But it was gone quickly too, just the memory and no lingering ache. There was a flashlight in her guitar case; she reached in and fumbled for it, searching by touch in complete blackness, with only a fading gray gloaming towards the front of the cafe-the sun was just down behind the Coast Range. The batteries were fresh, but nothing happened when she thumbed the switch except a click, more felt through her thumb than heard.

Wait a minute. There's nothing coming in the front windows from the streetlights! And they went on five minutes ago. It's as dark as a yard up a hog's butt.

She could hear a tinkling crash, and shouts, faint with distance. This isn't a blown fuse. Plus every dog in Corvallis was howling, from the sound of it.

"Well, people, it must be a power failure," she said, her trained singer's voice carrying through the hubbub and helping quiet it. "And in a second, our good host, Dennis, will-"

The flick of a lighter and then candlelight broke through the darkness, looking almost painfully bright. The Toad was a long rectangle, with the musicians' dais at the rear, the bar along one side and a little anteroom at the front, where a plate-glass window gave on to Monroe Avenue. The evening outside was overcast, damp and mildly chilly; which in the Willamette Valley meant it could have been October, or Christmas.

With the streetlights out, the whole town of Corvallis, Oregon, must be dark as the proverbial porker's lower intestine. There were more crashes, a few more shouts, and more sounds of bending metal and tinkling glass, and the chorus of howls gave way to ragged barking.

Dennis at the bar was a friend of hers; he got her drinks for free, not to mention gigs like this now and then. Wearily she cursed her luck; it was a pretty good crowd for a weekday, too; mostly students from OSU, with some leftover hippies as well-most of the valley towns had some, though Corvallis wasn't swarming with them the way Eugene was-and they'd all.given a good hand to the first two tunes.