As if in answer, there came another explosion. It was followed by half a dozen more, marching off to the southeast like the diminishing footsteps of a giant. From above them came another thud, and a faint cry of rage.

"I don't think the crazy ones will have the brains to leave the city any more than that guy up there can find his way to the stairs," Clay said.

For a moment he thought the look on Tom's face was shock, and then he realized it was something else. Amazement, maybe. And dawning hope. "Oh, Christ," he said, and actually slapped the side of his face with one hand. "They won't leave. I never thought of that."

"There might be something else," Alice said. She was biting her lip and looking down at her hands, which were working together in a restless knot. She forced herself to look up at Clay. "It might actually be safer to go after dark."

"Why's that, Alice?"

"If they can't see you—if you can get behind something, if you can hide—they forget about you almost right away."

"What makes you think that, honey?" Tom asked.

"Because I hid from the man who was chasing me," she said in a low voice. "The guy in the yellow shirt. This was just before I saw you. I hid in an alley. Behind one of those Dumpster thingies? I was scared, because I thought there might not be any way back out if he came in after me, but it was all I could think of to do. I saw him standing at the mouth of the alley, looking around, walking around and around—walking the worry-circle, my grampa would say—and at first I thought he was playing with me, you know? Because he had to've seen me go into the alley, I was only a few feet ahead of him . . . just a few feet . . . almost close enough to grab . . ." Alice began to tremble. "But once I was in there, it was like . . . I dunno . . ."

"Out of sight, out of mind," Tom said. "But if he was that close, why did you stop running?"

"Because I couldn't anymore," Alice said. "I just couldn't. My legs were like rubber, and I felt like I was going to shake myself apart from the inside. But it turned out I didn't have to run, anyway. He walked the worry-circle a few more times, muttering that crazy talk, and then just walked off. I could hardly believe it. I thought he had to be trying to fake me out. . . but at the same time I knew he was too crazy for anything like that." She glanced briefly at Clay, then back down at her hands again. "My problem was running into him again. I should have stuck with you guys the first time. I can be pretty stupid sometimes."

"You were sca—" Clay began, and then the biggest explosion yet came from somewhere east of them, a deafening KER-WHAM! that made them all duck and cover their ears. They heard the window in the lobby shatter.

"My . . . God, " Mr. Ricardi said. His wide eyes underneath that bald head made him look to Clay like Little Orphan Annie's mentor, Daddy Warbucks. "That might have been the new Shell superstation they put in over on Kneeland. The one all the taxis and the Duck Boats use. It was the right direction."

Clay had no idea if Ricardi was right, he couldn't smell burning gasoline (at least not yet), but his visually trained mind's eye could see a triangle of city concrete now burning like a propane torch in the latening day.

"Can a modern city burn?" he asked Tom. "One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?"

"That lantern-kicking business was nothing but an urban legend," Alice said. She was rubbing the back of her neck as if she were getting a bad headache. "Mrs. Myers said so, in American History."

"Sure it could," Tom said. "Look what happened to the World Trade Center, after those airplanes hit it."

"Airplanes full of jet fuel," Mr. Ricardi said pointedly.

As if the bald desk clerk had conjured it, the smell of burning gasoline began to come to them, wafting through the shattered lobby windows and sliding beneath the door to the inner office like bad mojo.

"I guess you were on the nose about that Shell station," Tom remarked.

Mr. Ricardi went to the door between his office and the lobby. He unlocked it and opened it. What Clay could see of the lobby beyond already looked deserted and gloomy and somehow irrelevant. Mr. Ricardi sniffed audibly, then closed the door and locked it again. "Fainter already," he said.

"Wishful thinking," Clay said. "Either that or your nose is getting used to the aroma."

"I think he might be right," Tom said. "That's a good west wind out there—by which I mean the air's moving toward the ocean—and if what we just heard was that new station they put in on the corner of Kneeland and Washington, by the New England Medical Center—"

"That's the one, all right," Mr. Ricardi said. His face registered glum satisfaction. "Oh, the protests! The smart money fixed that, believe you m—"

Tom overrode him. "—then the hospital will be on fire by now . . . along with anybody left inside, of course . . ."

"No," Alice said, then put a hand over her mouth.

"I think yes. And the Wang Center's next in line. The breeze may drop by full dark, but if it doesn't, everything east of the Mass Pike is apt to be so much toasted cheese by ten p.m."

"We're west of there," Mr. Ricardi pointed out.

"Then we're safe enough," Clay said. "At least from that one." He went to Mr. Ricardi's little window, stood on his toes, and peered out onto Essex Street.

"What do you see?" Alice asked. "Do you see people?"

"No . . . yes. One man. Other side of the street."

"Is he one of the crazy ones?" she asked.

"I can't tell." But Clay thought he was. It was the way he ran, and the jerky way he kept looking back over his shoulder. Once, just before he went around the corner and onto Lincoln Street, the guy almost ran into a fruit display in front of a grocery store. And although Clay couldn't hear him, he could see the man's lips moving. "Now he's gone."

"No one else?" Tom asked.

"Not at the moment, but there's smoke." Clay paused. "Soot and ash, too. I can't tell how much. The wind's whipping it around."

"Okay, I'm convinced," Tom said. "I've always been a slow learner but never a no-learner. The city's going to burn and nobody's going to stand pat but the crazy people."

"I think that's right," Clay said. And he didn't think this was true of just Boston, but for the time being, Boston was all he could bear to consider. In time he might be able to widen his view, but not until he knew Johnny was safe. Or maybe the big picture was always going to be beyond him. He drew small pictures for a living, after all. But in spite of everything, the selfish fellow who lived like a limpet on the underside of his mind had time to send up a clear thought. It came in colors of blue and dark sparkling gold. Why did it have to happen today, of all days? Just after I finally made a solid strike?

"Can I come with you guys, if you go?" Alice asked.

"Sure," Clay said. He looked at the desk clerk. "You can, too, Mr. Ricardi."

"I shall stay at my post," Mr. Ricardi said. He spoke loftily, but before they shifted away from Clay's, his eyes looked sick.

"I don't think you'll get in Dutch with the management for locking up and leaving under these circumstances," Tom said. He spoke in the gentle fashion Clay was so much coming to like.

"I shall stay at my post," he said again. "Mr. Donnelly, the day manager, went out to make the afternoon deposit at the bank and left me in charge. If he comes back, perhaps then . . ."

"Please, Mr. Ricardi," Alice said. "Staying here is no good."

But Mr. Ricardi, who had once more crossed his arms over his thin chest, only shook his head.

They moved one of the queen anne chairs aside, and mr. ricardi unlocked the front doors for them. Clay looked out. He could see no people moving in either direction, but it was hard to tell for sure because the air was now full of fine dark ash. It danced in the breeze like black snow.