Thunder follows lightning like travails follow a bride. The sky so dark, so grim, purple like a bruise, and I sit in my green wingback sipping the last of the whiskey. She’d gone out for ice cream, said she’d be back in a little while. Ice cream and white bread, that was all that was on the grocery list.

The room lights up, just for an instant, white light driving the shadows away, and it’s like those photos you see from the moon, everything sharp and crisp, none of the distortion of eddying air: my heart was rent, and I swallow the last of my glass full of fire.

Ice cream, and hell, we’ve got brown bread, I just wanted, for some reason, the listless no-taste of white, and…

The police phoned, very polite, and for all I know they’re still on the line, whispering hollow platitudes.

Thunder follows lightning, and my wife is gone, taken down in the parking lot by some horrible accident, and ice cream is melting somewhere on pavement, and again the lightning flashes and the whiskey isn’t helping anything.