyes and suddenly remembered how their own were set. They walked easily; Michael did not stamp on the earth nor Laura flinch from it with each footstep. They looked almost real enough to cast shadows or be reflected in mirrors.

But this shivered through his mind and vanished. Now he stared from Campos to Michael and heard the man and the ghost call to each other. He heard both of them laugh and could tell only that one laugh was deeper and rougher than the other. Laura saw him and called his name. He nodded stiffly in reply, feeling older than he was.

"Can you see them?" he asked Campos in a wondering whisper.

"Sure," Campos said. "What kind of a dumb question is that?" Mr. Rebeck did not answer.

Campos stood up as Michael and Laura approached and demanded, "Where you been?"

"All the hell over," Michael answered. "We've been selling beads and pottery to the tourists. It's not much, but we manage in our primitive way. Sometimes she does a little primitive dance for them while I'm filling out the primitive sales slip. Sends them away happy."

"Hello," Laura said to Mr. Rebeck. She sat beside him and put her hand on his. He could not feel her fingers, but his own felt suddenly cold.

"Hello, Laura," he said. And because he could think of nothing else to say, he added, "I haven't seen you in a while."

"We meant to come," Laura said. "We'd have come." She followed his glance at Michael and Campos and smiled. "Are you surprised that we can talk to Campos too?"

"Very," Mr. Rebeck said. "I don't quite understand it."

"Neither do we, honestly," Laura said. "It was Michael. He ran into Campos first. I only met him later."

Michael turned his head to her. "What did I do?"

"You met Campos," Laura said. "I was telling Mr. Rebeck."

"So I did," Michael said complacently. "He was driving along in his truck and I stepped into the road and tried to put the whammy on him, because I wanted to see if there was anything to all the old ghost stories. The dirty dog ran right over me. Through me, really."

"I knew you were a ghost," Campos said. "Anyway, didn't I go back to make sure?"

"Oh, you did that. That I will grant you. To make sure you hadn't spoiled the pelt." He looked at Mr. Rebeck. "Well, it turned out that he could see me and talk to me, the same way you can. And Laura and I got into the habit of coming down to visit him when he's on the night shift. We sing to him and tell him stories. It keeps him awake."

"I see," Mr. Rebeck said. He sighed, and his body relaxed. "Excuse me for seeming startled. It's just that I always wondered if I might not be the only man in the world who could see ghosts. I know it sounds greedy, but after a while I began to feel that I was."

"There's never just one of anything in the world," Michael said casually. He turned back to Campos. "Listen, night watchman, watcher of the night, sing me that song about the tree. I keep forgetting it."

"It's not about a tree," Campos said. "I tell you and tell you."

"All right, it's not about a tree. It has nothing to do with trees. Now sing it."

Campos began to sing very softly. The string quartet was still going on the radio, and Campos's guttural, almost rasping, voice sounded like a fifth stringed instrument, tuned to a different scale from that of the other four and playing a completely irrelevant melody that prowled around the closed circle of the quartet, hoping to be let in.