difference does it make? We're in a
situation we didn't ask to get in. Our luck put us here and I'm damned
if I'm going to kick a hole in the ceiling and yell for help."

Nora was going to reply, but at that moment Jim Wilson came striding out
front. He wore his big grin and he carried another half-dozen bottles of
beer. "Minna'll be out in a minute," he said. "Women are always slower
than hell."

He dropped into a chair and snapped the cap off a beer bottle with his
thumb. He held the bottle up and squinted through it, sighing gustily.
"Man! I ain't never had it so good." He tilted the bottle in salute, and
drank.

* * * * *

The sun was lowering in the west now, and when Minna reappeared it
seemed that she materialized from the shadows, so quietly did she move.
Jim Wilson opened another bottle and put it before her. "Here--have a
drink, baby."

Obediently, she tilted the bottle and drank.

"What do you plan to do?" Frank asked.

"It'll be dark soon," Wilson said. "We ought to go out and try to
scrounge some flashlights. I bet the power plants are dead. Probably
aren't any flashlights either."

"Are you going to stay here?" Nora asked. "Here in the Loop?"

He seemed surprised. "Why not? A man'd be a fool to walk out on all
this. All he wants to eat and drink. No goddam cops around. The life of
Reilly and I should walk out?"

"Aren't you afraid of what's going to happen?"

"I don't give a good goddam what's going to happen. What the hell!
Something's always going to happen."

"They didn't evacuate the city for nothing," Frank said.

"You mean we can all get killed?" Jim Wilson laughed. "Sure we can. We
could have got killed last week too. We could of got batted in the can
by a truck anytime we crossed the street." He emptied his bottle, threw
it accurately at a mirror over the cash register. The crash was
thunderous. "Trouble with you people, you're worry warts," he said with
an expansive grin. "Let's go get us some flashlights so we can find our
way to bed in one of those fancy hotels."

He got to his feet and Minna arose also, a little tired, a little
apprehensive, but entirely submissive. Jim Wilson said, "Come on, baby.
I sure won't want to lose _you_." He grinned at the others. "You guys
coming?"

Frank's eyes met Nora's. He shrugged. "Why not?" he said. "Unless you
want to start walking."

"I'm too tired," Nora said.

As they stepped out through the smashed wi