Shock 3

FADEOUT.

The old man had succumbed. From its movie heaven, an ethereal choir paeaned. Amid roiling pink clouds they sang: A Moment or Forever. It was the title of the picture. Lights blinked on. The voices stopped abruptly, the curtain was lowered, the theatre boomed with p.a. resonance; a quartet singing A Moment or Forever on the Decca label. Eight hundred thousand copies a month.

Owen Crowley sat slumped in his seat, legs crossed, arms slackly folded. He stared at the curtain. Around him, people stood and stretched, yawned, chatted, laughed. Owen sat there, staring. Next to him, Carole rose and drew on her suede jacket. Softly, she was singing with the record, "Your mind is the clock that ticks away a moment or forever."

She stopped. "Honey?"

Owen grunted. "Are you coming?" she asked.

He sighed. "I suppose." He dragged up his jacket and followed her as she edged toward the aisle, shoes crunching over pale popcorn buds and candy wrappers. They reached the aisle and Carole took his arm.

"Well?" she asked. "What did you think?"

Owen had the burdening impression that she had asked him that question a million times; that their relationship consisted of an infinitude of movie-going and scant more. Was it only two years since they'd met; five months since their engagement? It seemed, momentarily, like the dreariest of eons.

"What's there to think?" he said. "It's just another movie."

"I thought you'd like it," Carole said, "being a writer yourself."

He trudged across the lobby with her. They were the last ones out. The snack counter was darkened, the soda machine stilled of technicolored bubblings. The only sound was the whisper of their shoes across the carpeting, then the click of them as they hit the outer lobby.

"What is it, Owen?" Carole asked when he'd gone a block without saying a word.

"They make me mad," he said.

"Who does?" Carole asked.

"The damn stupid people who make those damn stupid movies," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because of the way they gloss over everything."

"What do you mean?"

"This writer the picture was about," said Owen. "He was a lot like I am; talented and with plenty of drive. But it took him almost ten years to get things going. Ten years. So what does the stupid picture do? Glosses over them in a few minutes. A couple of scenes of him sitting at his desk, looking broody, a couple of clock shots, a few trays of mashed-out butts, some empty coffee cups, a pile of manuscripts. Some bald-headed publishers with cigars shaking their heads no at him, some feet walking on the sidewalk; and that's it. Ten years of hard labour. It makes me mad."

"But they have to do that, Owen," Carole said. "That's the only way they have of showing it."

"Then life should be like that too," he said.

"Oh, you wouldn't like that," she said.

"You're wrong. I would," he said. "Why should I struggle ten years or more on my writing? Why not get it over with in a couple of minutes?"

"It wouldn't be the same," she said.

"That's for sure," he said.

An hour and forty minutes later, Owen sat on the cot in his furnished room staring at the table on which sat his typewriter and the half-completed manuscript of his third novel And Now Gomorrah.

Why not indeed? The idea had definite appeal. He knew that, someday, he'd succeed. It had to be that way. Otherwise, what was he working so hard for? But that transition, that was the thing. That indefinite transition between struggle and success. How wonderful if that part could be condensed, abbreviated.

Glossed over.

"You know what I wish?" he asked the intent young man in the mirror.

"No, what?" asked the man.

"I wish," said Owen Crowley, "that life could be as simple as a movie. All the drudgery set aside in a few flashes of weary looks, disappointments, coffee cups and midnight oil, trays of butts, no's and walking feet. Why not?"

On the bureau, something clicked. Owen looked down at his clock. It was 2:43 a.m.

Oh, well. He shrugged and went to bed. Tomorrow, another five pages, another night's work at the toy factory.

A year and seven months went by and nothing happened. Then, one morning, Owen woke up, went down to the mail box and there it was.

We are happy to inform you that we want to publish your novel Dream Within a Dream.

"Carole! Carole!" He pounded on her apartment door, heart drumming from the half-mile sprint from the subway, the leaping ascent of the stairs. "Carole!"

She jerked open the door, face stricken. "Owen, what-?" she began, then cried out, startled, as he swept her from the floor and whirled her around, the hem of her nightgown whipping silkenly. "Owen, what is it?" she gasped.

