the flaring throat. The silk fell to her feet, and the glass fell from my hand, and something else dropped or plunged inside my chest.
'Oh, Christ,' I said. 'Happy, I'm sorry.'
I remember what the sky was like, when the sky was young -its shawls and fleeces, its bears and whales, its cusps and clefts. A sky of gray, a sky of blue, a sky of spice. But now the sky has gone, and we face different heavens. Some vital casing has left our lives. Up there now, I think, a kind of turnaround occurs. Time-fear collects up there and comes back to us in the form of time. It's the sky, the sky, it's the fucking sky. If enough people believe that a thing is real or happening, then it seems that the thing must happen, must go for real. Against all odds and expectation, these are magical times we're living in: proletarian magic. Gray magic!
Now that it's over, now that I'm home and on the mend, with Danuta back for good and Happy gone forever, I think I can talk it all out and tell you the real story. I'm sitting on the cramped veranda with a blanket on my lap. Before me through the restraining bars the sunset sprawls in its polluted pomp, full of genies, cloaked ghosts, crimson demons of the middle sky. Red light: let's stop-let's end it. The Thing Up There, it may not be God, of course. It may be the Devil. Pretty soon, Danuta will call me in for my broth. Then a nap, and an hour of TV maybe. The Therapy Channel. I'm really into early nights… This afternoon I went walking, out on the shoulder. I don't know why. I don't think I'll do it again. On my return Roy appeared and helped me into the lift. He then asked me shyly, 'Happy Farraday-she okay now, sir?'
'Okay?' I said. 'Okay? What do you mean, okay? You never read a news page, Roy?'
'When she had to leave for Australia there. I wondered if she's okay. It'll be better for her, I guess. She was in a situation, with Duncan. It was a thing there.'
'That's just TV, for Christ's sake. They wrote her out,' I said, and felt a sudden, leaden calm. 'She's not in Australia, Roy. She's in heaven.'
'-Sir?'
'She's dead, God damn it.'
'Now I don't know about none of that,' he said, with one fat palm raised. 'All it is is, I just hope she's okay, over in Australia there.'
Happy is in heaven, or I hope she is. I hope she's not in hell. Hell is the evening sky and I surely hope she's not up there. Ah, how to bear it? It's a thing. No, it really is.
I admit right now that I panicked back there, in the bungalow bedroom with the chute of light, the altered woman, and my own being so quickly stretched by fragility and fear. I shouted a lot. Lie down! Call Trattman! Put on your robe! That kind of thing. 'Come on, Lou. Be realistic,' she said. 'Look at me.' And I looked. Yeah. Her skin had that shiny telltale succulence, all over. Her hair-which a week ago, God damn it, lay as thin and colorless as my own -was humming with body and glow. And the mouth, Christ, lips all full and wet, and an animal tongue, like a heart, not Happy's, the tongue of another woman, bigger, greedier, younger. Younger. Classic time. Oh, classic.
She had me go over and lie down on the bed with her there, to give comfort, to give some sense of final safety. I was in a ticklish state of nerves, as you'd imagine. Time isn't infectious (we do know that about time) but sickness in any form won't draw a body nearer and I wanted all my distance. Stay out, it says. Then I saw-I saw it in her breasts, high but heavy, their little points tender, detailed, time-inflamed; and the smell, the smell of deep memory, tidal, submarine… I knew the kind of comfort she wanted. Yes, and time often takes them this way, I thought, in my slow and stately terror. You've come this far: go further, I told myself. Go closer, nearer, closer. Do it for her, for her and for old times' sake. I stirred, ready to let her have all that head and hand could give, until I too felt the fever in my lines of heat, the swell and smell of youth and death. This is suicide, I thought, and I don't care… At one point, during the last hours, just before dawn, I got to my feet and crept to the window and looked up at the aching, the hurting sky; I felt myself gray and softly twanging for a moment, like a coathanger left to shimmer on the pole, with Happy there behind me, alone in her bed and her hot death. 'Honey,' I said out loud, and went to join her. I like it, I thought, and gave a sudden nod. What do I like? I like the love. This is suicide and I don't care.
