He shook his head slightly, winked maliciously at Michael, and rose from the branch with a jump that was very nearly a dance step. The air was as warm as wedding cake as he fell, volplaning directly at Michael's feet. Michael stepped back nervously, wondering if the ground would cleave before the strong beak like the Red Sea or if it wouldn't, and how the raven felt about the matter, if he gave a damn at all. And then there was a quick swirl in the gravel and pebbles scattering and a black feather on the ground, and the raven was circling overhead with the roast-beef sandwich in his beak.
The sandwich had had a pretty tiring morning itself, and as the raven circled triumphantly the worn wrapping tore, and the sandwich fell from the raven's beak, turning over and over. Michael raised his hands to catch it, and then lowered them and held them behind his back.
But the raven fell beside the sandwich, turning his head to judge its descent so that they looked like two meteors comforting each other. Then a branch broke the sandwich's fall for a moment; the raven struck and was gone, over the trees and down the path. Michael smiled with just the right touch of casual sadness and followed.
Laura saw the raven first from where she sat with Mr. Rebeck on the grass in front of the mausoleum. She had been sitting there when he had come out to stand on the steps and yawn. He had been inordinately pleased to see her and had gone back into the mausoleum to dress as fast as he could, because he felt somehow that she might be gone when he returned.
But she was there, sitting on the grass and looking curiously at the sun. He had not seen her since the time she had come with Michael, a week ago. June then, it was July now, a New York July, full of rust-colored mornings and shining noons that hurt the eyes. People came less often to the cemetery, and the roses went brown on the graves before they were replaced.
She had not come again, and he had wondered. Now he went over and sat down beside her.
"Hello, Laura," he said. "Where have you been?"
"Here and there." Laura moved her hand very slightly and was both here and there. Mr. Rebeck saw her so—sitting, with the sun shining through dress and bone and body, making her look like a pen-and-ink drawing; and walking among the olive-colored ferns that grew all around the cemetery, encircling it as cattails do a stagnant pond. She smiled at him now, and he saw her the night before, standing close to the snake-laced gate, smiling.
"I see," he said, and he did.
"I came to visit you," Laura said. "I came to sit and hear you talk to me."
"Delighted to have you. What should I talk about?"
"Something alive. The theater, or subway fares or labor unions, or books, or baseball, or foreign relations, or the going price of bananas. Talk to me, please, about anything at all, so long as it's alive."
Mr. Rebeck's brows consulted each other as he tried to think of a subject, but Laura interpreted the frown as an expression of puzzlement and went on, "Because I'm going to have to make a choice very soon, and I want to be sure it's the right one."
She paused, and her hands moved in her lap like captured butterflies. "Death has been very good to me," she said finally. "Do you know what I can do now?" Mr. Rebeck shook his head.
"I can think myself places. I can go back and forth across this cemetery seven times, from gate to gate, and be back here before you can snap your fingers. I can ride in the caretakers' truck, in a space barely big enough for two people, and hear the men talking. All I have to do is let my body drop from me as if it were a wet bathing suit, and then I'm me and I can go where I want to go."
"Except out of the cemetery," Mr. Rebeck said.
"How did you know?"
"It works that way for all ghosts. You can go anywhere, except away from the place where your body is buried. I suppose there's a reason for it."
"I thought it was just me," Laura said. "I thought perhaps you had to want to go back very badly before the gate would let you pass."
She looked past him, and he knew that she was staring at the lion-heads on the mausoleum door. "It doesn't matter. There's nothing I want to see. I like it better this way. Nobody can see me, you know. Not even you, unless I want you to. I've sat and watched you for hours"—Mr. Rebeck started—"and you read, and sometimes you have put your book down and looked at me and didn't know I was there. You were humming to yourself."
"I can see you now," Mr. Rebeck said.
"Sometimes I put my body back on. But not as often as I used to. It feels tight on me and makes me walk slowly. It always did. Someday, someday soon, I may just leave it and not come back."
"Where is the choice, then?"
Laura's hands stopped moving in her lap, and she looked away from Mr. Rebeck. "Because I might be wrong," she said softly, "and Michael might be a little bit right, even if he is a fool."
She turned back to Mr. Rebeck. "This is very much like the last minute before you fall asleep at night. You close your eyes and everything seems to be rushing away from you, and you're sinking backward and down—like a subway when you're in a local and an express goes by so fast that your train really appears to be going backward. You just let yourself fall with it, and it's easy and comfortable and quite wonderful. But you keep yourself awake until you make sure that everything's all right; that the lights are out and the door is locked, that you did everything you meant to do that day, that nothing's left unfinished.
"Well, I don't feel right. I keep thinking that I've left a door open somewhere." She put a hand out to touch his own, and Mr. Rebeck felt a cold breeze drying the July sweat on the back of his hand before she moved away.
"Do you want me to talk about live things now?" he asked. "I've remembered something."
"Yes, please," said Laura. And Mr. Rebeck sat with his legs tucked under him and his eyes holding the delicate tracings of iris and pupil and eyelash that had been Laura's eyes, and he told her about a zoo he had visited more than twenty years before. He told Laura about a hippopotamus that would munch on the same tiny square of chocolate for almost an hour, rolling it around in its mouth with its eyes shut tight; and an immensely fat orangutan that sat sleeping in a puddle of its own flesh; and a monkey that tossed itself carelessly around the cage like a spool of red ribbon; about two white wolves; and about the people that had been at the zoo. He made them up for her; they weren't too good because it had been a long time, but Laura seemed satisfied. Suddenly she pointed over his shoulder and said, "The raven's coming—and Michael."
Mr. Rebeck turned his head and saw the raven in the sky and Michael coming slowly down the path, stepping on twigs and not breaking them.
The raven seemed reluctant to land, but he finally did, dropping a battered roast-beef sandwich into Mr. Rebeck's lap just before he touched the ground. He seemed a little unsteady on his feet, Mr. Rebeck thought, but his eyes glittered and he carried his head like the cocked hammer of a gun.
"All I could get," he said, gesturing at the sandwich with his beak.
"Just one?"
"Things are tough all over."
"I was joking." Mr. Rebeck unwrapped the torn waxed paper. "This will be fine." He pulled a strip of meat from the sandwich and offered it to the raven, who shook his head. "Uh-uh. Found a robin's nest this morning."
Mr. Rebeck ate the meat himself, but Laura made a small sound of horror. "You ate—" She could not finish.
The raven turned to look at her. "Morning," he said cheerfully. "Didn't notice you."
Laura remained still, but she seemed to have drawn miles away from the man and the bird. "You ate a robin's eggs—"