"Look! Look!" He put her down on the couch and, kneeling, held out the crumpled letter to her.

"Oh, Owen!"

They clung to each other and she laughed, she cried. He felt the unbound softness of her pressing at him through the filmy silk, the moist cushioning of her lips against his cheek, her warm tears trickling down his face. "Oh, Owen. Darling:'

She cupped his face with trembling hands and kissed him; then whispered, "And you were worried."

"No more," he said. "No more!"

The publisher's office stood aloofly regal above the city; draped, panelled, still. "If you'll sign here, Mr. Crowley," said the editor. Owen took the pen.

"Hurray! Hurroo!" He polkaed amid a debris of cocktail glasses, red-eyed olives, squashed hors d'oeuvres and guests. Who clapped and stamped and shouted and erected monumental furies in the neighbours' hearts. Who flowed and broke apart like noisy quicksilver through the rooms and halls of Carole's apartment. Who devoured regimental rations. Who flushed away Niagara's of converted alcohol. Who nuzzled in a fog of nicotine. Who gambled on the future census in the dark and fur-coat-smelling bedroom.

Owen sprang. He howled. "An Indian I am!" He grabbed the laughing Carole by her spilling hair. "An Indian I am, I'll scalp you! No, I won't, I'll kiss you!" He did to wild applause and whistles. She clung to him, their bodies moulding. The clapping was like rapid fire. "And for an encore!" he announced.

Laughter. Cheers. Music pounding. A graveyard of bottles on the sink. Sound and movement. Community singing. Bedlam. A policeman at the door. "Come in, come in, defender of the weal!" "Now, let's be having a little order here, there's people want to sleep."

Silence in the shambles. They sat together on the couch, watching dawn creep in across the sills, a night gowned Carole clinging to him, half asleep; Owen pressing his lips to her warm throat and feeling, beneath the satin skin, the pulsing of her blood.

"I love you," whispered Carole. Her lips, on his, wanted, took. The electric rustle of her gown made him shudder. He brushed the straps and watched them slither from the pale curving of her shoulders. "Carole, Carole." Her hands were cat claws on his back.

The telephone rang, rang. He opened an eye. There was a heated pitchfork fastened to the lid. As the lid moved up it plunged the pitchfork into his brain. "Ooh!" He winced his eyes shut and the room was gone. "Go away," he muttered to the ringing, ringing; to the cleat shoed, square-dancing goblins in his head.

Across the void, a door opened and the ringing stopped. Owen sighed.

"Hello?" said Carole. "Oh. Yes, he's here."

He heard the crackle of her gown, the nudging of her fingers on his shoulder. "Owen," she said. "Wake up, darling."

The deep fall of pink-tipped flesh against transparent silk was what he saw. He reached but she was gone. Her hand closed over his and drew him up. "The phone," she said.

"More," he said, pulling her against himself.

"The phone."

"Can wait," he said. His voice came muffled from her nape. "I'm breakfasting."

"Darling, the phone."

"Hello?" he said into the black receiver.

"This is Arthur Means, Mr. Crowley," said the voice.

"Yes!" There was an explosion in his brain but he kept on smiling anyway because it was the agent he'd called the day before.

"Can you make it for lunch?" asked Arthur Means.

Owen came back into the living room from showering. From the kitchen came the sound of Carole's slippers on linoleum, the sizzle of bacon, the dark odour of percolating coffee.

Owen stopped. He frowned at the couch where he'd been sleeping. How had he ended there? He'd been in bed with Carole.

The streets, by early morning, were a mystic lot. Manhattan after midnight was an island of intriguing silences, a vast acropolis of crouching steel and stone. He walked between the silent citadels, his footsteps like the ticking of a bomb.

"Which will explode!" he cried. "Explode!" cried back the streets of shadowed walls. "Which will explode and throw my shrapnel words through all the world!"

Owen Crowley stopped. He flung out his arms and held the universe. "You're mine!" he yelled.

"Mine," the echo came.

The room was silent as he shed his clothes. He settled on the cot with a happy sigh, crossed his legs and undid lace knots. What time was it? He looked over at the clock. 2:58 a.m.

Fifteen minutes since he'd made his wish.

