“No, no, no,” Laura said, gazing curiously at Marcie. Did she really feel so guilty? She hadn’t done anything that bad. Laura had a strange feeling of finality, of the end of things, of everything ending at once so that nothing really mattered any more. As if Marcie would turn and walk out of her life, and her job would end, and Beebo would never see her, and Jack and Terry would break up. It made her pensive and sad. She wondered at all the new feelings in her: the inability to care about her job, her meanness with Beebo, her unreasoning fear of Merrill Landon in the hotel lobby. Nothing seemed very real, up there on the roof. It didn’t seem to make much difference what she did. She gave another little pull and Marcie came still closer, touching her up and down the length of her body. Laura touched her hair. “You look so much like a friend of mine,” she said. Marcie reminded her of Beth again at this moment; the Beth she had lost so long ago, a million years ago, it seemed. “I do? You never told me that.” “I forgot.” “What’s she like?” “Oh, she was tall, short dark hair, purple eyes. Rather boyish.” “You talk about her as if she were dead.” “She is. As far as I’m concerned.” Marcie frowned at her. “She doesn’t sound at all like me.” “No, I guess she doesn’t,” Laura said. “There’s something about your face; I don’t know how to define it. I thought I saw a resemblance.” She had seen it in Beebo, too. And even in the curly-headed little blonde who had approached her in The Cellar the night she was looking for Beebo. They couldn’t all look like Beth. It was very strange. “Were you good friends?” Marcie asked. Laura smiled a little and put her arms around Marcie. In the still night she answered simply, “We were lovers.” It was very quiet, dreamlike, as if she spoke in a trance. Marcie stared at her, motionless, as if to determine whether she were joking. She stood in Laura’s arms, unable to move one way or the other; uncertain and a little scared. Laura saw her consternation, but it didn’t worry her. She spoke again, still feeling as if it weren’t real, any more than the glittering city below was real, or her father’s wrath, or Jack, or Beebo, or the doctors and Sarah ... “That was the ‘great love’ I told you about, in college,” she said. “It was Beth.” After a long pause, Marcie said in a whisper, “What happened?” “She got married,” Laura said. Marcie was dumbfounded. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly and then retreated into herself, embarrassed. She had no idea what to say, what to do.