it out and looked at it. Her curiosity slowly changed to solemnity.
"I remember this picture, "she said. "The big one was on the mantel in their living room, in a fancy gold frame. It had pride of place."
Ralph nodded. "This must have been the one he carried in his wallet.
It was taped to the instrument panel of the plane. Until I took it, he was beating me, and not even breathing hard while he did it. Grabbing his picture was all I could think of to do. When I did, his focus switched from the Civic Center to them. The last thing I heard him say was 'Give them back, they're mine."
"And was he talking to you when he said it?"
Ralph stuck the sneaker into his back pocket and shook his head.
"Nope. Don't think so."
"Helen was at the Civic Center tonight, wasn't she?"
"Yes." Ralph thought of how she had looked out at High Ridge -her pale face and smoke-reddened, watering eyes. If they stop us now, they win, she'd said. Don't you see that?
And now he did see.
He took the picture from Lois's hand, crumpled it up again, and walked over to the litter-basket which stood on the corner of Harris Avenue and Kossuth Lane. "We'll get another picture of them somesometime, one we can keep on our own mantel.
Something not quite so formal. This one, though... I don't want it."
He tossed the little ball of paper at the litter-basket, an easy shot, two feet at the most, but the wind picked that moment to gust and the crumpled photo of Helen and Natalie which had been taped above the altimeter of Ed's plane flew away on its cold breath. The two of them watched it whirl up into the sky, almost hypnotized. It was Lois who looked away first. She glanced at Ralph with a trace of a smile curving her lips.
"Did I hear a backhand proposal of marriage from you, or am I just tired?" she asked.
He opened his mouth to reply and another gust of wind struck them, this one so hard it made them both wince their eyes shut.
When he opened his, Lois had already started up the hill again.
"Anything's possible, Lois," he said. "I know that now."
Five minutes later, Lois's key rattled in the lock of her front door.
She led Ralph inside and shut it firmly behind them, closing out the windy, contentious night. He followed her into the living room and would have stopped there, but Lois never hesitated. Still holding his hand, not quite pulling him along (but perhaps meaning to do so if he began to lag), she showed him into her bedroom.
He looked at her. Lois looked calmly back... and suddenly he felt the blink happen again. He watched her aura bloom around her like a gray rose. It was still diminished, but it was already coming back, re-knitting itself, healing itself.
["Lois, are you sure this is what you want?"] ["Of course it I's."
Did you think I was going to give you a pat on the head and send you home after all we've been through?" Suddenly she smiled-a wickedly mischievous smile.
["Besides, Ralph-do you really feel like getting up to dickens tonight? Tell me the truth. Better still, don't flatter me."] He considered it, then laughed and drew her into his arms. Her mouth was sweet and slightly moist, like the skin of a ripe peach, That kiss seemed to tingle through his entire body, but the sensation was most concentrated in his mouth, where it felt almost like an electric shock.
When their lips parted, he felt more excited than ever... but he also felt queerly drained.
["What if I say I do, Lois? What if I say I do want to get up to dickens?" She stood back and looked at him critically, as if trying to decide whether he meant what he said or if it was just the usual male bluff and brag. At the same time her hands went to the buttons of her dress. As she began to slip them free, Ralph noticed a wonderful thing: she looked younger again. Not forty by any stretch of the imagination, but surely no more than fifty... and a young fifty. It had been the kiss, of course, and the really amusing thing was he didn't think she had the slightest idea that she had added a helping of Ralph to her earlier helping of wino. And what was wrong with that?
She finished her inspection, leaned forward, and kissed his