“Or you are. It’s your dream,” Lydia replied. “You visited here in your dream, but it isn’t a dream to me—” She broke off. Will said something else and she tried to respond, but suddenly from the house the sizzling smell of mutton chops wafted through the air so temptingly that Tweety’s senses splashed over. Tweety and Lydia for the moment became indivisible. Tweety forgot the cat and headed clumsily toward the house. Will just stood there. The young woman had completely disappeared.

Will groaned. The dream, or whatever it was, was getting out of hand. He felt very lonely standing there in the strange dreary landscape. He was just beginning to feel really sorry for himself when Lydia reappeared.

“This happens to me more and more,” she said uneasily. “I keep forgetting myself and turning into Tweety all the way. See how small this little fenced area is? They put Tweety out here whenever it’s not too cold, and to her, it’s absolutely vast. While to me—”

“I’m going to commit suicide,” Will interrupted, but a part of Lydia was suddenly relating to Tweety again, in the kitchen, and she didn’t respond.

“I said, I’m going to commit suicide,” Will repeated.

“Oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening,” Lydia answered. “I don’t think I ever died that way. And you were telling me that smoking was bad for my health. Suicide isn’t about to promote good health either, you know.”

Silence. “You’re terrifically facetious,” Will said finally. But his curiosity got the best of him. “How did you die and how many times? Are you putting me on?” he asked suspiciously.

But Lydia more than answered his question. She turned into the image of the old woman she had been before death: white bubbles of hair; thin but somehow jaunty bones dressed in a pair of dungarees and faded shirt. Will stared, horrified at the transformation.

She said, in the old woman’s crispy voice, “I looked like this, more or less, when I died the last time. And I was pretty proud of myself in a way. I mean, I considered myself a survivor.”

But Will was so startled that he could feel himself starting to wake up in bed; and he didn’t want to. He did, though—in a cold sweat. He was somehow terrified. He’d taken quite a few Phenobarbitals, and he imagined, imagined, he muttered, gritting his teeth, that he’d just fall into a dreamless sleep. But no. Instead he had to have a nightmare in which a beautiful young woman turned into an old hag. Ugh. He tried, unsuccessfully, to remember what else had happened. Then he tried to interpret the whole thing symbolically, and gave up almost at once.