The three Grecian maids, the retired Furies, the ancient vest porch G.o.ddesses, stepped back a way to line up for a final view-halloo.

And the weeping began.

First Emily, then Cora, then Elizabeth, as all summoned back some midnight collision of young fools who somehow survived the crash.

Albert Beam stood amidst the rising salt sea, until the tears also ran free from his eyes.

And whether they were tears of somber remembrance for a past that was not a golden pavane, or celebratory wails for a present most salubrious and enchanting, none could say. They wept and stood about, not knowing what to do with their hands.

Until at last, like small children peering in mirrors to catch the strangeness and mystery of weeping, they ducked under to look at each other's sobs.

They saw each other's eyegla.s.ses spattered with wet salt stars from the tips of their eyelashes.

"Oh, hah!"

And the whole d.a.m.ned popcorn machine exploded into wild laughter.

"Oh, heee!"

They turned in circles with the bends. They stomped their feet to get the barks and hoots of hilarity out. They became weak as children at four o'clock tea, that silly hour when anything said is the funniest crack in all the world and the bones collapse and you wander in dazed circles to fall and writhe in ecstasies of mirth on the floor.

Which is what now happened. The ladies let gravity yank them down to flag their hair on the parquetry, their last tears flung like bright comets from their eyes as they rolled and gasped, stranded on a morning beach.

"G.o.ds! Oh! Ah!" The old man could not stand it. Their earthquake shook and broke him. He saw, in this final moment, that his pal, his dear and precious Junior, had at last in all the shouts and snorts and happy cries melted away like a snow memory and was now a ghost.

And Albert Beam grabbed his knees, sneezed out a great laugh of recognition at the general shape, size and ridiculousness of birthday-suit humans on an indecipherable earth, and fell.

He squirmed amidst the ladies, chuckling, flailing for air. They dared not look at each other for fear of merciless heart attacks from the seal barks and elephant trumpetings that echoed from their lips.

Waiting for their mirth to let go, they at last sat up to rearrange their hair, their smiles, their breathing and their glances.

"Dear me, oh, dear, dear," moaned the old man, with a last gasp of relief. "Wasn't that the best ever, the finest, the loveliest time we have ever had anytime, anywhere, in all the great years?"

All nodded "yes."

"But," said practical Emily, straightening her face, "drama's done. Tea's cold. Time to go."

And they gathered to lift the old tentbones of the ancient warrior, and he stood among his dear ones in a glorious warm silence as they clothed him in his robe and guided him to the front door.

"Why?" wondered the old man. "Why? Why did Junior return on this day?"

"Silly!" cried Emily. "It's your birthday!"

"Well, happy me! Yes, yes." He mused. "Well, do you imagine, maybe, next year, and the next, will I be gifted the same?"

"Well," said Cora.

"We-"

"Not in this lifetime," said Emily, tenderly.

"Good-bye, dear Albert, fine Junior," said each.

"Thanks for all of my life," said the old man.

He waved and they were gone, down the drive and off into the fine fair morning.

He waited for a long while and then addressed himself to his old pal, his good friend, his now sleeping forever companion.

"Come on, Fido, here, boy, time for our pre-lunch nap. And, who knows, with luck we may dream wild dreams until tea!"

And, my G.o.d, he thought he heard the small voice cry, then won't we be famished!?

"We will!"

And the old man, half-asleep on his feet, and Junior already dreaming, fell flat forward into a bed with three warm and laughing ghosts. . . .

And so slept.

THAT WOMAN ON THE LAWN.

VERY LATE AT NIGHT HE HEARD the weeping on the lawn in front of his house. It was the sound of a woman crying. By its sound he knew it was not a girl or a mature woman, but the crying of someone eighteen or nineteen years old. It went on, then faded and stopped, and again started up, now moving this way or that on the late-summer wind.

He lay in bed listening to it until it made his eyes fill with tears. He turned over, shut his eyes, let the tears fall, but could not stop the sound. Why should a young woman be weeping long after midnight out there?

He sat up and the weeping stopped.

At the window, he looked down. The lawn was empty but covered with dew. There was a trail of footsteps across the lawn to the middle where someone had stood turning, and another trail going off toward the garden around the house.

The moon stood full in the sky and filled the lawn with its light, but there was no more sadness and only the footprints there.

He stepped back from the window, suddenly chilled, and went down to heat and drink a cup of chocolate.

He did not think of the weeping again until dusk the next day, and even then thought that it must be some woman from a house nearby, unhappy with life, perhaps locked out and in need of a place to let her sadness go.

