Most people at the counter did not talk to Annika about their work and their dreams. They assumed, as Luis did, that she was stupid and uninformed. She was feeling sensitive, too, and was touched. “Some other time you’ll have to come back in here and dance for me,” she said to the young man in a low voice.

“Some other time,” he said sadly.

There was another plane; but the news came dully to her now. Another, another — what was the difference? One more piece of the complete destruction they were all going to have to face.

There was another plane; but the news came dully to her now. Another, another — what was the difference? One more piece of the complete destruction they were all going to have to face. Annika wondered how excitable Lizette would do. This thing made you look at people in a whole different way. Maybe Lizette wouldn’t do all that well, but better than Bobbie, capable and comfortably smart when she knew what was what, but probably not so much when things went so ominous and foreign. On the other hand, knowing Bobbie, she might have a bunker to dive into when she got home. Luis, her Luis, he would be all right, Annika knew what to do for him: all they had to do was get in the van and drive.

She went into Bobbie’s office. “Bobbie, when do you think they’re going to close the University so we can go home? I’d like to call my parents,” she added. Bobbie had just been on the phone for an hour with her hysterical daughter, at college in California. Annika thought that the girl was smart to worry. Her theory was that the Chilean terrorists were going to get on each coast, then squeeze their way in until the whole country had been touched in one way or another.

“I don’t know what they’re going to do, honey.” Bobbie uncrossed her thin legs and clutched her hands in her lap. She was staring at her Superman family picture. “Facilities Management told me to sit tight. They closed down the capitol. I think every capitol is closed down now. If you need to go home, honey, you can.”

“Well,” Annika said.

“Every capitol, and the Mall of America.”

If they bombed the power plant (Maybe they were going to try and go after the President’s daughter, who went to school here, who knew? That was what all the locksmiths were saying now, standing around upstairs talking about it while customers, waiting for the keys that had not even begun to get cut, tried, out of respect for the extraordinary circumstances, to hide their impatience), and Annika had left Luis here to die, she wouldn’t be able to bear it. She went to see him in his cubicle and he was on the phone again, pacing around the little space. He was speaking again in Spanish. When he saw Annika he turned away, his hand on his forehead.

“Penny,” he said, tenderly, into the phone.