"It won't take that long," Laura said. "A month. Maybe a couple of months."

"All right. I know it. What are you trying to prove? Right now I like watching the morning come. Sandy and I used to do that a lot. We'd sit up all night playing cards and listening to records, and then, just before morning, we'd go out and walk until the sun came up. We'd have breakfast wherever we were and go home and sleep till three or four in the afternoon. Then we'd go through the same routine again, and we never got tired of it."

Laura looked down the hillside as she spoke. "Sometimes I wish Sandra would restrain herself from feather-footing her way into everything we talk about. If I sound petty and malicious, it's because I am."

"I was sorry as soon as I'd mentioned her," Michael said. "I know how it sounds. The most boring thing in the world is another man's girl."

"It isn't that," Laura said a little crossly. "You have a perfect right to talk about her. Every beautiful thing you can remember comes in handy after death. Only—" A plane from La Guardia Airport was thundering tinnily over the city, and she used it as an excuse to leave the sentence incomplete until it was out of sight. Then, still looking away from him, she said, "Only, I wish you'd decide whether you love her or hate her."

"I don't love her," Michael answered. "But all the pleasant things I remember seem to be tied up with her, one way or the other. Not because she was Sandra, but because the good moments were better for someone else's being there. This sounds like women's-magazine philosophy, but some things aren't any good unless they're shared. Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets. You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," Laura said.

"All right. Let it go. The point is made. You know, the raven was right about birds. They do sing just before rain. I was listening."

Michael looked sideways at her. "What's the matter, Laura? Did I say something wrong?"

"Nothing," Laura said. "Nothing's wrong. When you mentioned Sandra, I started thinking about the trial. It must be over now."

"Now? What are you talking about? It's not for a week yet."

Laura smiled for the first time. "What day is today?"

"Good God, I don't know. It's still summer, but some of the leaves are turning brown already. Is it August?"

"It's August seventeenth," Laura said. "The trial was two days ago. I know because Mr. Rebeck told me. The raven's been following it in the newspapers, the way you asked him to."

"Did I ask him? I don't even remember that. I'm losing all track of time, Laura. I thought I'd keep that a while longer."

Alarm clocks were going off in the city now. One after another, sometimes two or three together, they drove their small silver knives into the body of the great dream that sprawled naked on the housetops. Sensual, amiable, and defenseless as it was, it would still take a little while to die.

"Does it make any difference?" Laura asked. "What's time to us? What's five o'clock to the dead? We've got no pressing appointments."

"No difference. But it's part of being human, and so I hate to lose it. Didn't I tell you I hung on to things?"

"I remember," Laura said. She looked up at the overcast sky for a sign of the raven. "Anyway," she said, "we ought to know about the trial today."

"I don't care about the trial," Michael said. "It might have meant something to me if they'd tried her when I was newly dead and full of revenge. Now I don't much care. I don't even remember her as well as I used to. She's becoming a stranger who did something to a stranger. I don't wish her any harm. Let's leave it at that. Don't talk about the trial, Laura."

Behind them a tree branch shook like a wet dog and sent its load of rain splashing to the ground. Michael and Laura turned and saw a couple coming past the hothouse and toward the wall.

"Company," Michael said. "And so early."

They were very young, Laura thought. Twenty or twenty-one, no more. The boy's hair was so wet it was almost maroon in color. He wore a raincoat but no rubbers, and the bottoms of his pants legs flapped shapelessly above his equally soaked socks as he walked. The girl also wore a raincoat, but the top button was missing and her wet white blouse clung to her small pointed breasts. She wore some sort of plastic kerchief over her hair, but the rain had seeped in, and what could be seen of her hair was limp and damp. They walked slowly, with their arms around each other's waists, faces turned to each other as they talked. Sometimes, without stopping, they kissed and then stumbled because they were not looking where they were going. Then they would laugh.

"Let's get out of here," Michael said. "I don't want to eavesdrop on them. Let's go somewhere else."

"Wait a little. How wet they are, and how happy."

They heard the boy's voice then. "Sure it's crazy. Been a pretty night all around. Look at it this way. I bet you've had hundreds of guys taking you to movies and skating rinks and dances. How many guys ever took you to a graveyard before breakfast? This way you'll remember me."

"A graveyard before breakfast," the girl said. "All night out in the rain and now a graveyard. You bet I'll remember you, mister." But she was laughing as she said it, and she hugged the boy's waist tightly.

"Think of it like a park," the boy said. "Look at all the statues standing around. Look at all the trees. It's like Central Park."

The girl looked up at him and shook her head, pantomiming exasperation. "A park. Some park. Wait till my mother gets hold of me." She made her voice shrill and old. " 'Where were you, Norma, all night and not a word? What kind of a way is that to treat your mother?' And I'll say, 'It's all right, Ma, it's all right, don't panic. Harry and I had a wonderful time. We went to a movie and when we came out it was raining, and so we walked all night. And in the morning Harry took me to the most wonderful graveyard. Ma, you should have been there. What a night.'" She sneezed.

"God bless you," the boy said. "Honey, you all right? I don't want you getting sick because I'm crazy. I'll take you right home now, you don't feel good."

"No, I'm all right," the girl said. "I'll take a hot shower when I get home. Only let's not stay too long, Harry."

"A few minutes, that's all." The boy pointed toward the wall. "Come on, we'll sit down and catch our breath. Then we'll start back."

As they came on together, Michael said urgently, "Laura, let's get out of here. I don't want to watch them. Neither do you."

"Wait," Laura said. "Wait a little. I thought you were the one who spent all his time observing people."

"Not couples. Never couples. I'm not obnoxiously brave, Laura."

"I'm not brave at all," Laura said. But she remained on the wall, watching the boy and girl approach, and Michael stayed with her.

When the couple reached the wall, the boy stooped and lifted the girl onto it. There was a good deal of puffing and giggling and flopping of wet garments involved. Once seated on the wall, the girl extended her hand daintily, and the boy took it and scrambled, panting, up the ladderlike mortar to sit beside her. He was completely out of breath and tried to conceal it by taking deep gasps of air and letting them out slowly. But the girl looked at him and began to laugh, and it was somehow different from laughing after kissing and stumbling.

"Look at you," she said. "You're all red and breathless."

"You think you're such a featherweight?" the boy said, not without rancor. "Come on, we'll do it over and you carry me this time. Let's see how you look."

"Score one for our side," Michael said to Laura. "I think I'm for him if it comes to shooting."