"Forget it," she said.

"Tell it to the pumpkin," Scott said. "He can't remember."

"You mean clean undewear, anyway," she said. "Not new."

* * * * * *

October is a deathly month. The moon is pumpkin sized and vibrant. In a tiny room in Boston, on a night as black as Boston's sooty buildings, Scott lay beneath the blankets and watched the ceiling change color to the rhythm of Mirna's peaceful breathing. A man ran across a graveyard beneath a moon which changed into his mother's smiling face. The graveyard was full of rows of white crosses which pulled backwards beneath the running man's feet so that he made no progress. But he kept running. The moon kept smiling. Scott thought the moon, perhaps, made his mother force his father into science. She taught us to apologize for him. The crosses whirred by. The father ran in the opposite direction all the time though he did everything his family told him to. The scene vanished. I made the scene, reflected Scott.

Now above some high white tombstones loomed the pumpkin. Scott had nurtured the pumpkin from a seedling to its present ripe state. You are a grown up pumpkin, to told it. Scott wove his way through the tombstones, across the messy room, and came to his pumpkin. He stroked it. He murmured to it.

"Pumpkin are you ready? You are my first step into a new life. Perhaps I'll reach the cross alive, not dead. You will take me out of my dreams so that I might live them. But I must tell you something first, I have lied to someone about you. I mentioned farming. Silly, I know, but I through the guy had some similar drop out in mind and I brought it up to make him feel good. But I started feeling lousy. I was a bum, Pumpkin. And I had to tell you before it is accomplished."

Scott was naked. His moving body might have passed for very light drapes whipping in a slow wind. then everything grew dark as the moon passed behind a thick layer of clouds. Mirna sat up in bed.

"Is it time, Scott?"

"Yes," Scott's voice came softly across the darkness.

"Don't you think you should tell Nathan?"

No one spoke for a long time. then Scott walked back to the bed.

"You're right," he said. "We should ask him over."

* * * * * *

Nathan's wife walked into the office and Mildred mistyped.