After a silence, Richard asks, "What about Lois and George?"

"Asleep. Mom in Park Royal and Dad in his shop."

"Oh."

The generator huffs and stutters and kicks out and then back in. The lights flicker. They now feel fragile, and the youthful sense of infinity that got them to this moment in their lives is gone. "Richard, please remove the paper bags from my head. I want all of us to go out for a walk."

"But the rain—"

"What is your point? Get some flashlights and rain gear."

Minutes later, the seven walk through the street, where a rain of stunning proportion turns the sky into a sea. "Look," Pam says, "each drop is like a glass of water." Nobody can remember the last time it rained so hard. Water clobbers them on the head; water renders them deaf. Down the street they march, without lights, Karen inher wheelchair, soaked and sad, down the street until they reach the bottom. Richard says, "Karen, can you tell us what's going on—why we're here?"

"Richard—" In spite of the water that gullies down her hood, she looks him calmly in the eye. "The world was never meant to end like in a Hollywood motion picture—you know: a chain of explosions and stars having sex amid the fire and teeth and blood and rubies. That's all fake shit."

"So exactly what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, shh!" Karen whispers as they stand in the rain, drenched, on the pavement at the foot of Rabbit Lane bordering the entrance to the forest. "Listen: There is an older woman in Florida. She's in her kitchen and she hears her wind chimes tinkle. On the kitchen chairs are bags of groceries bought yesterday but never placed in their cupboards. It's cool out and she is wearing a nightie. She walks out of the kitchen door and down to a nearby dock where a warm wind sweeps over her head and through the fabric she's wearing. She sits down and looks at the sky with its stars and satellites and thinks of her family and her grandchildren. She's smiling and she's humming a song, one that her grandchildren had been playing over and over that week. "Bobo and the Jets"? No—"Benny and the Jets." Suddenly, she's sleepy. She lies down on the deck and closes her eyes and sleeps. And that's that. She is the last person. The world's over now. Our time begins."

PART 3

27 FUN IS STUPID

Jared here, one year later…

… lock up your daughters. And your smutty magazines. And your sofa, for God's sake, because you never know, I may go and hump it like a Great Dane. Har bar. Listen to my friends and you'd think I was the world's biggest perv. Right. And take a look at them now, will you—one year later: useless sacks of dung they are, slumped around Karen's fireplace watching an endless string of videos, the floor clogged with Kleenex boxes and margarine tubs overflowing with diamonds and emeralds, rings and gold bullion—a parody of wealth.

Between tapes what do they do? They have money fights, lobbing and tossing Krugerrands, rubies and thousand-dollar bills at each other; at other times they make paper airplanes from prints by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and shoot them into the fireplace.

During one particularly long lull between videos, I, Jared, slip to the side of the house and turn off the Honda gas generator Linus has rigged up. The power dies and triggers a clump of groans amid the clan. It's at this point I choose to appear outside the window—across the lawn—a ball of white light. Wendy is the first to see me and she calls my name.

"Jared?"

"What's that, Wendy?" Megan asks.

"It's Jared. Look. He's back."

All eyes gaze rapt while I gavotte across the lawn in my old football uniform, the brown and whites.

In the silence I glow like a deep-sea creature, like a pale moon, and I flow several feet above the ground, and then scoot through the one unsmashed pane of the glass patio doors as though catching a fumbled ball. I walk across the room as though on an airport conveyor belt and out the other wall. Hamilton runs out to the car port but I'm not there.

Wendy lights candles and a few moments later I enter the room from the ceiling, stopping with my feet above the fireplace, where I introduce myself:

"Hey guys. It's me—Jared. Fucking A—I'm so happy to see all of you."

"Jared?" Karen says.

"Hi, Karen. Hello everybody."

"Jared, what are you? Where are you? Are you ofokay?" asks Richard.

"I'm a ghost and I guess I'm blissed out, Richard. I'm high on life. It's the Hotel California. Yessiree."

"What are you doing here?" Megan asks, recognizing me from my old high school yearbook photo.

"I'm here to help you out," I say as I begin to dissolve through the floor.

"Wait!" Wendy shouts. "Don't go!"

I'm halfway through the floor: "Man, this floor feels good.""You can feel the floor?" Linus asks.

"What's heaven like?" Richard asks

"What happens when you die?" Pam asks.

"Show us a miracle, big boy" Hamilton says.

Only my head lies above the floor: "Oof!—you should try this sometime. This floor beats Cheryl Anderson any day of the week."

"Jared!" Karen's shout is urgent.

"All of you," I say, "—you're birds born without wings; you're bees who pollinate cut flowers. Don't pee yourselves. I'll return soon. Let's get weird."

It's the next day and Richard is growing impatient with Hamilton and Pam, dawdling as the two step out of the minivan, wobbly and silly.

"You go first, Barbara Hutton."

"No wayyyy, Mr. Hefner. You first."

"Pals call me Hef."

"Listen you two freaks, can we just step to it?"

Before them is a wide, faded tar piazza strewn with skeletons, cars parked at odd angles, and rusted shopping carts. Beyond this is the faded and ratty looking Save-On supermarket. Its glass doors are like gums without dentures.

"Ooh. Miss Thing needs a drinky."

"Hamilton—I mean Hef—let's get in and out as quickly as we can."

"Okay, okay, Richard. Don't cack your nappies."

"Richard," Karen says, "I'm going to stay out in the van. You three go in. I need some sun."

"You want anything special, Kare?"

"Yeah, cotton balls … a hot oil treatment … some licorice if it's still any good."

"Gotcha."

Karen sits alone in the minivan's front seat, sifting through CD's and enjoying a freakish heat wave warming the remains of the city. I, Jared, become manifest."Hi, Karen."

"Jared! Where are you?"

"Out here." She swivels to see me standing outside the door atop a rusted shopping cart on its side. I'm hard to see during the day—like gas flames against a blue sky.

"Jared, what's the deal here? I've got a thousand questions I want to ask you."

"Ask away, Karen. You look good. How are you feeling?"

"Crappy. But my arms are getting pretty strong. My legs—they're kind of going downhill now. They're deteriorating. I can only barely walk around the house and stuff. What about you—do ghosts have pain? I mean, do you hurt?"

"Not the way you do."

"No. I imagine not." She changes gears: "So cough up the truth, Jared, because I'm really mad at you or whoever did this to me. You deep-freezed me for seventeen years and left me with a puppet body. And who smashed in the patio door last year when everything started falling apart?"

"Actually, that was me at the door."

"You?"

"Apologies, Kare. I screwed up—it was my first time back here. I was going to give a you a speech. I decided not to—I was^too embarrassed about wrecking the door. It was just like the night I walked into Brian Alwin's parents' patio door in tenth grade. Duh. I went and helped Wendy instead. She got lost in the forest coming here from the dam.

"You scared the crap out of me."

"Hey—it won't happen again. I've got good control of it now—my astral presence, I mean." I do a double flip there and land atop the rusted shopping cart. "Sexy or what?"