A narrow, gray-glistening beam of force appeared at the end of Lois’s finger and began to extend itself across the deepening shadows of Harris Avenue. A passing car drove blithely through it. The car’s windows flashed a momentary bright, blind gray and its headlights seemed to flicker briefly, but that was all.

Ralph raised his own finger, and a blue beam grew from it. These two narrowcasts of light met in the center of Harris Avenue and twined together like woodbine, Higher and higher the interwoven pigtail rose, paling slightly as it went. Then Ralph curled his finger, and his half of the love-knot in the middle of Harris Avenue winked out of existence. A moment later, Lois’s half also disappeared. Ralph slowly descended the porch steps and began to cross his lawn. Lois came toward him. They met in the middle of the street… where, in a very real sense, they had met already.

Ralph put his arms around her waist and kissed her.

You look different, Roberts. Younger, somehow.

Those words kept running through his head-recycling themselves like an endless tape-loop-as Ralph sat in Lois’s kitchen, drinking coffee. He was unable to take his eyes off her. She looked easily ten years younger and ten pounds lighter than the Lois he’d gotten used to seeing over the last few years. Had she looked this young and pretty in the park this morning? Ralph didn’t think so, but of course she had been upset this morning, upset and crying, and he supposed that made a difference.

Still…

Yes, still. The tiny networks of wrinkles around the corners of her mouth were gone. So were the incipient turkey-wattles beneath her neck and the sag of flesh which had begun to hang from her upper arms.

She had been crying this morning and was radiantly happy tonight, but Ralph knew that couldn’t account for all the changes he saw.

“I know what you’re looking at,” Lois said. “It’s spooky, isn’t it?

I mean, it solves the question of whether or not all this has just been in our minds, but it’s still spooky. We’ve found the Fountain of Youth.

Forget Florida; it was right here in Derry, all along.”

“We’ve found it?”

For a moment she only looked surprised… and a little wary, as if she suspected he was teasing her, having her on. Of treating her as “Our Lois.” Then she reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“Go in the bathroom. Take a look at yourself.”

“I know what I look like. Hell, I just finished shaving. Took my time over it, too.”

She nodded. “You did a fine job, Ralph… but this isn’t about your five o’clock shadow. Just look at yourself.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I am.”

He had almost gotten to the door when she said, “You didn’t just shave; you changed your shirt, too. That’s good. I didn’t like to say anything, but that plaid one was ripped.”

“Was it?” Ralph asked. His back was to her, so she couldn’t see his smile. “I didn’t notice.”

He stood with his hands braced on the bathroom sink, looking into his own face, for a good two minutes. It took him that long to admit to himself that he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing.

The streaks of black, lustrous as crow feathers, which had returned to his hair were amazing, and so was the disappearance of the ugly pouches beneath his eyes, but the thing he could not seem to take his eyes away from was the way the lines and deep cracks had disappeared from his lips. It was a small thing… but it was also an enormous thing. It was the mouth of a young man. And…

Abruptly, Ralph ran a finger into his mouth, along the right-hand line of his lower teeth. He couldn’t be entirely positive, but it seemed to him that they were longer, as if some of the wear had been rolled back.

“Holy shit,” Ralph murmured, and his mind returned to that sweltering day last summer when he had confronted Ed Deepneau on his lawn. Ed had first told him to drag up a rock and then confided in him that Derry had been invaded by sinister, baby-killing creatures.

Life-stealing creatures. All lines afforce have begun to converge here, Ed had told him. I know how difficult that is to believe, but it’s true.

Ralph was finding it less difficult to believe all the time. What was getting harder to believe was the idea that Ed was mad.

“If this doesn’t stop,” Lois said from the doorway, startling him, we’re going to have to get married and leave town, Ralph. Simone and Mina could not-literally could not-take their eyes off me. I made a lot of glib talk about some new makeup I’d gotten out at the mall, but they didn’t swallow it. A man would, but a woman knows what makeup can do. And what it can’t.”

They walked back to the kitchen, and although the auras were gone again for the time being, Ralph discovered he could see one anyway: a blush rising out of the collar of Lois’s white silk blouse.

“Finally I told them the only thing they would believe.”

“What was that?” Ralph asked.

“I said I’d met a man.” She hesitated, and then, as the rising blood reached her cheeks and stained them pink, she plunged. “And had fallen in love with him.”

He touched her arm and turned her toward him. He looked at the small, clean crease in the bend of her elbow and thought how much he would like to touch it with his mouth. Or the tip of his tongue, perhaps. Then he raised his eyes to look at her. “And was it true?”

She looked back with eyes that were all hope and candor. “I think so,” she said in a small, clear voice, “but everything’s so strange now.

All I know for sure is that I want it to be true. I want a friend. I’ve been frightened and unhappy and lonely for quite awhile now. The loneliness is the worst part of getting old, I think-not the aches and pains, not the cranky bowels or the way you lose your breath after climbing a flight of stairs you could have just about flown up when you were twenty-but being lonely.”

“Yes,” Ralph said. “That is the worst.”

“No one talks to you anymore-oh, they talk at you, sometimes, but that’s not the same-and mostly it’s like people don’t even see you.

Have you ever felt that way?”

Ralph thought of the Derry of the Old Crocks, a city mostly ignored by the hurry-to-work, hurry-to-play world which surrounded it, and nodded.

“Ralph, would you hug me?”

“My pleasure,” he said, and pulled her gently into the circle of his arms.

Some time later, rumpled and dazed but happy, Ralph and Lois sat together on the living-room couch, a piece of furniture so stringently hobbit-sized it was really not much more than a love-seat. Neither of them minded. Ralph’s arm was around Lois’s shoulders. She had let her hair down and he twined a lock of it in his fingers, musing upon how easy it was to forget the feel of a woman’s hair, so marvelously different from the feel of a man’s. She had told him about her card-game and Ralph had listened closely, amazed but not, he discovered, much surprised.

There were a dozen or so of them who played every week or so at the

Ludlow Grange for small stakes. It was possible to go home a five-buck loser or a ten-buck winner, but the most likely result was finishing a dollar ahead or a handful of change behind. Although there were a couple of good players and a couple of shlumps (Lois counted herself among the former), it was mostly just a fun way to spend an afternoon-the Lady Old Crock version of chess tournaments and marathon gin-rummy games.

“Only this afternoon I just couldn’t lose. I should have come home completely broke, what with all of them asking what kind of vitamins I was taking and where I’d gotten my last facial and all the rest of it. Who can concentrate on a silly game like Deuces and jacks, Man with the Axe, Natural Sevens Take All when you have to keep telling new lies and trying not to trip over the ones you’ve already told?”

“Must have been hard, Ralph said, trying not to grin.