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"Yes—and before that it was the Olympics, and before that the World’s Series, and before that the Presidential Elections, and before that I-don’t-know-what. It’s been just one excuse after another for fifty years now. I don’t think we’re ever going to get a room to ourselves or an egg or anything."

"All right—call me a failure!" said Lou. "What can I do? I work hard and make good money, but the whole thing, practically, is taxed away for defense and old age pensions. And if it wasn’t taxed away, where you think we’d find a vacant room to rent? Iowa, maybe? Well, who wants to live on the outskirts of Chicago?"

Em put her arms around his neck. "Lou, hon, I’m not calling you a failure. The Lord knows you’re not. You just haven’t had a chance to be anything or have anything because Gramps and the rest of his generation won’t leave and let somebody else take over."

"Yeah, yeah," said Lou gloomily. "You can’t exactly blame ’em, though, can you? I mean, I wonder how quick we’ll knock off the anti-gerasone when we get Gramps’ age."

"Sometimes I wish there wasn’t any such thing as anti-gerasone!" said Emerald passionately. "Or I wish it was made out of something real expensive and hard-to-get instead of mud and dandelions. Sometimes I wish folks just up and died regular as clockwork, without anything to say about it, instead of deciding themselves how long they’re going to stay around. There ought to be a law against selling the stuff to anybody over one hundred and fifty."

"Fat chance of that," said Lou, "with all the money and votes the old people’ve got." He looked at her closely. "You ready to up and die, Em?"

"Well, for heaven’s sakes, what a thing to say to your wife. Hon! I’m not even one hundred yet." She ran her hands lightly over her firm, youthful figure, as though for confirmation. "The best years of my life are still ahead of me. But you can bet that when one hundred and fifty rolls around, old Em’s going to pour her anti-gerasone down the sink, and quit taking up room, and she’ll do it smiling."

"Sure, sure," said Lou, "you bet. That’s what they all say. How many you heard of doing it?"

"There was that man in Delaware."

"Aren’t you getting kind of tired of talking about him, Em? That was five months ago."

"All right, then—Gramma Winkler, right here in the same building."

"She got smeared by a subway."

"That’s just the way she picked to go," said Em.

"Then what was she doing carrying a six-pack of anti-gerasone when she got it?"

Emerald shook her head wearily and covered her eyes. "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno. All I know is, something’s just got to be done." She sighed. "Sometimes I wish they’d left a couple of diseases kicking around somewhere, so I could get one and go to bed for a little while. Too many people!" she cried, and her words cackled and gabbled and died in a thousand asphalt-paved, skyscraper-walled courtyards.

Lou laid his hand on her shoulder tenderly. "Aw, hon, I hate to see you down in the dumps like this."

"If we just had a car, like the folks used to in the old days," said Em, "we could go for a drive, and get away from people for a little while. Gee—if those weren’t the days!"

"Yeah," said Lou, "before they’d used up all the metal."

"We’d hop in, and Pop’d drive up to a filling station and say, ’Fillerup!’"

"That was the nuts, wasn’t it—before they’d used up all the gasoline."

"And we’d go for a carefree ride in the country."

"Yeah—all seems like a fairyland now, doesn’t it, Em? Hard to believe there really used to be all that space between cities."

"And when we got hungry," said Em, "we’d find ourselves a restaurant, and walk in, bit as you please and say, ’I’ll have a steak and French-fries, I believe,’ or, ’How are the pork chops today?’ " She licked her lips, and her eyes glistened.

"Yeah man!" growled Lou. "How’d you like a hamburger with the works, Em?"

"Mmmmmmmm."

"If anybody’d offered us processed seaweed in those days, we would have spit right in his eye, huh, Em?"

"Or processed sawdust,"