He grunted in amusement as he dropped his shoe. Weird fancy, that. Yes, it was exactly fifteen minutes if you chose to ignore the one year, seven months and two days since he'd stood over there in his pyjamas, fooling with a wish. Granted that, in thinking back, those nineteen months seemed quickly past; but not that quickly. If he wished to, he could tally up a reasonable itemization of every miserable day of them.

Owen Crowley chuckled. Weird fancy indeed. Well, it was the mind. The mind was a droll mechanism.

"Carole, let's get married!"

He might have struck her. She stood there, looking dazed.

"What?" she asked.

"Married!"

She stared at him. "You mean it?"

He slid his arms around her tightly. "Try me," he said.

"Oh, Owen." She clung to him a moment, then, abruptly, drew back her head and grinned.

'This," she said, "is not so sudden."

It was a white house, lost in summer foliage. The living room was large and cool and they stood together on the walnut floor, holding hands. Outside, leaves were rustling.

"Then by the authority vested in me," said Justice of the Peace Weaver, "by the sovereign state of Connecticut, I now pronounce you man and wife." He smiled. "You may kiss the bride," he said.

Their lips parted and he saw the tears glistening in her eyes.

"How do, Miz Crowley," he whispered.

The Buick hummed along the quiet country road. Inside, Carole leaned against her husband while the radio played, A Moment or Forever, arranged for strings. "Remember that?" he asked.

"Mmmm hmmm." She kissed his cheek.

"Now where," he wondered, "is that motel the old man recommended?"

"Isn't that it up ahead?" she asked.

The tires crackled on the gravel path, then stopped. "Owen, look," she said. He laughed. Aldo Weaver, Manager, read the bottom line of the rust-streaked wooden sign.

"Yes, brother George, he marries all the young folks round about," said Aldo Weaver as he led them to their cabin and unlocked the door. Then Aldo crunched away and Carole leaned her back against the door until the lock clicked. In the quiet room, dim from tree shade, Carole whispered, "Now you're mine."

They were walking through the empty, echoing rooms of a little house in Northport. "Oh, yes," said Carole happily. They stood before the living room windows, looking out into the shadow-dark woods beyond. Her hand slipped into his. "Home," she said, "sweet home."

They were moving in and it was furnished. A second novel sold, a third. John was born when winds whipped powdery snow across the sloping lawn; Linda on a sultry, cricket rasping summer night. Years cranked by, a moving backdrop on which events were painted.

He sat there in the stillness of his tiny den. He'd stayed up late correcting the galleys on his forthcoming novel One Foot in Sea. Now, almost nodding, he twisted together his fountain pen and set it down. "My God, my God," he murmured, stretching. He was tired.

Across the room, standing on the mantel of the tiny fireplace, the clock buzzed once. Owen looked at it. 3:15 a.m. It was well past his-

He found himself staring at the clock and, like a slow-tapped tympani, his heart was felt. Seventeen minutes later than the last time, thought persisted; thirty-two minutes in all.

Owen Crowley shivered and rubbed his hands as if at some imaginary flame. Well, this is idiotic, he thought; idiotic to dredge up this fantasy every year or so. It was the sort of nonsense that could well become obsession.

He lowered his gaze and looked around the room. The sight of time-worn comforts and arrangements made him smile. This house, its disposition, that shelf of manuscripts at his left. These were measurable. The children alone were eighteen months of slow transition just in the making.

He clucked disgustedly at himself. This was absurd; rationalizing to himself as if the fancy merited rebuttal. Clearing his throat, he tidied up the surface of his desk with energetic movements. There. And there.

He leaned back heavily in his chair. Well, maybe it was a mistake to repress it. That the concept kept returning was proof enough it had a definite meaning. Certainly, the flimsiest of delusions fought against could disorient the reason. All men knew that.

Well, then, face it, he decided. Time was constant; that was the core. What varied was a person's outlook on it. To some it dragged by on tar-held feet, to others fled on blurring wings. It just happened he was one of those to whom time seemed overly transient. So transient that it fostered rather than dispelled the memory of that childish wish he'd made that night more than five years before.

That was it, of course. Months seemed a wink and years a breath because he viewed them so. And-

The door swung open and Carole came across the rug, holding a glass of warmed milk.

