We walked some more. Neither of us knew whether "Cosmo" was an animal, vegetable, mineral, or folk singer, but it was O.K. For awhile it didn't matter. It was a summer night. Lucky was funny and beautiful, and for a few minutes I could pretend we were an old married couple, except one of us was wearing hot pants. It wasn't like an old Summer Fair, like the one I learned how to play three-card monte in while I should have been manning the Claw many years earlier when I was working my way through reform school, but it was cheesy in its own right. They had those teeensy Christmas lights strung up everywhere that no one had ever seen five years ago, and now every cheap outdoor night spot had them strewn around, but even I had to admit they looked pretty good. I am a sucker for a warm glow against the summer stars from a carnival. You get reminded that life is pretty rinky dink, when it all comes down to it. From cheers to chance we go staggering on, booths with all sorts of attractions are wooing, drumming, bawling. For adults only, there is something special to see: the multiplication of money, nothing concealed, guaranteed to increase your potency, and the rest of it.
Oh, but suppose you walk a little farther, beyond the last of the billboards, plastered with Pepsi signs, that bitter drink that seems so sweet to its drinkers, as long as they are distracted, beyond there, just beyond, the view becomes real. It is quieter, the trees and the night say dark things to each other, and the stars aren't cheesy. The man and the maiden are drawn farther out, into the meadow, the lights behind them coalescing into a warm opal. She leads him on, perhaps he is in love with her, she says: "Let's just walk a little more,", and he says, "Where?" and he is touched by her manner, which has suddenly become formal. Her shoulders, her neck – perhaps she is of noble descent. But then he turns back, and leaves her, waves in parting, but must leave....But why? What's the use? She is a Lament. She is the one who waits upon the newly dead and shows them the vast ruins of loss, the fields of late blooiming grief, and sometimes, when they are ready, she points upwards and they see that they are now under a different sky, filled with the constellations of loss, which she can name -- look, there is the Cradle, there the Window, there the Rider, and from time to time, even in the land of grief, happiness falls like a shooting star..

"Hey, Blake. BLAKE. Hey, remember me?" Lucky says. She clutches a Whack-a-Folkie Prize. "Where the hell did you go?"

"Just thinking, Lucky. Trying to figure out Cosmo."

"You are a bad liar."

"Poetry, Lucky, you and the summer stars bring out the Rilke in me."

She came up close to him, the fuzzy animal stuck under her arm. "You know, Blake, I don't think you are cut out for this line of work."

"Yeah, I know," I said, "but my feet were too flat for the Marines or ballet school."