Levy saw a sign for Wading River, followed it, and a few minutes later he saw the small road crossing the highway that Dworkin told him about and he found the path that crossed it and followed it. His feet were soaked, so was the front of his coat and trousers. Only his hat under the umbrella was dry. The path ended at the river. The bank was covered with dead reeds, broken, beaten down into the mud by the rain. He went closer, too close; he slipped in the mud and his shoe and cuff got soaked in the water. He felt so miserable he couldn’t think of anything to do but laugh. Rachel would laugh, so would Adam. A silly old man in the mud, in the rain, on the bank of the river, at dusk. The mud smelled, the river smelled, he was cold and wet and he knew it was ridiculous, and the past had been a dream. It couldn’t work again, he didn’t want it to work. Then, like a sign, a young buck came out of the reeds, and walked daintily along the edge of the river. A doe followed him. They were so close to Levy as they passed him that he could see the heavy soft tufts of hair in their ears, and the moss on the buck’s antlers. The reeds barely bent as they went by, and it was so dusky they disappeared a few feet beyond Levy into the bushes on the same side of the river. Levy looked after them for a while, straining his eyes in the gloom to try to see them again.