"You should be in bed," he scolded.

"So should you," she answered, "yet I see you sitting here. Do you know what time it is?"

"I know," he said.

She settled on his lap as he sipped the milk. "Galleys done?" she asked. He nodded and slid an arm around her waist. She kissed his temple. Out in the winter night, a dog barked once.

She sighed. "It seems like only yesterday, doesn't it?" she said.

He drew in faint breath. "I don't think so," he said. "Oh, you." She punched him gently on the arm.

"This is Artie," said his agent. "Guess what?"

Owen gasped. "No!"

He found her in the laundry room, stuffing bedclothes into the washer. "Honey!" he yelled. Sheets went flying.

"It's happened!" he cried.

"What?"

"The movies, the movies! They're buying Nobles and Heralds!"

"No!"

"Yes! And, get this now, sit down and get it, go ahead and sit or else you'll fall! �C they're paying twelve thousand, five hundred dollars for it!"

"Oh!"

"And that's not all! They're giving me a ten-week guarantee to do the screenplay at, get this �C seven hundred and fifty dollars a week!"

She squeaked. "We're rich."

"Not quite," he said, floor-pacing, "but it's only the beginning, folks, on-ly the beginning!"

October winds swept in like tides over the dark field. Spotlight ribbons wiped across the sky.

"I wish the kids were here," he said, his arm around her.

"They'd just be cold and cranky, darling," Carole said.

"Carole, don't you think-"

"Owen, you know I'd come with you if I could; but we'd have to take Johnny out of school and, besides, it would cost so much. It's only ten weeks, darling. Before you know it-"

"Flight twenty-seven for Chicago and Los Angeles," intoned the speaker, "now boarding at Gate Three."

"So soon." Suddenly, her eyes were lost, she pressed her wind-chilled cheek to his. "Oh, darling, I'll miss you so."

The thick wheels squeaked below, the cabin walls shook. Outside, the engines roared faster and faster. The field rushed by. Owen looked back. Colored lights were distant now. Somewhere among them, Carole stood, watching his plane nose up into the blackness. He settled back and closed his eyes a moment. A dream, he thought. Flying west to write a movie from his own novel. Good God, a veritable dream.

He sat there on a corner of the leather couch. His office was capacious. A peninsula of polished desk extended from the wall, an upholstered chair parked neatly against it. Tweed drapes concealed the humming air conditioner, tasteful reproductions graced the walls and, beneath his shoes, the carpet gave like sponge. Owen sighed.

A knocking broke his reverie. "Yes?" he asked. The snugly-sweltered blonde stepped in. "I'm Cora. I'm your secretary," she said. It was Monday morning.

"Eighty-five minutes, give or take," said Morton Zucker-smith, Producer. He signed another notification. "That's a good length." He signed another letter. "You'll pick these things up as you go along." He signed another contract. "It's a world of its own." He stabbed the pen into its onyx sheath and his secretary exited, bearing off the sheaf of papers. Zuckersmith leaned back in his leather chair, hands behind his head, his polo shirted chest broadening with air. "A world of its own, kiddy," he said. "Ah. Here's our girl."

Owen stood, his stomach muscles twitching as Linda Carson slipped across the room, one ivory hand extended. "Morton, dear," she said.

"Morning, darling." Zuckersmith engulfed her hand in his, then looked toward Owen. "Dear, I'd like you to meet your writer for The Lady and the Herald"

"I've been so anxious to meet you," said Linda Carson, nee Virginia Ostermeyer. "I loved your book. How can I tell you?"

He started up as Cora entered. "Don't get up," she said. "I'm just bringing you your pages. We're up to forty-five."

Owen watched her as she stretched across the desk. Her sweaters grew more skin like every day. The tense expansion of her breathing posed threats to every fibre.

"How does it read?" he asked.

