Mr. Williams, introduced to us in the first sentence of this story, is to discuss on the following pages, those last few hours of his visit in New York. This is to be a very special time, and he will describe the circumstances surrounding the opportunity to be emotionally refreshed by that wonderful friendship of Paul and Helen Pierson. And thus Bradbury will share with us, the reader, the enjoyable, happy times of these old friends.

But it's not to be so. For what happens is a sorely unexpected transgression of grand expectations.

Bradbury here, with this disturbing vignette, takes us for a quick sojourn to the heart of unfamiliarity. Here, we are to discover that we often lose something of the people we knew, or we lose the people we once loved, to the unfathomable layers of the human condition. Tho comfortable with the lovely and wonderful, we can easily find ourselves helpless at the wretched and destructive, that steals away that what we once held dear.

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