A great magic given to the modern man who thought of beauty never. Or who thought beauty was a ship's engine, or the line of high ferroconcrete, or the color scheme of a porch, or--adoring Christ forgive us, a new car! Something _he_ made, anyhow. This was some of my lives. Ricky had shared a number of them with me--created and divided the hours and days in the years of the flowers. Why should I wonder concerning anything, who knew and loved flowers like this--why not, in the continual floral celebrations, take all content from marvel itself? Men missed it, most of them. Generals detailed insensate GIs to set square borders of ageratum around the headquarters lawn. Statesmen wore bachelor's-buttons into their deadlocks. Or maybe carnations. Dowagers and whores--cattleyas: spilled on avid breasts and icy shoulders. Millionaires decreed. Gardeners dug. Who looked--who saw? Business executives had something sent up for the office, daily, and never noticed the color or knew the name. Flowers executed and embalmed to add their priceless prestige to dirty bucks. Schoolboys planted beans and watched the halved cotyledons ascend. Then grew and prospered and spent their lives sawing women in half. At last, tired relatives recriminated while they embedded melancholy metal pots in the green grittiness of graves. Who cherished? Who left them alone in the forest? Who else--like Ricky--knew each plant to be an individual? I put a call through. "Hello, darling," said her clear voice. Oh, look--love--we've had--centuries together--so beautiful, so various--people, yes--each other, yes--the topaz mornings and the amorous unsleepiness--the vague rainy Thursday afternoons--the incandescent, rose-petal you--the touching--we've had--places--Havana, for instance--this vaulting steel town--but also flowers, dear. I was thinking how long flowers really lasted. Surely, you won't mind, that the end is here? After entire histories of evolution shared by just the two of us? I knew you wouldn't--now. I said, "How's Rushford?" "More important--how are you?" "Sprung-witted. Weary. And pursuing." "Nearly finished?" "I should make it--tomorrow. If I hold out tonight." "Phil! What's wrong?" The echo--the electrical overtone--that long way. "Nothing's wrong, dear. Things are picking up. I picked up a blonde, for instance--and Paul's taking her out. So maybe his mental health is improving." "And maybe you should have taken her out yourself! You sound like somebody playing an ocarina in Mammoth Cave; positively sepulchral." "The heat. Expanded my sinuses. Gives me that hollow ring. Is it hot up there?" "Eighty-six tonight. The natives are dying of it." "It must be a hundred here." "I read about it in the Buffalo papers. Gee!"