"Second front coming in." Walt turned away from the sliding glass doors to the balcony and went back to the kitchen to finish the cookies. They lived on the fifteenth floor and could see what was coming before the radio had it. Especially snow.

His wife, Lucy, moved gingerly toward the doors. "Do you think it will get here this afternoon?"

Walter plunged his hands into the margeriney dough, looking past her to the deep blue receding before the stormy black edge of the front. A seagull coasted down the air out of sight, to the vacant lot next to their building. It must have been under a sky like this that Kataryna waited, but near dawn instead of late in the day as now. He remembered that morning, how he'd been lying awake and seen the incoming storm clouds, bright in a sky of clean New England silver-rose. In those days he'd often lie awake in the mornings, hear her back door and come down to his own back porch to see her in her yard pulling dandelions, her muddy fingers and muscular forearms pale in the early blue light.

Lucy said, "The weeds in the empty lot make it seem like prairie."

He snorted. "Most expensive prairie land in the country. If they don't get that other tower up when the ground thaws, the builder'll be out of business. Waltzed around with the mayor's office all year till the ground was frozen solid. Probably spent so much paying off inspectors they haven't got a dime left to build." He set the dough in the bowl. "How's this?" He'd done the Christmas baking since her arthritis got bad, but he still made her check his work. Not much to knead this year. Not many people coming. Three of their crowd, the men, all dead this year from heart attacks. They were having the party anyway, all the widows, he called them the debutantes.

Lucy came away from the doors to the kitchen, leaning slightly on the low counter. He continued to look at the sky. God and Nature, why is the world so beautiful? A utility job would have done: no color, birds with flat wings. But look at all the curves and colors, every trampled blade of grass so wrought, and then above, this sky, least likely of all the things we had never expected, arches in revelation.

Lucy poked the dough. "Just right. You love it up here, don't you? Like a boy in a tree house."

"Tree house? The kids still talk about that one we had. Every Christmas they tell their kids about it. Remember the crash when that thing finally came down? Shook the whole neighborhood. Wojorski came running out in his bathrobe. There's a face you could never forget. Cursing in Polish."

"How do you know he was cursing?"

"Had to have been. What a face. Launched a thousand ships in the other direction. Sourest mug I ever saw," Walter replied, thinking, shouldn't have brought it up. He watched his hands drop wavering lines of irregularly blobbed dough on the cookie sheet. The stuff used to roll off Lucy's palms with a slap and a pat and hit the sheet in drill-formation squads, each bit with the same number of raisins or nuts or, before the heart trouble, chocolate chips. Walter had to measure his out with a knife and teaspoon, and still made no two alike. Chopping and boiling were more in his line.

"I wish I could help you," she said.

"Ah, no trouble." The declining sun was now covered. "Wojorski. December 2l, wasn't it?" Kataryna Wojorski found dead in the snow. Fallen down the back stairs, unable to crawl up and inside.

Lucy took the vegetable knife from the drawer. "Yes, the 21st."

"Couldn't get word to her son. He was already on the road, coming home. What a Christmas present I had for him."

"You told him very gently," she said.

"Yeah. Yeah, I did. Learned how in the war." In France in 1944, everybody learned. It wasn't that hard with young Wojorski; Kataryna had told him that her son was not his son but her husband's. Lucy never knew what had gone on. It had all been long ago. He didn't expect to snuffle and had to turn away quickly to blow his nose. Putting his handkerchief back in his pocket, he laughed. "We're getting to be a couple of softies, aren't we? Old and soft. Don't know what got me started on that in the first place."

She put her hand on his. "The elm tree."

"Right." He looked down at the cookies. "About as even as they're going to get."

He put the sheet in the oven and went back to the doors. The sun shone bright behind the thick snow clouds, silvering the whole western sky. The front was advancing softly. Its black edge swirled over the pure deep blue of the night so beautifully that he slid the door open, muttering, "Have to cool off a little," and stepped outside.

Cold wind blasted him like lightening. He slid the door behind him shut. It was only a moment, but he felt the presence of the woman who died in the snow. He let the air make him ready to freeze past the human, down to the eternal core. He felt pain in his chest. Every crystal of snow a unique ephemeral triumph. The smallest detail, the briefest moment so crafted to what purpose, unless the purpose be irrational, be love? More pain. Light, then darkness. Behind him the door slid open. Back arched, he fell into the room.

