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reservations several weeks ahead, and pay $75 for a three-day weekend. He had pitched the tent among a horde of forty-foot RVs. The Marshalls were the only tent people at the campground.
    They lasted one night. Karen complained of the cold, hated bacon and eggs cooked over a propane stove, and was eaten up by bugs. They checked out, and checked in to a luxury hotel, and spent the rest of the weekend in the casinos or lounging by the pool. Addison asked one time about a month later if theycould do it again, and her mother said no. The camping gear had sat in the basement ever since.
    He couldn’t blame it all on Karen. He wasn’t all that wild about sleeping on an air mattress himself. Addison seemed to enjoy the experience, but she knew better than to pressure her mother about it.
    He ran a finger over the rolled-up tent, which was covered with dust. He recalled it had cost him about $600, and had been set up once. The old propane stove was still there, too, but he had no bottled gas for it. He put that on his shopping list.
    Alongside the old tennis rackets and boxes of books were three bicycles that were also gathering dust. When they’d lived in the Valley, in the flatlands, they’d actually used them as a family, riding the bike trails on weekends or evenings. Then they moved to the hills, and after a few trips down and back up, pushing them the last quarter mile, they put them in the basement and never used them again.
    It made him sad to look at them. What did they do as a family anymore? He’d spent most of the last decade in the high-pressure world of comedy writing, about as insecure as any job can be. Karen had flitted from one to another of her transient passions. He didn’t think Addison was actually
neglected
; they were involved in her school—Karen more than him—and she always seemed a happy little girl. Let’s just say she was encouraged to be self-sufficient, and she was good at that. Now he found himself wishing he’d asked her if she really
wanted
to be self-sufficient.
    Addison had been five when they moved. Her bicycle was now much too small for her. All three of them were good bikes, with fat tires and light aluminum frames. In his youth it was all ten-speeds. He squeezed one of the tires and wasn’t surprised to find that it was flat, but the rubber also felt flaky from age. He made a note of the sizes and put that on his shopping list, along with a new bike for Addison.
    By the time he left the house he had a long list.
    For once he was happy with the cavernous interior of the Escalade. He descended on Costco in Burbank like Crazy Horse on the Seventh Cavalry. For the first time he used one of the flatbed shopping carts, and he filled it up with bottled water, cases of canned meat, tuna, veggies, and whatever else struck his fancy. For good measure he bought lots of toilet paper. He figured,if it’s the end of the world as we know it, the toilet paper was going to have to last awhile.
    When he had it all stowed in the back, he realized he was breathing hard, and felt like he was on the edge of a panic attack. He used to get them when they were writing to a deadline, and lately he’d had a few when he contemplated his financial situation. He knew that what he’d just done was more like a hysterical reaction than true prudent planning. He had not been able to talk this over with anyone, and the pressure of that was getting to him. He had seen a man killed. He had heard the most frightening story he’d ever heard, and he’d seen what looked like proof that the story was true, or at least partly true. And so what was it that he was most worried about at that moment? Why, it was telling Karen about all this. He was sure she would think he was crazy. And it would be hard to blame her.
    When he picked up Addison she looked in back. She raised one eyebrow at him.
    “Doing a little shopping?”
    “No, I found all this sitting by the side of the road.”
    “Neat. Spam?”
    “Never know when a