The Mask

muscle in his small body was spring-taut, and the fur bristled along his arched back.
    “Ari? What’s wrong, you silly cat?”
    He whirled and ran out of the kitchen.

3
    CAROL sat in a chrome chair with shiny black vinyl cushions, and she slowly sipped whiskey from a paper cup.
    Paul slumped in the chair next to hers. He didn’t sip his whiskey; he gulped the stuff. It was an excellent bourbon, Jack Daniel’s Black Label, thoughtfully provided by an attorney named Marvin Kwicker, who had offices down the hall from Alfred O’Brian and who realized that a restorative was urgently needed. Pouring bourbon for Carol, Marvin had said, “Kwicker with liquor,” which he had probably said ten thousand times before, but he still enjoyed his own joke. “Kwicker with liquor,” he repeated when dispensing a double shot to Paul. Although Paul wasn’t much of a drinker, he needed every drop that the attorney gave him. His hands were still shaking.
    The reception lounge that served O’Brian’s office was not large, but most of the people who worked on the same floor had congregated here to talk about the lightning that had shaken the building, to marvel that the place hadn’t caught fire, to express surprise that the electric power had been restored so quickly, and to wait their turns for a peek at the rubble and ruin in O’Brian’s inner sanctum. The resultant roar of conversation did nothing to soothe Paul’s nerves.
    Every thirty seconds or so, a bleached blonde with a shrill voice repeated the same words of amazement:
    “I can’t believe nobody got killed in all that! I can’t believe nobody got killed.” Each time she spoke, regardless of where she was in the room, her voice carried over the din and made Paul wince. “I can’t believe nobody got killed.” She sounded somewhat disappointed.
    Alfred O’Brian was sitting at the reception desk. His secretary, a prim-looking woman whose hair was drawn back in a tight bun, was trying to apply Merthiolate to half a dozen scratches on her boss’s face, but O’Brian seemed more concerned about the condition of his suit than he was about himself. He plucked and brushed at the dirt, lint, and small fragments of tree bark that clung to his jacket.
    Paul finished his whiskey and looked at Carol. She was still badly shaken. Contrasted with her glossy dark hair, her face was very pale.
    Apparently, she saw the concern in his eyes, for she took his hand, squeezed it, and smiled reassuringly. However, the smile didn’t set well on her lips; it was tremulous.
    He leaned close to her, so that she could hear him above the excited chatter of the others. “Ready to get out of here?”
    She nodded.
    Over by the window, a young executive type raised his voice. “Hey! Hey, everybody! Better look sharp. The TV news people just drove up to the front door.”
    “If we get trapped by reporters,” Carol said, “we’ll be here an hour or more.”
    They left without saying goodbye to O’Brian. In the hall, as they headed toward a side entrance, they slipped into their raincoats. Outside, Paul opened his umbrella and put one arm around Carol’s waist. They hurried across the slippery macadam parking lot, stepping gingerly around huge puddles. The gusting wind was chilly for early September, and it kept changing direction until it finally got under the umbrella and turned it inside out. The cold, wind-driven rain was falling so hard that it stung Paul’s face. By the time they reached the car, their hair was plastered to their heads, and a lot of water had found its way down the backs of their necks, under the collars of their coats.
    Paul half expected the Pontiac to be lightning-damaged, but it was just as they had left it. The engine turned over without protest.
    Leaving the parking lot, he started to turn left but put his foot on the brake pedal when he saw that the street was sealed off by police cars and fire trucks just half a block away. The church was still ablaze, in spite of the pouring rain and in defiance of the big streams of water that the firemen directed onto it.
    Black smoke billowed into the gray day, and behind the blasted windows, flames spurted and churned.
    Clearly, the church was going to be a total loss.
    He turned right, instead, and drove home through rain-choked streets. where the gutters overflowed and where every depression in the pavement had been transformed into a treacherous lake that had to be negotiated with utmost caution to avoid drowning the engine and stalling out.
    Carol