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on you, and now you tell me you’re not going to come across?’
    He brightened up suddenly.
    ‘How about if I throw in the Polaroids?’
    ‘The what?’
    The lights waxed and then waned almost to nothing.
    ‘I took a whole set one night she was really hot. Got her to pose in various positions. Made her think it was all a game. It wasn’t that hard. Man, she didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Next day she asked about it, sounding kind of scared, but I showed her the empty camera and said I’d just been kidding. I got about eighteen in all. They’re around somewhere. You interested?’
    In the dim light cast by the stove, I saw him give me a look.
    ‘Or maybe you’d prefer the video.’
    ‘Video?’
    ‘Well, it was originally Super-8. They didn’t have video back then. I got it transferred later.’
    He searched around among the video cassettes stacked on his shelving.
    ‘This was back when we lived in San Francisco. You know those mornings that dawn bright and clear and kind of cold, with an edge to them, and everything feels possible? You don’t get any more of them once you turn thirty, even if the weather’s the same. We’d been on a stoner all night long. Luce wasn’t really into drugs, not like me, but I slipped some speed into the juice I brought her that morning. It was a kind of crazy night. We’d been to a party, well a couple in fact, and then a bunch of us ended up driving over to Marin.
    ‘I don’t recall too much after that except when Luce and I finally got home we were both bopping and the light was just incredible and I remembered this camera I’d borrowed from someone. I was just pissing around at first, seeing how it worked, totally into the trip, you know, focused, and suddenly she came in and started dancing to this music I’d put on. Only she had plans of her own, see, so she did a sort of slow strip to get my attention. Like I was into this boring guy thing with gadgets and she needed to win me back. Which I have to say she did, but not before I got some pretty good footage. I was a little worried about the light shining in through the window behind her, the one that always used to stick when it was damp, which it was a lot of the time with the fog rolling in, but not that morning. And the exposure turned out to be just perfect.’
    He smiled.
    ‘You going to kill me now? Or you want to see your late wife back when she was still cute? What’s it to be, Tone? Don’t keep me hanging on like this.’
    There was a deafening bang, as if someone had struck the roof of the trailer with a huge hammer.
    ‘What in hell’s that?’ gasped Allen.
    Before I could react, he was at the front door. I followed him out, gun in hand. The wind had died away, leaving an unblemished stillness.
    ‘There she is,’ I cried, pointing to a triangle of white lights in the sky.
    Allen followed the pattern of lights for some time.
    ‘Must be military,’ he said at last. ‘Area Fifty-one’s just over those hills. Groom Lake Base. Lots of secret, high-tech stuff going on there. Some kind of sonic boom, I guess. We’re miles away from any regular flight path here.’
    The lights receded in a wide arc, disappearing over a ridge of high land to the west. Allen shivered.
    ‘Fuck, it’s cold.’
    He went back inside and I followed, still holding the gun. Allen turned on a small lamp on the shelves above the stereo.
    ‘Runs on a battery,’ he explained. ‘For when the wind fails.’
    We sat down again.
    ‘So what’s going to happen now?’ he asked.
    ‘I have no idea.’
    ‘Okay, here’s my proposition. That gun cost you how much?’
    ‘Two hundred.’
    ‘And you’re planning on flying back? Well, they won’t let you take the gun on the plane without some fancy locked fibreglass case that’ll cost more than that. Plus I can’t imagine you needing a firearm at home. So how about this? I buy it off you right now for one hundred fifty in cash.’
    He finished adjusting the stove and gave