She took it for an invitation to perch across the couch arm at his feet. "I think you're doing wonderfully," she said. She crossed her legs and frothy slip lace sighed across her knees. "You're very talented." She drew in chest-enhancing air. "There's just a few things here and there," she said. "I'd tell you what they were right now but �C well, it's lunchtime and-"

They went to lunch; that day and others after. Cora donned a mantle of stewardship, guiding him as though he were re-sourceless. Bustling in with smiles and coffee every morning, telling him what foods were best prepared at dinner and, fingering his arm, leading him to the commissary every afternoon for orange juice; hinting at a p.m. continuance of their relationship; assuming a position in his life he had no desire for. Actually sniffling one afternoon after he'd gone to lunch without her; and, as he patted her shoulder in rough commiseration, pressing against him suddenly, her firm lips taking their efficient due, the taut convexities of her indenting him. He drew back, startled. "Cora."

She patted his cheek: "Don't think about it, darling. You have important work to do." Then she was gone and Owen was sitting at his desk, alarm diffusing to his fingertips. A week, another week.

"Hi," said Linda. "How are you?"

"Fine," he answered as Cora entered, clad in hugging gabardine, in clinging silk. "Lunch? I'd love to. Shall I meet you at the-? Oh. All right!" He hung up. Cora stared at him.

As he slipped onto the red leather seat he saw, across the street, Cora at the gate, watching him grimly.

"Hello, Owen," Linda said. The Lincoln purred into the line of traffic. This is nonsense, Owen thought. He'd have to try a second time with Cora. The first discouragement she'd taken for nobility; the gesture of a gallant husband toward his wife and children. At least she seemed to take it so. Good God, what complication.

It was lunch together on the Strip; then, later, dinner, Owen trusting that enough hours devoted to Linda would convince Cora of his lack of interest. The next night it was dinner and the Philharmonic; two nights later, dancing and a drive along the shore; the next, a preview in Encino.

At what specific juncture the plan went wrong Owen never knew. It gained irrevocable form the night when, parked beside the ocean, radio music playing softly, Linda slipped against him naturally, her world-known body pressing close, her lips a succulence at his. "Darling."

He lay starkly awake, thinking of the past weeks; of Cora and Linda; of Carole whose reality had faded to the tenuous form of daily letters and a weekly voice emitting from the telephone, a smiling picture on his desk.

He'd almost finished with the screenplay. Soon he'd fly back home. So much time had passed. Where were the joints, the sealing place? Where was the evidence except in circumstantial shards of memory? It was like one of those effects they'd taught him at the studio; a montage, a series of quickly paced scenes. That's what life seemed like; a series of quickly paced scenes that flitted across the screen of one's attention, then were gone.

Across the hotel room, his travelling clock buzzed once. He would not look at it.

He ran against the wind, the snow, but Carole wasn't there. He stood, eyes searching, in the waiting room, an island of man and luggage. Was she ill? There'd been no acknowledgment of his telegram but-

"Carole?" The booth was hot and stale.

"Yes," she said.

"My God, darling, did you forget?"

"No," she said.

The taxi ride to Northport was a jading travelogue of snow-cottoned trees and lawns, impeding traffic lights and tire chains rattling over slush-gravied streets. She'd been so deadly calm on the phone. No, I'm not sick. Linda has a little cold. John is fine. I couldn't get a sitter. A chill of premonitions troubled at him.

Home at last. He'd dreamed of it like this, standing silently among the skeletal trees, a mantle of snow across its roof, a rope of wood smoke spiralling from its chimney. He paid the driver with a shaking hand and turned expectantly. The door stayed shut. He waited but the door stayed shut.

He read the letter that she'd finally given him. Dear Mrs. Crowley, it began, I thought you ought to know.... His eyes sought out the childish signature below. Cora Bailey.

"Why that dirty, little-" He couldn't say it; something held him back.

"Dear God." She stood before the window, trembling. "To this very moment I've been praying it was a lie. But now..."

She shriveled at his touch. "Don't."

"You wouldn't go with me," he charged. "You wouldn't

go-"

"Is that your excuse?" she asked.

"Wha'm I gonna do?" he asked, fumbling at his fourteenth Scotch and water. "Wha'? I don' wanna lose 'er, Artie. I don' wanna lose 'er an' the children. Wha'm I gonna do?"

"I don't know," said Artie.

"That dirty li'l-" Owen muttered. "Hadn't been for her..."

"Don't blame the silly little slut for this," said Artie. "She's just the icing. You're the one who baked the cake."

"Wha'm I gonna do?"

