I searched for a toast, but there were just too many possibilities, all depressing. We drank without toasting. And then carefully set the snifters down and slid forward into each other’s arms. We could sit that way, face to face, leaning sideways against each other.

“We’re going to die,” she said.

“Maybe not.”

“Get used to the idea, I have,” she said. “Look at you, you’re all nervous now. Afraid of dying. Hasn’t it been a lovely night?”

“Unique. I wish I’d known in time to take you to dinner.”

Thunder came in a string of six explosions. Like bombs in an air raid. “Me too,” she said when we could hear again.

“I wish I’d known this afternoon.”

“Pecan pralines!”

“Farmer’s Market. Double-roasted peanuts. Who would you have murdered, if you’d had the time?”

“There was a girl in my sorority—”

—and she was guilty of sibling rivalry, so Leslie claimed. I named an editor who kept changing his mind. Leslie named one of my old girl friends, I named her only old boy friend that I knew about, and it got to be kind of fun before we ran out. My brother Mike had forgotten my birthday once. The fiend.

The lights flickered, then came on again.

Too casually, Leslie asked, “Do you really think the sun might go back to normal?”

“It better be back to normal. Otherwise we’re dead anyway. I wish we could see Jupiter.”

“Dammit, answer me! Do you think it was a flare?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Yellow dwarf stars don’t go nova.”

“What if ours did?”

“The astronomers know a lot about novas,” I said. “More than you’d guess. They can see them coming months ahead. Sol is a gee-naught yellow dwarf. They don’t go nova at all. They have to wander off the main sequence first, and that takes millions of years.”