In 1967, Westwood Village had probably been the coolest part of L.A., the way Melrose was a generation later. In the home timeline, it got commercial. Then it got grimy. Then it got redeveloped and turned cool again, even if not quite so cool as the first time around. Then the cycle started over.

In this alternate, time might as well have stopped when the bombs came down. And after it stopped, it might have started running backwards. Without running water to fight them, fires flattened a lot of the shops and restaurants and apartment buildings that had stood in the Village. The buildings here now-the house where she was staying included-were built from rubble and wreckage. The market had sprung up in one of the fire-born open spaces.

“How much for those avocados?” Liz asked an old lady in a broad-brimmed straw hat-not quite a sombrero, but close.

“'Dime apiece,” she answered. “Three for a quarter.”

Liz had all she could do not to giggle. Old Time money still circulated here. So did newer coins on the same standard. Prices were ridiculously cheap, at least by the home timeline's standards. Liz had had to learn about pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters before she came here. In the home timeline, a dollar-the smallest coin around-wouldn't come close to buying what a penny bought here. And a Benjamin -a hundred dollars-was worth somewhere between a dime and a quarter.

No matter how cheap things seemed, you couldn't take the first offer. That was an insult. “I'll give you a quarter for five,” Liz said. “They aren't very big.” She'd had to practice sounding that snotty.

The old lady let out a squawk. She told Liz what a snippy, rude thing she was. All this was as formal as a dance. They settled on four avocados for twenty-five cents, the way they'd both known they would. But social rules had to be followed even when they made no sense-maybe especially when they made no sense.

More bangs and booms came from the north. “Are those getting closer?” Liz asked. That wasn't in the rules about haggling, but it was liable to be more important.