tumes smelling like autumn leaves.

Or, especially when there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that
_I'll_ change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or
shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I
am--

--or, it occurred to me for the first time now, _remember_ who I am.
Which might be even worse.

Maybe that's what I'm afraid of.

I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a
high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those
of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet?
Harpsichord?

"Five minutes, everybody," Martin quietly called out behind me.

I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself--also for the first time,
_you know that some day you're really going to have to face this
thing, and not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in
some practice._

I stepped through the door.

* * * * *

Beau and Doc were already out there, made up and in costume for Ross
and King Duncan. They were discreetly peering past the wings at the
gathering audience. Or at the place where the audience ought to be
gathering, at any rate--sometimes the movies and girlie shows and
brainheavy beatnik bruhahas outdraw us altogether. Their costumes were
the same kooky colorful ones as the others'. Doc had a mock-ermine
robe and a huge gilt papier-mache crown. Beau was carrying a ragged
black robe and hood over his left arm--he doubles the First Witch.

As I came up behind them, making no noise in my black sneakers, I
heard Beau say, "I see some rude fellows from the City approaching. I
was hoping we wouldn't get any of those. How should they scent us
out?"

_Brother_, I thought, _where do you expect them to come from if not
the City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island
and on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx
boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what's it get you insulting
the woiking and non-woiking people of the woild's greatest metropolis?
Be grateful for any audience you get, boy._

But I suppose Beau Lassiter considers anybody from north of Vicksburg
a "rude fellow" and is always waiting for the day when the entire
audience will arrive in carriage and democrat wagons.

Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel
Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage
except when "Vot doe