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be so histrionic—which meant US-35 would probably be black, too, by the time they crossed into Ohio.
    Maggie proposed checking her computer, just to see the full extent of what they were getting themselves into. But Mark balked. They’d had a good stretch, the two of them. Where they were, the sun was still shining. Gerome had been quiet, Maggie had been sweet, and Mark had lucked into a miraculously uninterrupted set of the Stones and Petty. But then, pulling into the station, gassing up, Maggie had to go and suggest getting out the computer and researching the storm, as if what her phone could access wasn’t already enough. “There are probably pictures,” she’d said. “We could see what the devastation looks like.” It was her use of that word—
devastation
—that had immediately soured his mood. She sounded like one of those news anchors, delirious with the possibility of tragedy.
    The thing was, the suggestion itself to get out the computer wasn’t half bad. They could have used it to look for hotels. If the situation was as dire as the broadcasts were saying, then it might have been nice to have a sure thing waiting for them when the storm came. But the quiver in Maggie’s voice had riled him with its intimation that their lives—
their
lives: Maggie’s and his—were somehow suddenly at risk. She’d gone and gotten desperate, illogical—“This could be bad. This could be Katrina bad. Sandy bad”—which had killed his driving buzz completely.
    Nope. He wasn’t about to give in to the computer. He’d so far resisted bringing it into his classroom (to the ire of his colleagues), and he would resist, for as long as possible, bringing it into every aspect of their lives.
    A few years back, Mark’s father turned him on to some intriguing articles about server farms and data barns, articles suggesting that the move from paper to e-readers wasn’t nearly as green or eco-friendly as his and most other universities were insisting. Plus, the Internet’s energy consumption was something like ten billion watts of electricity in the United States alone, with another twenty billion in the rest of the world, which was equivalent to the output of something like thirty nuclear power plants, which—come on!—was a wholly mind-boggling statistic. Once a month or so, whenever Robert forwarded a new series of articles, Mark printed one or two of them out, made a couple dozen copies off campus (no way was he going to use his copy card and risk a lecture from the chair), and then posted them in the department hallways.
    The point? Fuck the computer. How had they secured hotels in the past on road trips? The old-fashioned way: by stopping and asking if there was a room.
    â€œThey probably don’t even have Wi-Fi here,” Mark said.
    â€œThey have Wi-Fi everywhere,” she said.
    â€œHow about this? After dinner we’ll find a hotel, and then you can knock yourself out all you want on that thing.”
    She hadn’t responded, but he could tell her brain had returned to whatever haunted house it had been popping in on since news of the college girl. He hated to resent a dead woman, one who’d died so ignominiously, but he’d nearly gotten Maggie back. She’d almost been restored to him. Instead, he could see from her face—the trembling lower lip she was biting to keep calm—that she was already playing out worst-case scenarios: a tree in the road, which would lead to a blocked avenue, which would lead to an unfamiliar route, which would lead to a dead end, which would lead to the Bates Motel. It was too much.
    â€œI’ll get the coffee,” he said.
    Five minutes later, he was standing inside the gas station’s coffee shop/convenience mart, and he was watching Maggie walk Gerome. The two of them were going back and forth over a narrow strip of grass. Gerome wasn’t doing anything but