Lucy couldn't work the bottle of nitro tabs with her fingers. She must have taken the cap in her teeth and turned it between the palms of her hands and tipped one onto her tongue. She pushed it between his lips. "Your kisses are like blasting powder," he whispered.

She would not let him make her laugh. She got to her feet and went in the bedroom, calling out, "Now you lie right there and take a nap on the carpet until the girls come. I'll do the rest of the cooking."

"Never mind a blanket. You've got your work cut out for you. I'll just--"

She was back, tucking the bottom of a green blanket under his feet. "One peep out of you and no party." She clapped the fabric between her hands to pull it up. Woolen. A blanket like this would have saved Kataryna's life.

Teeth snapped as Lucy bit the wrapper off the turkey roll. She eased it into a pan. The oven timer sounded. Metal scraped metal and a few cookies fell with a click into a bowl to make room for her mitted hand. One hand on top of the sheet, the other pressed to the bottom, she slid it out. The sheet tipped, righted, came to rest on the stove. The chopper took care of the vegetables. Walt remembered that he hadn't washed the salad makings yet. He opened his eyes and got up to his knees and then his feet.

It had been longer than he thought. The lettuce, radishes, tomatoes and onions lay chopped in their bowls. She had the celery between her hands, looking down at it, lip caught between her teeth like a veil. She was crying. Big tears sparkled as they crested the rounds of her cheeks, spilled over and ran down between the cords and loosed the dirt. A muddy one dropped on the floor. She came slowly around the counter to him.

He must have been dreaming he ever got up; she knelt and kissed his face. He must be dreaming again. He felt strong graceful fingers, hers of old, fan across his cheek and baptize him with soil.

It was fully night when he got to his knees and then cautiously to his feet. He looked to his left toward the porch. No stars. To his right beyond the kitchen Lucy was setting the table in the big room that did for living and dining both.

"You got the cloth down," he said. "How'd you do it? Turkey cooking, vegetables made, all the greens out for the salad."

"I couldn't wash the lettuce." She looked up, not at him but a little to one side. "Couldn't get it clean. What am I--"

"Glad to know I've got some use left," he said to cover the question she didn't finish: What am I going to do next year when I'm a widow?"

He forced a lighter tone. "Just me and the girls tonight, hey? Y'better watch out." Men die younger than women, he and the guys used to tell each other in the war. You'll get all of it you can handle when you're old. But at the end, they get the last laugh. They live here, youıre just visiting, like the French girls say.

"You wanted to have the party." Again she wasnıt looking at him, but to his right. Margaret stood there. She must have turned up while he was sleeping.

"You bet I want a party!" Margaret cried, still big and booming after five kids, thick waves of hair dyed red for tonight swooping down the brow. Army nurse in the war, she hailed from the Yukon, saw the city and never went back.

"Sure. Gotta ring in the new with my girls," Walter agreed. The women would get the last laugh, all right. Margaret half knocked him down with her elbow as she reached across to grab the celery. He moved away. "Just live long enough."

Rose Mungan was on the couch in the living room, but she didnıt look up when he came in. A mouse. It was Mungan that did all the talking for both of them even before they got married. But then, he could have done all the talking for six or ten. Helluva pal, but he never cared if a girl was dumb as a rock as long as she didnıt interrupt him. Another thing; Mungan had been a great dancer before the war tore up his knee, and after that he wasn't himself with the girls, but Rose didn't notice. She thought a jitterbug was something you sprayed the kitchen to got rid of.

A voice from a corner startled him. "You're the man of the evening, Walter." The soft Brooklyn "r" like a sigh. No other voice in the world like that. Mary Connolly, the dark-eyed one the guys used to call their Black Irish girl. She stood by the closet with one arm out of her coat, like a dowdy little Amazon who might want to beat a retreat.

"Iım man of the evening. Feel like I died and went to heaven," he said.

She spoke along with him, but from her it came out, "Like I died and went to heaven, he said, you remember?" She didn't look at him. Ignoring his offer to help with her coat, she hung it herself, then kissed Lucy and went past her a step to look over at the balcony. "What a beautiful view you have up here. The fifteenth floor."