"Well, for one thing, start working at life a little more. It isn't just a play that's taking place in front of you. You're on the stage, you have a part. Either you play it or you're a pawn. No one's going to feed you dialogue or action, Owen. You're on your own. Remember that."

"I wonder," Owen said. Then and later in the silence of his hotel room.

A week, two weeks. Listless walks through a Manhattan that was only noise and loneliness. Movies stared at, dinners at the Automat, sleepless nights, the alcoholed search for peace. Finally, the desperate phone call. "Carole, take me back, please take me back."

"Oh, darling. Come home to me."

Another cab ride, this time joyous. The porch light burning, the door flung open, Carole running to him. Arms around each other, walking back into their home together.

The Grand Tour! A dizzying whirl of places and events. Misted England in the spring; the broad, the narrow streets of Paris; Spree-bisected Berlin and Rhone-bisected Geneva. Milan of Lombardy, the hundred crumbling-castled islands of Venice, the culture trove of Florence, Marseilles braced against the sea, the Alps-protected Riviera, Dijon the ancient. A second honeymoon; a rush of desperate renewal, half seen, half felt like flashes of uncertain heat in a great, surrounding darkness.

They lay together on the river bank. Sunlight scattered glittering coins across the water, fish stirred idly in the thermal drift. The contents of their picnic basket lay in happy decimation. Carole rested on his shoulder, her breath a warming tickle on his chest.

"Where has the time all gone to?" Owen asked; not of her or anyone but to the sky.

"Darling, you sound upset," she said, raising on an elbow to look at him.

"I am," he answered. "Don't you remember the night we saw that picture A Moment or Forever? Don't you remember what I said?"

"No."

He told her; of that and of his wish and of the formless dread that sometimes came upon him. "It was just the first part I wanted fast, though," he said, "not the whole thing."

"Darling, darling," Carole said, trying not to smile, "I guess this must be the curse of having an imagination. Owen, it's been over seven years. Seven years."

He held his watch up. "Or fifty-seven minutes," he said.

Home again. Summer, fall, and winter. Wind from the South selling to the movies for $100,000; Owen turning down the screenplay offer. The aging mansion overlooking the Sound, the hiring of Mrs. Halsey as their housekeeper. John packed off to military academy, Linda to private school. As a result of the European trip, one blustery afternoon in March, the birth of George.

Another year. Another. Five years, ten. Books assured and flowing from his pen. Lap of Legends Old, Crumbling Satires, Jiggery Pokery, and The Dragon Fly. A decade gone, then more. The National Book Award for No Dying and No Tomb. The Pulitzer Prize for Bacchus Night.

He stood before the window of his panelled office, trying to forget at least a single item of another panelled office he'd been in, that of his publisher the day he'd signed his first contract there. But he could forget nothing; not a single detail would elude him. As if, instead of twenty-three years before, it had been yesterday. How could he recall it all so vividly unless, actually-

"Dad?" He turned and felt a frozen trap jaw clamp across his heart. John strode across the room. "I'm going now," he said.

"What? Going?" Owen stared at him; at this tall stranger, at this young man in military uniform who called him Dad.

"Old Dad," laughed John. He clapped his father's arm. "Are you dreaming up another book?"

Only then, as if cause followed effect, Owen knew. Europe raged with war again and John was in the army, ordered overseas. He stood there, staring at his son, speaking with a voice not his; watching the seconds rush away. Where had this war come from? What vast and awful machinations had brought it into being? And where was his little boy? Surely he was not this stranger shaking hands with him and saying his goodbyes. The trap jaw tightened. Owen whimpered.

But the room was empty. He blinked. Was it all a dream, all flashes in an ailing mind? On leaden feet, he stumbled to the window and watched the taxi swallow up his son and drive away with him. "Goodbye," he whispered. "God protect you."

No one feeds you dialogue, he thought; but was that he who spoke?

The bell had rung and Carole answered it. Now, the handle of his office door clicked once and she was standing there, face bloodless, staring at him, in her hand the telegram. Owen felt his breath stop.

"No," he murmured; then, gasping, started up as, soundlessly, Carole swayed and crumpled to the floor.

"At least a week in bed," the doctor told him. "Quiet; lots of rest. The shock is most severe."

