“That’s good. Listen, Dor, it’s great to see you, but the walk up the hill kind of tired me out, so maybe we could visit another t-”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Dorrance said, standing up. There was a faint cinnamony smell about him that always made Ralph think of Egyptian mummies kept behind red velvet ropes in shadowy museums. His face was almost without lines except for the tiny sprays of crow’s-feet around his eyes, but his age was unmistakable (and a little scary): his blue eyes were faded to the watery gray of an April sky and his skin had a translucent clarity that reminded Ralph of Nat’s skin. His lips were loose and almost lavender in color. They made little smacking sounds when he spoke. “That’s all right, I didn’t come to visit; I came to give you a message.”

“What message? From who?”

“I don’t know who it’s from,” Dorrance said, giving Ralph a look that suggested he thought Ralph was either being foolish or playing dumb. “I don’t mess in with long-time business. I told you not to, either, don’t you remember?”

Ralph did remember something, but he was damned if he knew exactly what. Nor did he care. He was tired, and he had already had to listen to a fair amount of tiresome proselytizing on the subject of Susan Day from Ham Davenport. He had no urge to go round and round with Dorrance Marstellar on top of that, no matter how beautiful this Saturday morning was. “Well then, just give me the message,” he said, “and I’ll toddle along upstairs. How would that be?”

“Oh, sure, good, fine.” But then Dorrance stopped, looking across the street as a fresh gust of wind sent a funnel of leaves storming into the bright October sky. His faded eyes were wide, and something in them made Ralph think of the Exalted amp; Revered Baby again-of the way she had snatched at the gray-blue marks left by his fingers, and the way she had looked at the flowers sizzling in the vase by the sink.

Ralph had seen Dor stand watching airplanes take off and land on Runway 3 with that same slack-jawed expression, sometimes for an hour or more.

“Dor?” he prompted.

Dorrance’s sparse eyelashes fluttered. “Oh! Right! The message!

The message is…” He frowned slightly and looked down at the-book which he was now bending back and forth in his hands. Then his face cleared and he looked up at Ralph again. “The message is, “I ’Cancel the appointment.

It was Ralph’s turn to frown. “What appointment?”

“You shouldn’t have messed in,” Dorrance repeated, then heaved a big sigh. “But it’s too late now. Done-bun-can’the-undone. just cancel the appointment. Don’t let that fellow stick any pins in you.”

Ralph had been turning to the porch steps; now he turned back to Dorrance. “Hong? Are you talking about Hong?”

“How would I know?” Dorrance asked in an irritated tone of voice.

“I don’t mess in, I told you that. Every now and then I carry a message, is all, like now. I was supposed to tell you to cancel the appointment with the pin-sticker man, and I done it. The rest is up to

YOU.”

Dorrance was looking up at the trees across the street again, his odd, lineless face wearing an expression of mild exaltation. The strong fall wind rippled his hair like seaweed. When Ralph touched his shoulder the old man turned to him willingly enough, and Ralph suddenly realized that what Faye Chapin and the others saw as foolishness might actually be joy. If so, the mistake probably said more about them than it did about Old Dor.

“Dorrance?”

“What, Ralph?”

“This message-who gave it to you?”

Dorrance thought it over-or perhaps only appeared to think it over-and then held out his copy of Cemetery Nights. “Take it.”

“No, I’ll pass,” Ralph said. “I’m not much on poetry, Dor.”

“You’ll like these. They’re like stories-” Ralph restrained a strong urge to reach out and shake the old man until his bones rattled like castanets. “I just picked up a couple oat operas downtown, at Back Pages. What I want to know is who gave you the message about-” Dorrance thrust the book of poems into Ralph’s right hand-the one not holding the Westerns-with surprising force. “One of them starts, ’Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.”

“And before Ralph could say another word, Old Dor cut across the lawn to the sidewalk. He turned left and started toward the Extension with his face turned dreamily up to the blue sky where the leaves flew wildly, as if to some rendezvous over the horizon.

“Dorrance! “Ralph shouted, suddenly infuriated. Across the street at the Red Apple, Sue was sweeping fallen leaves off the hot-top in front of the door. At the sound of Ralph’s voice she stopped and looked curiously over at him. Feeling stupid-feeling old-Ralph manufactured what he hoped looked like a big, cheerful grin and m,aved to her. Sue waved back and resumed her sweeping. Dorrance, meanwhile, had continued serenely on his way. He was now almost half a block up the street.

Ralph decided to let him go.

He climbed the steps to the porch, switching the book Dorrance had given him to his left hand so he could grope for his key-ring, and then saw he didn’t have to bother-the door was not only unlocked but standing ajar. Ralph had scolded McGovern repeatedly for his carelessness about locking the front door, and had thought he was finally having some success in getting the message through his downstairs tenant’s thick skull. Now, however, it seemed that McGovern had backslid.

“Dammit, Bill,” he said under his breath, pushing his way into the shadowy lower hall and looking nervously up the stairs. It was all too easy to imagine Ed Deepneau lurking up there, broad daylight or not.

Still, he could not stay here in the foyer all day. ’ He turned the thumb-bolt on the front door and started up the stairs.

There was nothing to worry about, of course. He had one bad moment when he thought -he saw someone standing in the far corner of the living room, but it was only his own old gray jacket. He had actually hung it on the coat-tree for a change instead of just slinging it onto a chair or draping it over the arm of the sofa; no wonder it had given him a turn.

He went into the kitchen and, with his hands poked into his back pockets, stood l(looking at the calendar. Monday was circled, and within the circle he had scrawled HONG-10:00.

I was supposed to tell you to cancel the appointment with the pinsticker man, and I done it. The rest is up to you.

For a moment Ralph felt himself step back from his life, so he was able to look at the latest section of the mural it made instead of just the detail which was this day. What he saw frightened him: an unknown road heading into a lightless tunnel where anything might be waiting.

Anything at all.

Then turn back, Ralph!

But he had an idea he couldn’t do that. He-had an idea he was for the tunnel, whether he wanted to go in there or not. The feeling was not one of being led so much as it was one of being shoved forward by powerful, invisible hands.

“Never mind,” he muttered, rubbing his temples nervously with the tips of his fingers and still looking at the circled date-two days from now-on the calendar. “It’s the insomnia. That’s when things really started to-”

Really started to what?

“To get weird,” he told the empty apartment. “That’s when things started to get really weird.”

Yes, weird. Lots of weird things, but the auras he was seeing were clearly the weirdest of them all. Cold gray light-it had looked like living frost-creeping over the man reading the paper in Day Break, Sun Down. The mother and son walking toward the supermarket, their entwined auras rising from their clasped hands like a pigtail.

Helen and Nat buried in gorgeous clouds of ivory light; Natalie snatching at the marks left by his moving fingers, ghostly contrails which only she and Ralph had been able to see.