Ralph was at his desk, which had become a life raft in this sea of destruction. Preserved upon it: pictures of Kathleen, an antique clock, his first editions of chandler.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I've already lost enough. First Kathleen--"

"She'll be back, Ralphie."

"--Then Duffy running off. I'm damned if I'm going to leave this house. It's practically all I've got left." He put his hand to his bandaged brow. "Besides a permanant headache."

The bedroom was uninhabitable, so the next night he made up a bed for himself on the sofa. The aftershocks had continued through the day--the seismologists up at Cal Tech were predicting they'd go on for several weeks after a quake of that magnitude--but in the brightness and warmth of the day the tremors hadn't bothered him. Once darkness fell however, he began to feel jittery. Sleep did not come easily. Twice he woke from a light doze thinking he felt plaster dust on his face.

The third time, it was the sound that stirred him, that of somebody eating. He rose, picking up the heavy-duty flashlight he'd left on the floor, and followed the noise through to the kitchen. He could just make out a dimunitive figure in the darkness, sitting at the table. It wasn't a child. A sliver of light caught the whiskers around its chin.

"Ralphie?" The interloper's voice was deep and warm.

Ralph snapped on the light.

"Too bright." said Duffy, squinting. He was sitting up at the table with a tub of peach ice cream in front of him. There was a spoon and a bowl beside it, but he'd apparently decided they weren't worth the bother, and plunged his snout into the tub. "Boy," he said, "You look like hell." Ralph put his hands to his throbbing head. His concussion was plainly worse than he thought.

"I know, I shouldn't be eating ice cream," Duffy was saying. "Our digestive systems weren't designed for sugar. But I thought, What the hell? Why not celebrate? It's not every day that a dog gets to talk with it's master."