Midnight

said brightly when Sam came into the kitchen.
    "What's good about it?" he asked.
    "Just listen to that rain," she said. "Rain always makes me feel clean and fresh."
    "Always depresses me."
    "And it's nice to be in a warm, dry kitchen, listening to the storm but cozy."
    He scratched at the stubble of beard on his unshaven cheeks. "Seems a little stuffy in here to me."
    "Well, anyway, we're still alive, and that's good."
    "I guess so."
    "God in heaven!" She banged an empty frying pan down on the stove and scowled at him. "Are all FBI agents like you"
    "In what way?"
    "Are they all sourpusses?"
    "I'm not a sourpuss."
    "You're a classic Gloomy Gus."
    "Well, life isn't a carnival."
    "It isn't?"
    "Life is hard and mean."
    "Maybe. But isn't it a carnival too?"
    "Are all documentary filmmakers like you?"
    "In what way?"
    "Pollyannas?"
    "That's ridiculous. I'm no Pollyanna."
    "Oh, no?"
    "No."
    "Here we are trapped in a town where reality seems to have been temporarily suspended, where people are being torn apart by species unknown, where Boogeymen roam the streets at night, where some mad computer genius seems to have turned human biology inside out, where we're all likely to be killed or 'converted' before midnight tonight, and when I come in here you're grinning and sprightly and humming a Beatles tune."
    "It wasn't the Beatles."
    "Huh?"
    "Rolling Stones."
    "And that makes a difference?"
    She sighed. "Listen, if you're going to help eat this breakfast, you're going to help make it, so don't just stand there glowering."
    "All right, okay, what can I do?"
    "First, get on the intercom there and call Harry, make sure he's awake. Tell him breakfast in … ummmm … forty minutes. Pancakes and eggs and shaved, fried ham."
    Sam pressed the intercom button and said, "Hello, Harry," and Harry answered at once, already awake. He said he'd be down in about half an hour.
    "Now what?" Sam asked Tessa.
    "Get the eggs and milk from the refrigerator—but for God's sake don't look in the cartons."
    "Why not?"
    She grinned. "You'll spoil the eggs and curdle the milk."
    "Very funny."
    "I thought so."
    While making pancake mix from scratch, cracking six eggs into glass dishes and preparing them so they could be quickly slipped into the frying pans when she needed them, directing Sam to set the table and help her with other small chores, chopping onions, and shaving ham, Tessa alternately hummed and sang songs by Patti La Belle and the Pointer Sisters. Sam knew whose music it was because she told him, announcing each song as if she were a disc jockey or as if she hoped to educate him and loosen him up. While she worked and sang, she danced in place, shaking her bottom, swiveling her hips, rolling her shoulders, sometimes snapping her fingers, really getting into it.
    She was genuinely enjoying herself, but he knew that she was also needling him a little and getting a kick out of that too. He tried to hold fast to his gloom, and when she smiled at him, he did not return her smile, but damn she was cute. Her hair was tousled, and she wasn't wearing any makeup, and her clothes were wrinkled from having been slept in, but her slightly disheveled look only added to her allure.
    Sometimes she paused in her soft singing and humming to ask him questions, but she continued to sing and dance in place even while he answered her. "You figured what we're going to do yet to get out of this corner we're in?"
    "I have an idea."
    "Patti La Belle, 'New Attitude,' " she said, identifying the song she was singing. "Is this idea of yours a deep, dark secret?"
    "No. But I have to go over it with Harry, get some information from him, so I'll tell you both at breakfast."
    At her direction he was hunched over the low counter, cutting thin slices of cheese from a block of Cheddar when she broke into her song long enough to ask, "Why did you say life is hard and mean?"
    "Because it is."
    "But it's also full of fun—"
    "No."
    "—and beauty—"
    "No."
    "—and hope—"
    "Bullshit."
    "It is."
    "It isn't."
    "Yes, it is."
    "It isn't."
    "Why are you so negative?"
    "Because I want to be."
    "But why do you want to be?"
    "Jesus, you're relentless."
    "Pointer Sisters, 'Neutron Dance.'" She sang a bit, dancing in place as she put eggshells and other scraps down the garbage disposal. Then she interrupted her tune to say, "What could've happened to you to make you feel that life's only mean and hard?"
    "You don't want to know."
    "Yes, I do."
    He finished with the cheese and put