What, then, could he ask for? What did he want or need? How long was the acceptable wait till you finally declared, if you could? What would the negotiations be like, and how long would they go on, how often be repeated? He might want to just say Give me something to want and I'll want it for your sake, but of course that would precisely not do, so he had to think, in his bed in the Morpheus Arms, the bedclothes drawn up to his chin.

After a time—it was long, or short—he heard a big car roar into the parking lot and brake with a pissed-off squeal before his unit, and he waited motionless in alarm and hope for his door to be flung open again.

* * * *

On Midsummer Day, Rosie and Spofford were married at Arcady. Pierce and Roo went down in the Rabbit. She claimed not to be a friend of theirs or even to know them at all, to know nothing of their circumstances and lives anyway, though it seemed to Pierce that she knew more than she ever said about everything that went on around her, at least in certain strata about which he (for instance) truly knew nothing; she had firmly decided not to go with him, then said she had nothing to wear, and finally came anyway, in a white lace dress and cowboy boots, more visible than she supposed herself ever to be.

"Never been here before,” she said as the drive approached. “Big."

Their car was one of many; there was even a boy to point you to a parking place. A Rasmussen wedding could not be small, or hidden; Rosie Rasmussen had tried in every way to make it small, and wherever she pressed it down or trimmed it off it sprang out elsewhere; finally she called her mother in and gave it over to her, and did as she was told. Which for some reason allowed her mother to regard her for the first time as an adult, and enjoy her company, and laugh with her and dispute and approve, as though they were any two people, any two friends with a history. Her mother, rosy cheeked and tireless, seemed drawn back from limbo, at whose gray doors Rosie had last parted from her. She could see now (from the windows of the study, where she and Spofford waited to appear, like actors in the wings) her mother making her way amid people she knew long ago, who greeted her with what appeared to be the same pleased surprise.

Out on those lawns guests were disposed in artless groups, sitting on the grass or the stone seats; wandering musicians entertained (actually these were a few former members of the Orphics, a recently disbanded band; they now called themselves the Rude Mechanicals, and played a variety of instruments). Not far off, sheep munched grass and gave voice, happy that it was hot and green and blue again, as we all were. At length the musicians gathered us all into a great circle on the lawn where once Boney Rasmussen had played croquet, where Pierce had first met Rosie. In those days, he had believed that there were two of her, or that she and another were one. It's the simplest lesson a stranger can be asked to learn, the plainest puzzle to solve, and yet it can for a long while or a little while become inescapable, create all by itself a forest where no man is his own. Anyway now he knew. With Roo he walked in amid the circle—there were actually two circles, an inner and an outer, moving somewhat in contrary directions, as though for a dance, that old dance called labirinto—and he saw many he now knew, and many he never would. Rosie had seemingly invited the county, and then some. The last time Pierce had seen so many of them together this way, laughing, milling, celebratory, they were all masked and pretending to be who they were not. Val escorted her mother, tiny and bright eyed. Allan Butterman, the lawyer, was talking with—Roo pointed to him—Barney Corvino.

"Do you want to introduce me?"

"No. Maybe. Later."

At length there came out from the house a child, in white, white flowers in her hair, her feet bare; she carried a bowl or vessel with care. With steady, grave confidence she came into our dance, and from her bowl she took and scattered white petals on the path, or rather she made a path of petals for the two who came after her to walk.

"It's her daughter,” Pierce said to Roo. Surprising tears stood suddenly in his eyes.

"Not his, though."

"No. But I think she was a big reason for this."

"Sure,” Roo said, and pondered how it was that now children brought about marriages, when it had always been the other way around. Sam's eyes fell on them, but her smile was general, for herself as object of our attention, and for the couple too—he and she, not in white but wearing bright coats and chaplets and holding hands, as though they were taking a stroll in a long-past or just-past age. The former Orphics played Mendelssohn on zither and ocarina.

When they were among us, Rhea Rasmussen separated from the circle, as though just then remembering her duties, and came to Rosie and Spofford and took their hands; she spoke to them words we couldn't hear, meant for them alone, so that we went on talking among ourselves for a moment, murmurs of appreciation touched with light laughter here and there. Then Rhea stepped back, holding the two of them in place before her; we were stilled; Sam with her now empty bowl beside them lifted her face in rapt attention to them and what they might do next, lifting a leg absently to scratch where a bug bit.

The vows that Rosie and Spofford took at Rhea's promptings were the standard ones engraved on every heart there, a relief (Roo whispered to Pierce) that they hadn't made up their own. To have and to hold, to honor and cherish, in sickness and in health, till Death (even he, old friend, among the wedding guests, Pierce for the first time truly took notice of him there) did them part. When they kissed, and all was accomplished, some applauded, as for a performance, and others murmured in awe or delight, as at an accomplishment. Our circles dissolved, and shyly or boldly one by one friends and family came up to embrace them. Roo, gripping Pierce's hand too tightly, turned away with him, a fixed smile on her face.

"I get so embarrassed,” she said when they were apart. “All those things they say that they've said before. I mean she's said them, anyway. I don't think you get to say them a second time."

"It's always the first time,” Pierce said. “Every time. By definition.” Roo looked at him in disgust or contempt, and he perceived that perhaps his brand of irony or doublespeak was no good anymore, and he ought now to put it aside, if he could. But still he returned her look in mock surprise. “What,” he said. “You don't believe in marriage?"

"I didn't say marriage. Marriage is long, anyway should be. Weddings are short."

"So you're no romantic,” he said, as though he'd just learned this.

"Romance is I guess a nice way to start off. But everybody says it doesn't last."

"Everybody says?"

"As you ought to know by now,” she said, rifling a steady look at him, “I've never had one work out. In fact you could pretty much say I've never had one at all. Not with all the parts."

He wouldn't look away from her, though her own face seemed to be daring him to do so. “Well, I can tell you,” he said, “'cause you wouldn't know, that it's the romance that does last. It's all that's left after everything else is gone. Including her. Or him I guess. That's the problem."

"Then I'm a lucky gal,” she said, and walked away.

Pierce, after a moment of chagrin or discontent (Why was she like that? Was the obvious answer as unlikely as it seemed to him? Was he supposed to know, or know better?), turned toward the long tables whereon the food and drink were laid. He encountered Val going that way too, unsteady on the grass in tall shoes, seeming a little out of place altogether in the sun and air, like an upholstered chair, swathed as she was in figured fabrics and hung with chains and (Pierce noted in wonder) a pair of tiny mother-of-pearl opera glasses.