He shambled on the dunes; numbed, expressionless. Razored winds cut through him, whipped his clothes and lashed his gray-streaked hair to threads. With lightless eyes, he marked the course of foam flecked waves across the Sound. Only yesterday that John went off to war, he thought; only yesterday he came home proudly rigid in his academy uniform; only yesterday he was in shorts and grammar school; only yesterday he thundered through the house leaving his wake of breathless laughter; only yesterday that he was born when winds whipped powdery snow across-

"Dear God!" Dead. Dead! Not twenty-one and dead; all his life a moment passed, a memory already slipping from the mind.

"I take it back!" Terrified, he screamed it to the rushing sky. "I take it back, I never meant it!" He lay there, scraping at the sand, weeping for his boy yet wondering if he ever had a boy at all.

"Attendez, M'sieus, M'dames! Nice!"

"Oh my; already?" Carole said. "That was quick now, children, wasn't it?"

Owen blinked. He looked at her; at this portly, gray-haired woman across the aisle from him. She smiled. She knew him?

"What?" he asked.

"Oh, why do I talk to you?" she grumbled. "You're always in your thoughts, your thoughts." Hissing, she stood and drew a wicker basket from the rack. Was this some game?

"Gee, Dad, look at that!"

He gaped at the teenaged boy beside him. And who was he? Owen Crowley shook his head a little. He looked around him. Nice? In France again? What about the war?

The train plunged into blackness. "Oh, damn!" snapped Linda. On Owen's other side she struck her match again and, in the flare, he saw, reflected in the window, the features of another middle-aged stranger and it was himself. The present flooded over him. The war over and he and his family abroad: Linda, twenty-one, divorced, bitter, slightly alcoholic; George, fifteen, chubby, flailing in the glandular limbo between women and erector sets; Carole, forty-six, newly risen from the sepulchre of menopause, pettish, somewhat bored; and he himself, forty-nine, successful, coldly handsome, still wondering if life were made of years or seconds. All this passing through his mind before Riviera sunlight flooded into their compartment again.

Out on the terrace it was darker, cooler. Owen stood there, smoking, looking at the spray of diamond pinpoints in the sky. Inside, the murmuring of gamblers was like a distant, insect hum.

"Hello, Mr. Crowley."

She was in the shadows, palely gowned; a voice, a movement.

"You know my name?" he asked.

"But you're famous," was her answer.

Awareness fluttered in him. The straining flattery of club women had turned his stomach more than once. But then she'd glided from the darkness and he saw her face and all awareness died. Moonlight creamed her arms and shoulders; it was incandescent in her eyes.

"My name is Alison," she said. "Are you glad to meet me?"

The polished cruiser swept a banking curve into the wind, its bow slashing at the waves, flinging up a rainbowed mist across them. "You little idiot!" he laughed. "You'll drown us yet!"

"You and I!" she shouted back. "Entwining under fathoms! I'd love that, wouldn't you?"

He smiled at her and touched her thrill-flushed cheek. She kissed his palm and held him with her eyes. I love you. Soundless; a movement of her lips. He turned his head and looked across the sun-jewelled Mediterranean. Just keep going on, he thought. Never turn. Keep going till the ocean swallows us. I won't go back.

Alison put the boat on automatic drive, then came up behind him, sliding warm arms around his waist, pressing her body to his. "You're off again," she murmured. "Where are you, darling?"

He looked at her. "How long have we known each other?" he asked.

"A moment, forever, it's all the same," she answered, teasing at his ear lobe with her lips.

"A moment or forever," he murmured. "Yes."

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Just brooding on the tyranny of clocks."

"Since time is so distressing to you, love," she said, pushing open the cabin door, "let's not waste another second of it."

The cruiser hummed across the silent sea.

"What, hiking?' Carole said. "At your age?"

"Though it may disturb you," Owen answered, tautly, "I, at least, am not yet prepared to surrender to the stodgy blandishments of old age."

"So I'm senile now!" she cried.

"Please,' he said.

"She thinks you're old?" said Alison. "Good God, how little that woman knows you!"

Hikes, skiing, boat rides, swimming, horseback riding, dancing till sun dispersed the night. Him telling Carole he was doing research for a novel; not knowing if she believed him; not, either, caring much. Weeks and weeks of stalking the elusive dead.

