11 Finale
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I’d be hard-pressed to describe the bedlam that followed—and rapidly doubled, tripled, quadrupled—other than to say that what started humbly, subtly, innocuously, with a chorus of staggered hisses and frizzles, quickly became a cannonade; a fusillade, a barrage of such sound and fury and color that, had I not been so focused on lighting fuses, would surely have blinded me, at least temporarily. As it was, I was able to launch virtually everything before ricocheting rockets forced me to shelter in place (which is to say, with one skinny arm thrown over my exposed head and shoulders); after which, cowering, I could only cough and hack in the stifling smoke—all while praying nothing detonated too close. Which, as it turned out, nothing did. And, also, that the warring din
