«Afraid?»
«Strange. Half my years afraid of life. The other half, afraid of death. Always some kind of afraid. You! Tell the truth, now! When my twenty-four hours are up, after we walk by the lake and take the train back and come through the woods to my house, you want to…»
He made her say it.
«… sleep with me?» she whispered.
«For ten thousand million years,» he said.
«Oh.» Her voice was muted. «That's a long time.»
He nodded.
«A long time,» she repeated. «What kind of bargain is that, young man? You give me twenty-four hours of being eighteen again and I give you ten thousand million years of my precious time.»
«Don't forget, my time, too,» he said. «I'll never go away.»
«You'll lie with me?»
«I will.»
«Oh, young man, young man. Your voice. So familiar.»
«Look.»
He saw the keyhole unplugged and her eye peer out at him. He smiled at the sunflowers in the field and the sunflower in the sky.
«I'm blind, half blind,» she cried. «But can that be Willy Winchester 'way out there?»
He said nothing.
«But, Willy, you're just twenty-one by the look of you, not a day different than you were seventy years back!»
He set the bottle by the front door and walked back out to stand in the weeds.
«Can ―» She faltered. «Can you make me look like yourself?»
He nodded.
«Oh, Willy, Willy, is that really you?»
She waited, staring across the summer air to where he stood relaxed and happy and young, the sun flashing off his hair and cheeks.
A minute passed.
«Well?» he said.
«Wait!» she cried. «Let me think!»
And there in the house he could feel her letting her memories pour through her mind as sand pours through an hourglass, heaping itself at last into nothing but dust and ashes. He could hear the emptiness of those memories burning the sides of her mind as they fell down and down and made a higher and yet higher mound of sand.
All that desert, he thought, and not one oasis.
She trembled at his thought.
«Well,» he said again.
And at last she answered.
«Strange,» she murmured. «Now, all of a sudden, twenty-four hours, one day, traded for ten million billion years, sounds fair and good and right.»
«It is, Clarinda,» he said. «Oh, yes, it is.»
The bolts slid back, the locks rattled, the door cracked. Her hand jerked out, seized the bottle and flicked back in.
A minute passed.
Then, as if a gun had been fired off, footsteps pelted through the halls. The back door slammed open. Upstairs, windows flew wide, as shutters fell crumbling to the grass. Downstairs, a moment later, the same. Shutters exploded to kindling as she thrust them out. The windows exhaled dust.
Then at last, from the front door, flung wide, the empty bottle sailed and smashed against a rock.
She was on the porch, quick as a bird. The sunlight struck full upon her. She stood as someone on a stage, in a single revealing motion, come from the dark. Then, down the steps, she threw her hand to catch his.
A small boy passing on the road below stopped, stared and, walking backward, moved out of sight, his eyes still wide.
«Why did he stare at me?» she said. «Am I beautiful?»
«Very beautiful.»
«I need a mirror!»
«No, no, you don't.»
«Will everyone in town see me beautiful? It's not just me thinking so, is it, or you pretending?»
«Beauty is what you are.»
«Then I'm beautiful, for that's how I feel. Will everyone dance me tonight, will men fight for turns?»
«They will, one and all.»
Down the path, in the sound of bees and stirring leaves, she stopped suddenly and looked into his face so like the summer sun.
«Oh, Willy, Willy, when it's all over and we come back here, will you be kind to me?»
He gazed deep into her eyes and touched her cheek with his fingers.