Now I know someone is going to think she was a ghost, or a vampire, or some alien creature dressed up to look like a human being, but as Nero Wolfe says in the mysteries, that is just flummery. She was a person, nothing more than that, and you can forget that sort of stuff, even with what comes next. She was as real as I was.

“How did you know I'd been sick?” I asked.

She shrugged again. “I don't know, I suppose I just knew, that's all. But I saw you coming out of the hospital up the street.”

“I live there. But how could you know I was sick? Actually, I almost died. Well, that's not accurate: I did die, but I'm all right now.”

“What do we do here?”

“Nothing much, just take it easy. The rest of the world is gone, and I don't know where, so we just sort of take it easy, I guess. There used to be a lot of crazy invasions, about a year ago, but they stopped pretty suddenly.”

“I'll need a place to live,” she said. “How about the hospital?”

“Well, that's fine with me,” I said, “but actually, I was going to take over one of those little houses over there. If you like, you can move into the one next door.”

So she did, and I did, and it was nice for a few weeks. I always went very slowly with women. Or maybe it's that they went slow with me. I'm a big believer that women give off radiation or something, that keeps a man from moving in on them if they don't want him to. I don't know much about it, if you want the truth.

We had a cordial relationship, Opal and I. She kept up her yard and I kept up mine. We ate dinner together a lot, and we saw each other frequently through the day. Once-when she realized I was spending time at the Post Office-she came in with a letter and came up to my window and asked me for an air mail stamp. She had money. I sold it to her. She took it and said, “Thank you for removing those little white borders; I always have trouble with them and usually rip the stamp or leave some on the edge. That was very nice of you, sir.” And she left.

I was too stunned and pleased to even consider where she was mailing the letter to.

Or to whom she was writing.

One night we had dinner together and she made fried chicken. The grocery store had a large supply of food, more than enough for us for a long time. It did bother me, of course, why the milk was always fresh, and the meat was always freshly cut, but I assumed it was part of the scheme of things that kept the lights and water working, that took away the garbage and kept the streets clean. I never saw anyone who did it, but it got done, so I didn't worry about it.

Look: before I died, when the world was here, I drove a mail truck and I rode a Ronda. I didn't know how either of those things worked, I mean aside from cleaning the spark plugs once in a while or filling the gas tanks, or superficial repairs like that. I never worried about it, because it got done, and that was the long and short of it. No one was any different. It was the same after everything vanished. As long as it worked, I didn't have to think about the logic of it, and if it had started going sour I would have; but it didn't, and that's all I want to say about that. You'd have done the same.

Anyhow. We had this fried chicken dinner, which I liked a lot because she made it just the way I like it, very dark and golden and crunchy on the surface and dry underneath, without that thin oily film that makes your teeth feel greasy. And we had some wine.

Now I don't drink much. I won't apologize. I can't hold it. But we had wine.

And I got, well, a little drunk, just a little. And I tried to touch her. And she was cold. Very cold. Very very cold. And she yelled at me, “Don't ever touch me!”

Now that was just two weeks before she told me she loved me and wanted to be mine. I asked her what she meant by that, “be mine.” I never wanted to own anybody. And I certainly had the idea she didn't want to be anybody's possession, but there it was.

“I love you, and I want to stay with you.”

“There's no place to go.”

“That isn't what I meant. We could still live here together and not see each other. I mean, I love you and want to share the world with you.”

“I don't know if that's a good idea,” I said. I really wanted what she wanted, but I was afraid she'd get tired of me, and then what? Our situation wasn't too normal, at least by the usual standards I'd grown up with, if you catch my meaning.

So. She got angry, and went stalking out the door. I waited a few minutes to let her cool off, and then I went looking for her.

She had walked straight out to the edge of the world, and kept right on going. I don't think she knew I was following her.

I went back to my house and laid down.

When she came back, about two hours later I guess, I sat up and said, “Just who the dickens are you?”

She was furious, still furious. “Who the dickens are you?”

“I know who I am,” I said, getting angry too, “and I want to know who you are. I saw you walking out there off the edge. I can't do that!”

“Some of us are talented, some aren't. Learn to live with it.” Really a snotty answer, boy!

“I was here first! “

“That's what the Indians said and look what happened to them!”

“Dammit, are you responsible for all of this, for every crazy thing that happened?”

Then she really blew her stack and shouted at me. “Yes, you silly, irresponsible clown, I'm responsible. I did it all. I destroyed the world. Now what the hell are you going to do about it?”

I was too stunned to do anything. I hadn't really thought she was responsible, but when she admitted it, I didn't know what to say. I went over and tried to grab her by the shoulders, and I could feel that cold coming right off her. “You're not human,” I said.

“Oh, go to hell, you idiot. I'm as human as you are. Humaner.”

“You'd better tell me,” I said, with a threatening tone, “or else”

“Or else what, you nerd? Or else I'll wipe out this last little chunk and you and everything else and I'll be all alone the way I was before I did it!”

“Did it?”

“Yes, did it. Blew it all away. Just sat back and put my thumb in my mouth and said, 'Vanish everything but Eugene Harrison, wherever he is, and me, and a little town where I can be with him.' And when I took my thumb out of my mouth, everything was gone. Boston was gone, and the sky and the earth and every other thing, and I had to go walking through that glop out there till I found you.”

“Why?!”

“You don't even recognize me, do you, you idiot? You don't even remember Opal Sellers, do you?”

I stared at her.

“Dope!”

I continued staring.

“I was in your graduating class in high school. You were right behind me when we went up for our diplomas. I was wearing a white gown, and you were standing behind me during the invocation, and I was having my period, and I was spotting, and it had gone through the white gown, and you leaned over and told me and I was embarrassed to death, but you gave me your mortarboard and I held it across my backside and I thought it was the kindest, nicest thing anyone had ever done. And I loved you, you simple stupid insensitive sonofabitch!”

And she let down the screen or the image or the mask or whatever it was that she'd put up over herself, which was why she was cold to the touch, and inside there was Opal Sellers, who was one of the ugliest girls I'd ever seen, and she knew that was what I thought, and she didn't wait a minute, but put her thumb in her mouth and started mumbling around it… but nothing happened.

Then she went completely out of her head and started screaming that she'd passed on the power to me, and she couldn't do a thing about me, and she ran out the door.

I took off after her, and she went off the edge and kept going straight away like the Viking and the Stuka and the Hun and all the rest of them, which I guess she'd sent to liven things up for me so I'd feel heroic.