A thunderstorm rolled through this evening with lightning flashing and thunder rumbling and rain blattering against the windows. Debra asked me, “What was that sound?” and I told her it was the rain hitting the windows and the sides of the townhouse. Then she heard something else and asked what it was and I told her it was really low, rolling thunder. She asked a third time and I stopped her and asked, “Have you completely forgotten what rain is like?”

She said yes.

“You know what I thought as I was driving home from Le Chef’s today?” asked The Debra over a plate of noodles, eggplant and tomato sauce.

“Tell me,” I said.

“It was raining and I thought, ‘This is free water!’ Because in Calitastrophe, outside of February, you pay for every drop of water you use. Isn’t this great? It’s free!“

*****

There was a fire alarm at Government Building X today. We knew it was coming - there had been announcements all week long telling us to expect the tests. What we didn’t expect was the very malevolent Arab voice that broadcast the beginning and end of the test. Between blasts of an air horn that dripped with the kind of reverb one might hear in a massive airplane hangar, the voice announced the commencement of the test. To be honest, when he started to speak I thought he was going to tell us that he had taken control of the building and that if we didn’t cooperate he was going to blow us all to kingdom come. The entire test had the ambient feel of a Bond movie from the Sixties…one of those films where Dr. Sinister takes over a small island in the South Pacific and builds a base inside the heart of the island’s volcano from which he plots his nefarious schemes and where he builds a giant thermonuclear warhead which he threatens to launch from his über-secret hideout using the missile that he stole from the Russians. The voice making the announcement, the sirens and air horns, the echoing reverb - it all sounded like it was being broadcast from the depths of a mountain while hordes of Japanese and German scientists in white lab coats and black horned-rim glasses raced back and forth doing their Master’s bidding.

I told one of my colleagues I’d give him a hundred bucks if he’d tape fake dynamite to his chest and run around the corridors of the building. He passed. The coward.