“That’s a riot, Don. An act like that, you could take it on the road and make a million dollars. You won’t have to wait long to do it, either-you can start just six moves from now.”

“Ain’t you smart,” Don said. “You just don’t know when to-”

“Hush.” Georgina Eberly said in a sharp tone. “What was that?

It sounded like something blew up!”

“That” was Lois, sucking a flood of vibrant rainforest green from Georgina’s aura.

Ralph raised his right hand, curled it into a tube around his lips, and began to inhale a similar stream of bright blue light from Stan Eberly’s aura. He felt fresh energy fill him at once; it was as if fluorescent lights were going on in his brain. But that vast sunken ship, which was really no more or less than four months’ worth of mostly sleepless nights, was still there, and still trying to suck him down to the place where it was.

The decision was still right there, too-not yet made one way or the other, but only deferred.

Stan was also looking around. No matter how much of his aura Ralph took (and he had drawn off a great deal, it seemed to him), the source remained as densely bright as ever. Apparently what they had been told about the all-but-endless reservoirs of energy surrounding each human being had been the exact, literal truth.

“Well,” Stan said, “I did hear something-”

“I didn’t,” Faye said.

“Coss not, you’re deaf as dirt,” Stan replied. “Stop interruptin for just one minute, can’tcha? I started to say it wasn’t a fuel-tank, because there ain’t no fire or smoke. Can’t be that Don farted, either, cause there ain’t no squirrels droppin dead out of the trees with their fur burnt off. I guess it musta been one of those big Air National Guard trucks backfirin. Don’t worry, darling, I’ll pertect ya.”

“Pertect this,” Georgina said, slapping one hand into the crook of her elbow and curling her fist at him. She was smiling, however.

“Oh boy,” Faye said. “Take a peek at Old Dor.”

They all looked at Dorrance, who was smiling and waving in the direction of the Harris Avenue Extension.

“Who do you see there, old fella?” Don Veazie asked with a grin.

“Ralph and Lois,” Dorrance said, smiling radiantly. “I see Ralph and Lois. They just came out from under the old tree!”

“Yep,” Stan said. He shaded his eyes, then pointed directly at them.

This delivered a wallop to Ralph’s nervous system which only abated when he realized Stan was just pointing where Dorrance was waving. “And look! There’s Glenn Miller coming out right behind em!

Goddam! “Georgia threw an elbow and Stan stepped away nimbly, grinning.

[“Hello, Ralph! Hello, Lois."’] [“Dorrance! We’re going to Strawford Park! Is that right?”] Dorrance, grinning happily: [“I don’t know, it’s all Long-Time business now, and I’m through with it. I’m going back home soon and read Walt Whitman. It’s going to be a windy night, and Whitman’s always best when the wind blows.”] Lois, sounding nearly frantic: [“Dorrance, help us!”] Doris grin faltered, and he looked at her solemnly.

[“I can’t. It’s passed out of my hands. Whatever’s done will have to be done by you and Ralph now.”] “Ugh,” Georgina said. “I hate it when he stares that way. You could almost believe he really does see someone.” She picked up her long-handled barbecue fork and began to toast her hbtdog again.

“Has anybody seen Ralph and Lois, by the way?”

“No,” Don said.

“They’re shacked up in one of those X-rated motels down the coast with a case of beer and a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil,” Stan said.

“The giant-economy-size bottle. I toldia that yesterday.”

“Filthy old man,” Georgina said, this time throwing the elbow with a little more force and a lot more accuracy.

Ralph: [“Dorrance, can’t you give us any help at all? At least tell us if we’re on the right track?”] For a moment he was sure Dor was going to reply. Then there was a buzzing, approaching drone from overhead and the old man looked up. His daffy, beautiful smile resurfaced. “Look!” he cried.

“An old Grumman Yellow Bird! And a beauty!” He jogged to the chainlink fence to watch the small yellow plane land, turning his back to them.

Ralph took Lois’s arm and tried to smile himself. It was hard going-he thought he had never felt quite so frightened and confused in his entire life-but he gave it the old college try.

[“Come on, dear. Let’s go.”] Ralph remembered thinking-this while they’d been making their way along the abandoned rail-line which had eventually taken them back to the airport-that walking was not exactly what they were doing; it had seemed more like gliding. They went from the picnic area at the end of Runway 3 back to Strawford Park in that same fashion, only the glide was faster and more pronounced now. It was like being carried along by an invisible conveyor belt.

As an experiment, he stopped walking. The houses and storefronts continued to flow mildly past. He looked down at his feet to make sure, and yes, they were completely still. It seemed the sidewalk was moving, not him.

Here came Mr. Dugan, head of the Derry Trust’s Loan Department, decked out in his customary three-piece suit and rimless eyeglasses.

As always, he looked to Ralph like the only man in the history of the world to be born without an asshole. He had once rejected Ralph’s application for a Bill-Payer loan, which, Ralph supposed, might account for a few of his negative feelings about the man. Now he saw that Dugan’s aura was the dull, uniform gray of a corridor in a VA hospital, and Ralph decided that didn’t surprise him much. He held his nose like a man forced to swim across a polluted canal and passed directly through the banker. Dugan did not so much as twitch.

That was sort of amusing, but when Ralph glanced at Lois, his amusement faded in a hurry. He saw the worry on her face, and the questions she wanted to ask. Questions to which he had no satisfactory answers.

Ahead was Strawford Park. As Ralph looked, the streetlights came on suddenly. The little playground where he and McGovern-Lois too, more often than not-had stood watching the children play was almost deserted. Two junior-high kids were sitting side by side on the swings, smoking cigarettes and talking, but the mothers and toddlers who came here during the daylight hours were all gone now.

Ralph thought of McGovern-of his ceaseless, morbid chatter and his self-pity, so hard to see when you first got to know him, so hard to miss once you’d been around him for awhile, both of them lightened and somehow turned into something better by his irreverent wit and his surprising, impulsive acts of kindness-and felt deep sadness steal over him. Short-Timers might be stardust, and they might be golden as well, but when they were gone they were as gone as the mothers and babies who made brief playtime visits here on sunny summer afternoons.

[“Ralph, what are we doing here? The deathbag’s over the Civic Center, not Strawford Park."’] Ralph guided her to the park bench where he had found her several centuries ago, crying over the argument she’d had with her son and daughter-in-law… and over her lost earrings.

Down the hill, the two Portosans glimmered in the deepening twilight.

Ralph closed his eyes. I am going mad, he thought, and I’m headed there on the express rather than the local. Which is it going to be?

The lady… or the tiger?

[“Ralph, we have to do something. Those lives… those thousands of lives… “I In the darkness behind his closed lids, Ralph saw someone coming out of the Red Apple Store. A figure in dark corduroy pants and a Red Sox cap. Soon the terrible thing would start to happen again, and because Ralph didn’t want to see it, he opened his eyes and looked at the woman beside him.

[“Every life is important, Lois, wouldn’t you agree? Every single one.”] He didn’t know what she saw in his aura, but it clearly terrified her.