"Come on," he said. They were only going next door to start with, to the Metropolitan Cafe.

"I'm going to relock the door and put the chair back in place," Mr. Ricardi said, "but I'll be listening. If you run into trouble—if there are more of those . . .people . . . hiding in the Metropolitan, for instance—and you have to retreat, just remember to shout, 'Mr. Ricardi, Mr. Ricardi, we need you!' That way I'll know it's safe to open the door. Is that understood?"

"Yes," Clay said. He squeezed Mr. Ricardi's thin shoulder. The desk clerk flinched, then stood firm (although he showed no particular sign of pleasure at being so saluted). "You're all right. I didn't think you were, but I was wrong."

"I hope I do my best," the bald man said stiffly. "Just remember—"

"We'll remember," Tom said. "And we'll be over there maybe ten minutes. If anything goes wrong over here, you give a shout."

"All right." But Clay didn't think he would. He didn't know why he thought that, it made no sense to think a man wouldn't give a shout to save himself if he was in trouble, but Clay did think it.

Alice said, "Please change your mind, Mr. Ricardi. It's not safe in Boston, you must know that by now."

Mr. Ricardi only looked away. And Clay thought, not without wonder, This is how a man looks when he's deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.

"Come on," Clay said. "Let's make some sandwiches while we've still got electricity to see by."

"Some bottled water wouldn't hurt, either," Tom said.

The electricity failed just as they were wrapping the last of their sandwiches in the Metropolitan Cafe's tidy, white-tiled little kitchen. By then Clay had tried three more times to get through to Maine: once to his old house, once to Kent Pond Elementary, where Sharon taught, and once to Joshua Chamberlain Middle School, which Johnny now attended. In no case did he get further than Maine's 207 area code.

When the lights in the Metropolitan went out, Alice screamed in what at first seemed to Clay like total darkness. Then the emergency lights came on. Alice was not much comforted. She was clinging to Tom with one arm. In the other she was brandishing the bread-knife she'd used to cut the sandwiches with. Her eyes were wide and somehow flat.

"Alice, put that knife down," Clay said, a little more harshly than he'd intended. "Before you cut one of us with it."

"Or yourself," Tom said in that mild and soothing voice of his. His spectacles glinted in the glare of the emergency lights.

She put it down, then promptly picked it up again. "I want it," she said. "I want to take it with me. You have one, Clay. I want one."

"All right," he said, "but you don't have a belt. We'll make you one from a tablecloth. For now, just be careful."

Half the sandwiches were roast beef and cheese, half ham and cheese. Alice had wrapped them in Saran Wrap. Under the cash register Clay found a stack of sacks with DOGGY BAG written on one side and people bag written on the other. He and Tom tumbled the sandwiches into a pair of these. Into a third bag they put three bottles of water.

The tables had been made up for a dinner-service that was never going to happen. Two or three had been tumbled over but most stood perfect, with their glasses and silver shining in the hard light of the emergency boxes on the walls. Something about their calm orderliness hurt Clay's heart. The cleanliness of the folded napkins, and the little electric lamps on each table. Those were now dark, and he had an idea it might be a long time before the bulbs inside lit up again.

He saw Alice and Tom gazing about with faces as unhappy as his felt, and a desire to cheer them up—almost manic in its urgency—came over him. He remembered a trick he used to do for his son. He wondered again about Johnny's cell phone and the panic-rat took another nip out of him. Clay hoped with all his heart the damned phone was lying forgotten under Johnny-Gee's bed among the dust-kitties, with its battery flat-flat-flat.

"Watch this carefully," he said, setting his bag of sandwiches aside, "and please note that at no time do my hands leave my wrists." He grasped the hanging skirt of a tablecloth.

"This is hardly the time for parlor tricks," Tom said.

"I want to see," Alice said. For the first time since they'd met her, there was a smile on her face. It was small but it was there.

"We need the tablecloth," Clay said, "it won't take a second, and besides, the lady wants to see." He turned to Alice. "But you have to say a magic word. Shazam will do."

"Shazam!" she said, and Clay pulled briskly with both hands.

He hadn't done the trick in two, maybe even three years, and it almost didn't work. And yet at the same time, his mistake—some small hesitation in the pull, no doubt—actually added to the charm of the thing. Instead of staying where they were while the tablecloth magically disappeared from beneath them, all the place-settings on the table moved about four inches to the right. The glass nearest to where Clay was standing actually wound up with its circular base half on and half off the table.

Alice applauded, now laughing. Clay took a bow with his hands held out.

"Can we go now, O great Vermicelli?" Tom asked, but even Tom was smiling. Clay could see his small teeth in the emergency lights.

"Soon's I rig this," Clay said. "She can carry the knife on one side and a bag of sandwiches on the other. You can tote the water." He folded the tablecloth over into a triangle shape, then rolled it quickly into a belt. He slipped a bag of sandwiches onto this by the bag's carrier handles, then put the tablecloth around the girl's slim waist, having to take a turn and a half and tie the knot in back to make the thing secure. He finished by sliding the serrated bread-knife home on the right side.

"Say, you're pretty handy," Tom said.

"Handy is dandy," Clay said, and then something else blew up outside, close enough to shake the cafe. The glass that had been standing half on and half off the table lost its balance, tumbled to the floor, and shattered. The three of them looked at it. Clay thought to tell them he didn't believe in omens, but that would only make things worse. Besides, he did.

Clay had his reasons for wanting to go back to the atlantic avenue Inn before they set off. One was to retrieve his portfolio, which he'd left sitting in the lobby. Another was to see if they couldn't find some sort of makeshift scabbard for Alice's knife—he reckoned even a shaving kit would do, if it was long enough. A third was to give Mr. Ricardi another chance to join them. He was surprised to find he wanted this even more than he wanted the forgotten portfolio of drawings. He had taken an odd, reluctant liking to the man.

When he confessed this to Tom, Tom surprised him by nodding. "It's the way I feel about anchovies on pizza," he said. "I tell myself there's something disgusting about a combination of cheese, tomato sauce, and dead fish . . . but sometimes that shameful urge comes over me and I can't stand against it."

A blizzard of black ash and soot was blowing up the street and between the buildings. Car alarms warbled, burglar alarms brayed, and fire alarms clanged. There seemed to be no heat in the air, but Clay could hear the crackle of fire to the south and east of them. The smell of burning was stronger, too. They heard voices shouting, but these were back toward the Common, where Boylston Street widened.

When they got next door to the Atlantic Avenue Inn, Tom helped Clay push one of the Queen Anne chairs away from one of the broken glass door-panels. The lobby beyond was now a pool of gloom in which Mr. Ricardi's desk and the sofa were only darker shadows; if Clay hadn't already been in there, he would have had no idea what those shadows represented. Above the elevators a single emergency light guttered, the boxed battery beneath it buzzing like a horsefly.