Her thoughts went to little Alice Cavender, whom she would soon transform. When John’s winter actually came—many years from now—Alice would be rising to summer. As he withered she would flower, and Miriam’s love would slip from one to the next with none of the agonizing sense of loss she had experienced in the past. To reassure herself she sought a touch with Alice. It came promptly—Alice’s warmth, her smell, the fierceness of her heart. Then it was over, the bright little storm blowing away. A touch with Alice . . . how good. The girl was coming along well.

As they crossed Flushing Meadow Park with the enormous Mt. Hebron Cemetery on the left and the World’s Fair Site on the right, Miriam watched John as closely as possible without ignoring the road.

“Remember the Terrace Club,” he said.

“How could I forget?” That was in 1939; the Terrace Club had been at the old World’s Fair. She could picture the cheerful beauty of its yellow and white walls and svelte stainless-steel furniture.

“We danced there.”

“That’s not all we did.” She well remembered John’s outrageous kidnapping of a girl from the powder room while she herself consumed the little creature’s date.

Manhattan began to appear and disappear ahead as they rolled through Queens. How recent it all looked to Miriam. It seemed just a week ago the whole area had been swarming with builders. This had been a cobbled road; the air had been scented with the odor of tar and raw lumber. In those days the Long Island Expressway was not yet built and an electric tramway ran to Ozone Park. The bedroom suburbs beyond didn’t exist then. They had ridden the tram often, sitting on the rattan seats as it clicked and sparked and shuddered along, a raft of light in a great dark ocean.

Soon the procession of cemeteries began: Mt. Zion, Calvary, Greenacres. A musty, cool odor filled the air.

John turned on the radio, and her mellow mood was interrupted by a long, sorrowful tale being told by an old voice from nowhere, some used-up insomniac pouring his losses out to a talk show host.

“Please.”

“I like it.”

“Then your taste is more bizarre than I thought.”

“I like to listen to the old. I gloat over their infirmities.”

That she could understand. She could well imagine how it must feel to John to have defeated the curse of aging. What an absolutely perfect man he was. She also began to enjoy the presence of the old voice in the air. It became a kind of counterpoint to John’s youth and vigor, making him seem more wonderful, a more inspired catch, than ever before.