Yet . . .?

As the twilight deepened, coming home he found himself hurrying from the bus, at a steady pace which astonished him. Why, why all this?

Idiot, he thought. A woman unseen weeps under your window, and here at sunset the next day, you almost run.

Yes, he thought, but her voice!

Was it beautiful, then?

No. Only familiar.

Where had he heard such a voice before, wordless in crying?

Who could he ask, living in an empty house from which his parents had vanished long ago?

He turned in at his front lawn and stood still, his eyes shadowed.

What had he expected? That whoever she was would be waiting here? Was he that lonely that a single voice long after midnight roused all his senses?

No. Simply put: he must know who the crying woman was.

And he was certain she would return tonight as he slept.

He went to bed at eleven, and awoke at three, panicked that he had missed a miracle. Lightning had destroyed a nearby town or an earthquake had shaken half the world to dust, and he had slept through it!

Fool! he thought, and slung back the covers and moved to the window, to see that indeed he had overslept.

For there on the lawn were the delicate footprints.

And he hadn't even heard the weeping!

He would have gone out to kneel in the gra.s.s, but at that moment a police car motored slowly by, looking at nothing and the night.

How could he run to prowl, to probe, to touch the gra.s.s if that car came by again? What doing? Picking clover blossoms? Weeding dandelions? What, what?

His bones cracked with indecision. He would go down, he would not.

Already the memory of that terrible weeping faded the more he tried to make it clear. If he missed her one more night, the memory itself might be gone.

Behind him, in his room, the alarm clock rang.

d.a.m.n! he thought. What time did I set it for?

He shut off the alarm and sat on his bed, rocking gently, waiting, eyes shut, listening.

The wind shifted. The tree just outside the window whispered and stirred.

He opened his eyes and leaned forward. From far off, coming near, and now down below, the quiet sound of a woman weeping.

She had come back to his lawn and was not forever lost. Be very quiet, he thought.

And the sounds she made came up on the wind through the blowing curtains into his room.

Careful now. Careful but quick.

He moved to the window and looked down.

In the middle of the lawn she stood and wept, her hair long and dark on her shoulders, her face bright with tears.

And there was something in the way her hands trembled at her sides, the way her hair moved quietly in the wind, that shook him so that he almost fell.

He knew her and yet did not. He had seen her before, but had never seen.

Turn your head, he thought.

Almost as if hearing this, the young woman sank to her knees to half kneel on the gra.s.s, letting the wind comb her hair, head down and weeping so steadily and bitterly that he wanted to cry out: Oh, no! It kills my heart!

And as if she had heard, quite suddenly her head lifted, her weeping grew less as she looked up at the moon, so that he saw her face.

And it was indeed a face seen somewhere once, but where?

A tear fell. She blinked.

It was like the blinking of a camera and a picture taken.

"G.o.d save me!" he whispered. "No!"

He whirled and stumbled toward the closet to seize down an avalanche of boxes and alb.u.ms. In the dark he scrabbled, then pulled on the closet light, tossed aside six alb.u.ms until finally, dragging another forth and riffling pages, he gave a cry, stopped, and held a photo close, then turned and moved blindly to the window.

There he stared down at the lawn and then at the photograph, very old, very yellowed with age.

Yes, yes, the same! The image struck his eyes and then his heart. His whole body shook, made an immense pulsation, as he leaned at the alb.u.m, leaned on the window frame, and almost shouted: You! How dare you come back! How dare you be young! How dare you be what? A girl untouched, wandering late on my lawn!? You were never that young! Never! d.a.m.n, oh, d.a.m.n your warm blood, d.a.m.n your wild soul!

But this he did not shout or say.

For something in his eyes, like a beacon, must have flashed.

The crying of the young woman on the lawn stopped.

She looked up.

At which instant the alb.u.m fell from his fingers, through the burst-wide screen, and down like a dark bird fluttering to strike the earth.

The young woman gave a muted cry, whirled, and ran.

"No, no!" he cried aloud. "I didn't mean-come back!"

He was down the stairs and out on the porch in a matter of seconds. The door slammed behind him like a gunshot. The explosion nailed him to the rail, half down to the lawn, where there was nothing to be seen but footprints. Either way, up the street lay empty sidewalks and shadows under trees. A radio played off in an upstairs window in a house behind trees. A car pa.s.sed, murmuring, at a far intersection.

"Wait," he whispered. "Come back. I shouldn't have said-"

He stopped. He had said nothing, but only thought it. But his outrage, his jealousy?

She had felt that. She had somehow heard. And now . . .?