NOW, YOU MIGHT ASK: Didn’t I find it odd that she’d be so adamant on sleeping separately—in spite of the cold and her earlier flirtatiousness—that we had to drag a bed into the antechamber? And my answer is: No. Not really. Rather, I just took it to mean she was establishing a boundary, and that the apocalypse itself couldn’t turn her into something she wasn’t—which, frankly, I respected. Besides, any man who knows anything knows the coin paid going in is the same earned staying out, which is to say Time, however scrambled it had become, was on my side, and I knew it.
More than any of that, though, was that I wanted to try out the radio, which I did, drinking scotch from the caretaker’s stash and looking out the window—which framed the breakers and gathered pterodactyls like a picture—wra
