She was beginning to show, not a lot yet, but Stu had commented on it this evening. His question had been casual enough, even comic: How long can we do it without me, uh, squeezing him?

Or her, she had answered, amused. How does four months sound, Chief?

Fine, he had answered, and slipped deliciously into her.

Earlier talk had been much more serious. Not long after they got to Boulder, Stu had told her he had discussed the baby with Glen and Glen had advanced the idea, very cautiously, that the superflu germ or virus might still be around. If so, the baby might die. It was an unsettling thought (you could always, she thought, count on Glen Bateman for an Unsettling Thought or two), but surely if the mother was immune, the baby… ?

Yet there were plenty of people here who had lost children to the plague.

Yes, but that would mean —

Would mean what?

Well, for one thing, it might mean that all these people here were just an epilogue to the human race, a brief coda. She didn’t want to believe that, couldn’t believe it. If that were true—

Someone was coming up the street, turning sideways to slip between a dump truck that had stalled with two of its wheels on the pavement and the wall of a restaurant called the Pearl Street Kitchen. He had a light jacket slung over one shoulder and was carrying something in one hand that was either a bottle or a gun with a long barrel. In the other hand he had a sheet of paper, probably with an address written on it from the way he was checking street numbers. At last he stopped in front of their building. He was looking at the door as if trying to decide what to do next. Frannie thought he looked a little like a private detective in some old TV series. She was standing less than twenty feet above his head, and she found herself in one of those situations. If she called him, she might scare him. If she didn’t, he might start knocking and wake Stuart up. And what was he doing with a gun in his hand anyway… if it was a gun?

He suddenly craned his neck and looked up, probably to see if any lights were on in the building. Frannie was still looking down. They peered directly into each other’s eyes.

“Holy God!” the man on the sidewalk cried. He took an involuntary step backward, went off the sidewalk into the gutter, and sat down hard.

“Oh!” Frannie said at the same moment, and took her own step backward on the balcony. There was a spider-plant in a large pottery vase on a pedestal behind her. Frannie’s behind struck it. It tottered, almost decided to live a little longer, and then defenestrated itself on the balcony’s slate flags with a loud crash.

In the bedroom, Stu grunted, turned over, and was still again.

Frannie, perhaps predictably, was seized with the giggles. She put both hands over her mouth and pinched viciously at her lips, but the giggles came out anyway in a series of hoarse little whispers. Grace strikes again, she thought, and whisper-giggled madly into her cupped hands. If he’d had a guitar I could have dropped the damned vase on his head. O sole mio… CRASH! Her belly hurt from trying to hold in the giggles.

A conspiratorial whisper wafted its way up from below: “Hey, you… you on the balcony… psssst! ”

“Pssst,” Frannie whispered to herself. “Pssst, oh great.”

She had to get out before she started hee-hawing away like a donkey. She had never been able to hold in her laughter once it got hold of her. She ran fleetly across the darkened bedroom, snatched a more substantial—and demure—wrapper from the back of the bathroom door, and went down the hall struggling it on, her face working like a rubber mask. She let herself out onto the landing and got down one flight before the laughter escaped her and flew free. She went down the lower two flights cackling wildly.

The man—a young man, she saw now—had picked him self up and was brushing himself off. He was slim and well built, most of his face covered with a beard that might be blond or possibly sandy-red by daylight. There were dark circles under his eyes, but he was smiling a rueful little smile.

“What did you knock over?” he asked. “It sounded like a piano.”

“It was a vase,” she said. “It… it…” But then the giggles caught her again and she could only point a finger at him and laugh quietly and shake her head and then hold her aching belly again. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “You really looked funny… I know that’s a hell of a thing to say to somebody you just met but… oh, my! You did!”

“If this was the old days,” he said, grinning, “my next move would be to sue you for at least a quarter of a million. Whiplash. Judge, I looked up and this young woman was peering down at me. Yes, I believe she was making a face. Her face was on, at any rate. We find for the plaintiff, this poor boy. Also for the bailiff. There will be a ten-minute recess.”

They laughed together a little. The young man was wearing clean faded jeans and a dark blue shirt. The summer night was warm and kind, and Frannie was beginning to be glad she had come out.

“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Fran Goldsmith, would it?”

“It so happens. But I don’t know you.”

“Larry Underwood. We just came in today. Actually, I was looking for a fellow named Harold Lauder. They said he was living at 261 Pearl along with Stu Redman and Frannie Goldsmith and some other people.”

That dried her giggles up. “Harold was in the building when we first got to Boulder, but he split quite a while ago. He’s on Arapahoe now, on the west side of town. I can give you his address if you want it, and directions.”

“I’d appreciate that. But I’ll wait until tomorrow to go over, I guess. I’m not risking this action again.”

“Do you know Harold?”

“I do and I don’t—the same way I do and don’t know you. Although I have to be honest and say you don’t look the way I pictured you. In my mind I saw you as a Valkyrie-type blonde right out of a Frank Frazetta painting, probably with a .45 on each hip. But I’m pleased to meet you any way.” He stuck out his hand and Frannie shook it with a bewildered little smile.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sit down on the curb a minute and I’ll tell you.”

She sat. A ghost of a breeze riffled up the street, shuffling scraps of paper and making the old elms move on the courthouse lawn three blocks farther down.

“I’ve got some stuff for Harold Lauder,” Larry said. “But it’s supposed to be a surprise, so if you see him before I do, mum’s the word and all that.”

“Okay, sure,” Frannie said. She was more mystified than ever.

He held up the long-barreled gun and it wasn’t a gun at all; it was a wine bottle with a long neck. She tilted the label to the starlight and could just barely read the large print—BORDEAUX at the top, and at the bottom, the date: 1947.

“The best vintage Bordeaux in this century,” he said. “At least that’s what an old friend of mine used to say. His name was Rudy. God love and rest his soul.”

“But 1947… that’s forty-three years ago. Won’t it be… well, gone over?”

“Rudy used to say a good Bordeaux never went over. Anyway, I’ve carried it all the way from Ohio. If it’s bad wine, it’ll be well-traveled bad wine.”

“And that’s for Harold?”

“That and a bunch of these.” He took something out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She didn’t have to turn this up to the starlight to read the print. She burst out laughing. “A Payday candy bar!” she exclaimed. “Harold’s favorite… but how could you know that?”

“That’s the story.”

“Then tell me!”

“Well, then. Once upon a time there was a fellow named Larry Underwood who came from California to New York to see his dear old mother. That wasn’t the only reason he came, and the other reasons were a little less pleasant, but let’s stick to the nice-guy reason, shall we?”