"Come on, Sunny. Where's your robe."

As I fixed myself a vodka-context and sucked warily on a pretzel, I noticed Sunny's bald patch gently gleaming in the mist. I sighed.

"You like my dome?" she asked, without turning. "Relax, it's artificial." She sat up straight now and looked at me coyly. She smiled. Yeah, she'd had her teeth gimmicked too-by some cowboy snaggle-artist down in the Valley, no doubt. I poled myself poolside again and took a good slow scan. The flab and pallor were real all right, but the stretch marks seemed cosmetic: too symmetrical, too pronounced.

"Now, you listen to me, kid," I began. "Here are the realities. To scudbathe, to flop out all day by the pool with a bottle or two, to take on a little weight around the middle there-that's good for a girl. I mean you got to keep in shape. But this mutton routine, Sunny, it's for the punks. No oldjob ever got on my books and no oldjob ever will. Here are the reasons. Number one-" And I gave young Sunny a long talking-to out there, a real piece of my mind. I had her in the boredom corner and I wasn't letting her out. I went on and on at her-on and on and on and on. Me, I almost checked out myself, as boredom edged toward despair (the way boredom will), gazing into the voided pool, the reflected skyscape, and the busy static, in the sediment of sable rain.

"Yeah, well," I said, winding up. "Anyway. What's the thing? You look great."

She laughed, coughed, and spat. "Forget it, Lou," she said croakily. "I only do it for fun."

"I'm glad to hear that, Sunny. Now where's your mother."

"Two days."

"Uh?"

"In her room. In her room two days. She's serious this time."

"Oh, sure."

I rebrimmed my drink and went inside. The only point of light in the hallway came from the mirror's sleepless scanlamp. I looked myself over as I limped by. The heavy boredom and light stress of the seven-hour drive had done me good. I was fine, fine. "Happy?" I said, and knocked.

"Is that you, Lou?" The voice was strong and clear-and it was quick, too. Direct, alert. "I'll unlatch the door, but don't come in right away."

"Sure," I said. I took a pull of booze and groped around for a chair. But then I heard the click and Happy's brisk "Okay"… Now I have to tell you that two things puzzled me here. First, the voice; second, the alacrity. Usually when she's in this state you can hardly hear the woman, and it takes an hour or more for her to get to the door and back into bed again. Yeah, I thought, she must have been waiting with her fingers poised on the handle. There's nothing wrong with Happy. The lady is fine, fine.

So in I went. She had the long black nets up over the sack -streaming, glistening, a crib for the devil's progeny. I moved through the gloom to the bedside chair and sat myself down with a grunt. A familiar chair. A familiar vigil.

"Mind if I don't smoke?" I asked her. "It's not the lung-burn. I just get tuckered out lighting the damn things all the time. Understand what I mean?"

No answer.

"How are you feeling, Happy?"

No answer.

"Now listen, kid. You got to quit this nonsense. I know it's problematic with the new role and everything, but- do I have to tell you again what happened to Day Montague? Do I, Happy? Do I? You're forty years old. You look fantastic. Let me tell you what Greg Buzhardt said to me when he saw the outtakes last week. He said, 'Style. Class. Presence. Sincerity. Look at the ratings. Look at the profiles. Happy Farraday is the woman of men's dreams.' That's what he said. 'Happy Farraday is the-'

"Lou."

The voice came from behind me. I swiveled and felt the twinge of tendons in my neck. Happy stood in a channel of bathroom light and also in the softer channel or haze of her slip of silk. She stood there as vivid as health itself, as graphic as youth, with her own light sources, the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the dips and curves of 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.