"Forget what!?"

"How much we loved them."

"They knew!"

"Did they? Sure, we told each other, but maybe not enough of us ever wrote or waved when they passed and just yelled 'Love!' you think?"

"Hell, Bella, they're on TV every night!"

"Yeah, but that don't count. Has anyone, since they left us, come here to these steps and said? Maybe those voices down there, ghosts or whatever, have been here every night for years, pushing that music box, and nobody thought, or tried, to just whisper or yell all the love we had all the years. Why not?"

'Why not?" Zelda stared down into the long darkness where perhaps shadows moved and maybe a piano lurched clumsily among the shadows. "You're right."

If I'm right," said Bella, "and you say so, there's only one thing to do-"

"You mean you and me?"

"Who else? Quiet. Come on."

They moved down a step. In the same instant lights came

on around them, in a window here, another there. A screen door opened somewhere and angry words shot out into the night:

"Hey, what's going on?"

"Pipe down!"

"You know what time it is?" "My God," Bella whispered, "everyone else hears now!"

"No, no." Zelda looked around wildly. "They'll spoil everything!"

"I'm calling the cops!" A window slammed.

"God," said Bella, "if the cops come-"

"What?"

"It'll be all wrong. If anyone's going to tell them to take it easy, pipe down, it's gotta be us. We care, don't we?"

"God, yes, but-"

"No buts. Grab on. Here we go."

The two voices murmured below and the piano tuned itself with hiccups of sound as they edged down another step and another, their mouths dry, hearts hammering, and the night so dark they could see only the faint streetlight at the stair bottom, the single street illumination so far away it was sad being there all by itself, waiting for shadows to move.