I was in terrible shape, mind you, for the next couple of months, really beat to shit, out of it, just out of it. I would wake at seven and leap out of the sack. I suffered energy attacks. Right off my food, I craved thick meat and thick wine. I couldn't watch any Therapy. After barely a half-hour of some home-carpentry show or marathon dance contest I'd be pacing the room with frenzy in my bitten fingertips. I put Danuta at risk too, on several occasions. I even threw a pass in on little Sunny Farraday, who moved in here for a time after the cremation. Danuta divorced me. She even moved out. But she's back now. She's a good kid, Danuta-she helped me through. The whole thing is behind me now, and I think (knock on wood) that I'm more or less my old self again.
Pretty soon I'll rap on the window with my cane and have Danuta fetch me another blanket. Later, she'll help me inside for my broth. Then a nap, and an hour of TV maybe. The Therapy Channel. I'm happy here for the time being, and willingly face the vivid torment, the boiling acne of the dying sky. When this sky is dead, will they give us a new one? Today my answering service left a strange message: I have to call a number in Sydney, over in Australia there. I'll do it tomorrow. Or the next day. Yeah. I can't make the effort right now. To reach for my stick, to lift it, to rap the glass, to say Danuta-even that takes steep ascents of time. All things happen so slowly now. I have a new feature with my back. I broke a tooth last week on a piece of toast. Jesus, how I hate bending and stairs. The sky hangs above me in shredded webs, in bloody tatters. It's a big relief, and I'm grateful. I'm okay. I'm good, good. For the time being, at any rate, I show no signs of coming down with time.
THE LITTLE PUPPY THAT COULD
The little puppy came bounding and tumbling over the fallow fields. Here he comes, bounding, tumbling. Like all the most adorable little puppies, this little puppy had large pleading brown eyes, wobbly half-cocked ears, and loose folds of flesh on the join of his neck. His coat was a subtle gray (like silver in shadow), with a triangle of white on his chest, like a shirtfront, and white tufts on each paw, like socks, like shoes, like little spats! He was a bit plump, this little puppy, it had to be said-but adorably so. Puppy fat, not doggy fat. He had been running and running for days and days. Where had the little puppy come from? Where was the little puppy heading, and so eagerly? His proud tail high, his front paws gaily outthrust, his-whoops! Over he goes again. Then he's up, undismayed, bounding, tumbling, toward huge discoveries, toward wonderful transformations. Of course, the little puppy had no idea where he had come from or where he was heading. But he was going to get there.
Now, the puppy probably sniffed or sensed the village before he saw it-the fires, the crescents, the human place. In truth, his eyesight was not all that reliable, floppy, tousled, subject to passionate distortions of fear and desire. But he saw something new out there, shape and pattern, evidence, a great manifestation pressed or carved upon the random world through which he bounded. The little puppy tumbled to a halt, then wriggled himself upright. He knew at once that he had found the place that his heart sought- his destination. Down in the round valley he could descry moving figures, and circles within circles, and, at their crux, a flaming parabola shaped like a scythe: a swan neck, a query of fire! The little puppy stood there, anxiously snapping his jaws. His head craned forward, urging the little puppy on, but his paws just jostled and danced. His tail started wagging, hesitantly at first, then with such reckless vigor that he almost pulled a muscle in his plump little rump. On he bounded, nearer, nearer, down through the dawn shadows, almost flying, his young blood aflame- until he saw a human group moving stolidly from a gateway in the low palisade. Now the little puppy really turned on the speed. He hurtled toward them, then leapt into the air and swiveled, skidlanding back-first at their feet-the four paws limply raised, the shivering tail, his soft belly exposed in reflexive surrender and trust.
And nothing happened… The puppy awoke in a pool of bafflement and hurt. He hadn't been asleep or anything, but life was like that for the little puppy, it all being so much more fervent down there, so pressing, so sudden. The people just stood there in a stoical arc, six or seven of them; some faces wore fear, some disgust; none showed kindness. At last the puppy climbed sadly to his feet and looked up at them with beseeching eyes, his worked jaw forming a question. His question was your question. Why should they want to act this way toward a
