"Then we won't see the dawn. We won't live even that long."
"No."
"You explain things so well," she said bitterly. "A flaming shock wave. So graphic."
"Sorry. I've been thinking about it too much. Wondering what it will be like."
"Well, stop it." She came to me her face in my shoulder. She cried quietly. I held her with one arm and used the other to rub her neck, and I watched the streaming clouds, and I didn't think about what it would be like.
Didn't think about the ring of fire closing on us.
It was the wrong picture anyway.
I thought of how the oceans had boiled on the day side, so that the shock wave had been mostly steam to start with. I thought of the millions of square miles of ocean it had to cross. It would be cooler and wetter when it reached us. And the Earth's rotation would spin it like the whirlpool in a bathtub.
Two counterrotating hurricanes of live steam, one north, one south. That was how it would come. We were lucky. California would be near the eye of the northern one.
A hurricane wind of live steam. It would pick a man up and cook him in the air, strip the steamed flesh from him and cast him aside. It was going to hurt like hell.
We would never see the sunrise. In a way that was a pity. It would be spectacular.
Thick parallel streamers of clouds were drifting across the stars, too fast, their bellies white by city light. Jupiter dimmed, then went out. Could it be starting already? Heat lightning jumped --
"Aurora," I said.
"What?"
"There's a shock wave from the sun, too. There should be an aurora like nothing anybody's ever seen before."
Leslie laughed suddenly, jarringly. "It seems so strange, standing on a street corner talking like this! Stan, are we dreaming it?"
"We could pretend --"
"No. Most of the human race must be dead already."
"Yah."
"And there's nowhere to go."
"Damn it, you figured that out long ago, all by yourself. Why bring it up now?"
"You could have let me sleep," she said bitterly. "I was dropping off to sleep when you whispered in my ear. "
I didn't answer. It was true.
" 'Hot fudge sundae,' " she quoted. Then, "It wasn't a bad idea, actually.
Breaking my diet."
I started to giggle.
"Stop that."
"We could go back to your place now. Or my place. To sleep."
"I suppose. But we couldn't sleep, could we? No, don't say it. We take sleeping pills, and five hours from now we wake up screaming. I'd rather stay awake. At least we'll know what's happening."
But if we took all the pills... but I didn't say it. I said, "Then how about a picnic?"
"Where?"
"The beach, maybe. Who cares? We can decide later."
IV
All the markets were closed. But the liquor store next to the Red Barn was one I'd been using for years. They sold us foie gras, crackers, a couple of bottles of chilled champagne, six kinds of cheese and a hell of a lot of nuts -- I took one of everything -- more crackers, a bag of ice, frozen rumaki hors d'oeuvres, a fifth of an ancient brandy that cost twenty-five bucks, a matching fifth of Cherry Heering for Leslie, six packs of beer and Bitter Orange...
By the time we had piled all that into a dinky store cart it was raining. Big fat drops spattered in flurries across the acre of plate glass that fronted the store. Wind howled around the corners.
The salesman was in a fey mood, bursting with energy. He'd been watching the moon all night. "And now this!" he exclaimed as he packed our loot into bags. He was a small, muscular old man with thick arms and shoulders. "It never rains like this in California. It comes down straight and heavy when it comes at all. Takes days to build up."
"I know." I wrote him a check, feeling guilty about it. He'd known me long enough to trust me. But the check was good. There were funds to cover it. Before opening hours the check would be ash, and all the banks in the world would be bubbling in the heat of the sun. But that was hardly my fault.
He piled our bags in the cart, set himself at the door. "Now when the rain lets up, we'll run these out. Ready?" I got ready to open the door. The rain came like someone had thrown a bucket of water at the window. In a moment it had stopped, though water still streamed down the glass. "Now!" cried the salesman, and I threw the door open and we were off. We reached the car laughing like maniacs. The wind howled around us, sweeping up spray and hurling it at us.
"We picked a good break. You know what this weather reminds me of? Kansas," said the salesman. "During a tornado."
Then suddenly the sky was full of gravel! We yelped and ducked, and the car rang to a million tiny concussions, and I got the car door unlocked and pulled Leslie and the salesman in after me. We rubbed our bruised heads and looked out at white gravel bouncing everywhere.
The salesman picked a small white pebble out of his collar. He put it in Leslie's hand, and she gave a startled squeak and handed it to me, and it was cold.
"Hail," said the salesman. "Now I really don't get it."
Neither did I. I could only think that it had something to do with the nova. But what? How?
"I've got to get back," said the salesman. The hail had expended itself in one brief flurry. He braced himself, then went out of the car like a marine taking a hill. We never saw him again.
The clouds were churning up there, forming and disappearing, sliding past each other faster than I'd ever seen clouds move; their bellies glowing by city light.
"It must be the nova," Leslie said shivering.
"But how? If the shock wave were here already, we'd be dead -- or at least deaf. Hail?"
"Who cares? Stan, we don't have time!"
I shook myself. "All right. What would you like to do most, right now?"
"Watch a baseball game."
"It's two in the morning," I pointed out.
"That lets out a lot of things, doesn't it?"
"Right. We've hopped our last bar. We've seen our last play, and our last clean movie. What's left?"
"Looking in jewelry store windows."
"Seriously? Your last night on Earth?"
She considered, then answered. "Yes."
By damn, she meant it. I couldn't think of anything duller. "Westwood or Beverly
Hills?"
"Both."
"Now, look --"
"Beverly Hills, then."
We drove through another spatter of rain and hail -- a capsule tempest. We parked half a block from the Tiffany salesroom.
The sidewalk was one continuous puddle. Second-hand rain dripped on us from various levels of the buildings overhead. Leslie said, "This is great. There must be half a dozen jewelry stores in walking distance."
"I was thinking of driving."
"No no no, you don't have the proper attitude. One must window shop on foot.
It's in the rules."
"But the rain!"
"You won't die of pneumonia. You won't have time," she said, too grimly.
Tiffany's had a small branch office in Beverly Hills, but they didn't put expensive things in the windows at night. There were a few fascinating toys, that was all.