She always said that, and Walter replied automatically, "Not so far for the angels to come and get us. Make them sweat if they're taking us the other way." No one spoke. Maybe he ought to keep his trap shut, out of respect for Mary's Connolly, the most recent one dead. But she'd always been much tougher than Rose. Mary smiled now, letting her big teeth show, then hid them.

Walter had never been sure Mary gave him the brush. For a couple weeks just after the war heıd taken her to the movies. The guys joshed him about her. And then one night she paused on her motherıs doorstep and turned as if to lean in to a kiss. He almost had her in his arms, but she moved a fraction back, maybe just shifted her weight, and he saw that she wasnıt thinking of him at all, her eyes were focused someplace else. After that sheıd been busy on weekends, and after that she was going to movies with Connolly. So Walter and Lucy wound up together and moved into a house near the Polish neighborhood, next to Worjorski and Kataryna. Wojorski had some kind of business that took him to conventions.

The part Walter thought about less and less as the years went by had lasted a couple of months in the longest days of the year. Both early risers, he and Kataryna would open their eyes at the same moment, both of them amazed. Neither had ever woken to someone awake. Theyıd lie together and kiss and talk until the sun was bright, and he went back to his house and had breakfast cooking, as always, before his wife got up. After retirement he didnıt eat breakfast and his wifeıs appetite declined, so he just lay reading or thinking, and sometimes heard Kataryna come out in her yard. The morning she died, of course, it was winter, with all the windows closed and sound muted by snow.

The oven timer buzzed. Lucy went to fetch the meat. At the table, Mary and Margaret set the greens and cookies out with the glasses and the bottle of champagne. Mary took a deep huff of the smells from the kitchen. "You're quite a cook, Lucy," she said, as though she'd never noticed.

"Musician, too. I play wonderful records," Lucy replied a little brusquely, walking over to the cabinet. Walter tried to set a calm hand on his wifeıs arm to remind her Mary was always like that -- remember how she lifted up her own baby at half a year and said, "Blue eyes!" But Lucy pushed right past him to the records.

Walter noticed a deck of cards on the side table near Maryıs hand. By this time a couple of years ago (maybe decades), he and the guys would have been deep in five-card stud, the cards slapping, beer spilling, pennies and nickels heaped on the table and all of them laughing too hard to notice if Mungan dealt from the bottom of the deck. The girls had never joined in, of course. Bridge was their game. If Mary picked the cards up now, theyıd play bridge and talk and laugh about their cards all night and he might as well be gone. "Let me have my last year or two with my girls," he pleaded, but the music came on at that instant. "Who wants the first dance?" No answer.

He sang along, "Moonlight becomes you. . ." None of them so much as glanced at him. Lucy changed it to "Sabre Dance Boogie."

"Hey, I'm too old to keep up with that one," he protested, but nobody heard him; they were all laughing at a joke of Margaret's. Was he dead already? He might as well go lie under the blanket by the doors. Might as well have kicked off under there, or out on the porch. Might as well have been a dead man when he fell back into the apartment this evening.

A fine thing after more than 50 years of marriage, for his wife to be too busy yammering with her girlfriends to go check on her husband lying dead. When the worms showed up, would she just vacuum?

He was cranky because he was tired. He went to the blanket there on the floor and lay down, just for a moment, turning his head toward the porch to look out. It was dark here in the shadow of the counter and away from the living-room light. Still no moon or stars. His anger left him. Yes, they'd all get along, they'd play their games and wash their salad greens and all the rest of it without him. Mary had put her house on the market when Connolly died and was selling it without any help, and when Mungan's older sister needed prescriptions it was Rose the mouse that had got them by marching into some government office and telling off everybody in sight.

Behind him in the living room they were quiet as Lucy poured champagne into the glasses. Mary lifted hers. "Goodbye to a year of goodbyes. To the next one being cheerful." No point getting up. There'd be only four glasses, none for Walter, not with the heart ping that afternoon.

Lucy, face it, had been taking care of him with the heart for years. They'd get along as they'd done before they married and as they had all their lives. Now with his eyes adjusted he made out snowflakes drifting down in the light from neighbors' windows. It would be an inch or so deep on the balcony by morning. If he could get up he might still go out there with the woman who'd died in the snow.