He stood on the sun-drenched balcony outside Alison's room. Inside, ivory-limbed, she slept like some game-worn child. Owen's body was exhausted, each inadequate muscle pleading for surcease; but, for the moment, he was not thinking about that. He was wondering about something else; a clue that had occurred to him when he was lying with her.

In all his life, it seemed as if there never was a clear remembrance of physical love. Every detail of the moments leading to the act were vivid but the act itself was not. Equally so, all memory of his ever having cursed aloud was dimmed, uncertain.

And these were the very things that movies censored.

"Owen?" Inside, he heard the rustle of her body on the sheets. There was demand in her voice again; honeyed but authoritative. He turned. Then let me remember this, he thought. Let every second of it be with me; every detail of its fiery exaction, its flesh-born declarations, its drunken, sweet derangement. Anxiously, he stepped through the doorway.

Afternoon. He walked along the shore, staring at the mirror-flat blueness of the sea. It was true then. There was no distinct remembrance of it. From the second he'd gone through the doorway until now, all was a virtual blank. Yes, true! He knew it now. Interims were void; time was rushing him to his script-appointed end. He was a player, yes, as Artie said, but the play had already been written.

He sat in the dark train compartment, staring out the window. Far below slept moon-washed Nice and Alison; across the aisle slept George and Linda, grumbled Carole in a restless sleep. How angry they had been at his announcement of their immediate departure for home.

And now, he thought, and now. He held his watch up and marked the posture of its luminous hands. Seventy-four minutes.

How much left?

"You know, George," he said, "when I was young and not so young I nursed a fine delusion. I thought my life was being run out like a motion picture. It was never certain, mind you, only nagging doubt but it dismayed me; oh, indeed it did. Until, one day a little while ago, it came to me that everyone has an uncontrollable aversion to the inroads of mortality. Especially old ones like myself, George. How we are inclined to think that time has, somehow, tricked us, making us look the other way a moment while, now unguarded, it rushes by us, bearing on its awful, tracking shoulders, our lives."

"I can see that," said George and lit his pipe again.

Owen Crowley chuckled: "George, George," he said. "Give full humour to your nutty sire. He'll not be with you too much longer."

"Now stop that talk," said Carole, knitting by the fire. "Stop that silly talk."

"Carole?" he called. "My dear?" Wind from the Sound obscured his trembling voice. He looked around. "Here, you! Here!"

The nurse primped mechanically at his pillow. She chided, "Now, now, Mr. Crowley. You mustn't tire yourself."

"Where's my wife? For pity's sake go fetch her. I can't-"

"Hush now, Mr. Crowley, don't start in again."

He stared at her, at this semi-moustached gaucherie in white who fussed and wheedled. "What?" he murmured. "What?" Then something drew away the veil and he knew. Linda was getting her fourth divorce, shuttling between her lawyer's office and the cocktail lounges; George was a correspondent in Japan, a brace of critic-feted books to his name. And Carole, Carole?

Dead.

"No," he said, quite calmly. "No, no, that's not true. I tell you, fetch her. Oh, there's a pretty thing." He reached out for the falling leaf.

The blackness parted; it filtered into unmarked greyness. Then his room appeared, a tiny fire in the grate, his doctor by the bed consulting with the nurse; at the foot of it, Linda standing like a sour wraith.

Now, thought Owen. Now was just about the time. His life, he thought, had been a brief engagement; a flow of scenes across what cosmic retina? He thought of John, of Linda Carson, of Artie, of Morton Zuckersmith and Cora; of George and Linda and Alison; of Carole; of the legioned people who had passed him during his performance. They were all gone, almost faceless now.

"What... time?" he asked.

The doctor drew his watch. "Four-oh-eight," he said, "a.m."

Of course. Owen smiled. He should have known it all along. A dryness in his throat thinned the laugh to a rasping whisper. They stood there, staring at him.

"Eighty-five minutes," he said. "A good length. Yes; a good length."

Then, just before he closed his eyes, he saw them-letters floating in the air, imposed across their faces and the room. And they were words but words seen in a mirror, white and still.

Or was it just imagination? Fadeout.