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ahead, just an instant before the rain, with a last theatrical rattle on the sidewalks and cars, stopped abruptly and completely.
    Smiling at the freaky coincidence, he noticed—or imagined—that Shelly, coming up fast behind him was smiling, too, just as she had earlier when her mood had done a complete about face at the mention of old movies.
    Without thought or hesitation, he gave her a wave and hurried toward the car so that by the time she got there, he was prying open the rusty and squawking passenger side door with a sweeping bow worthy of any bedraggled Dracula.
    But he had been right. A bit of momentary silliness wasn’t enough. She smiled, almost grinned at his efforts, but this time her eyes remained a painful mixture of anger and sadness that he couldn’t face.
    His eyes fixed on the dash, he silently wedged his long legs under the wheel as best he could, fumbling for the lever that would send the seat back.
    He felt Shelly watching him and wondered how long the silence could last.
    Finally, still without a word from either of them, he started the car and pulled out onto the nearly deserted Central Avenue, and when they left the town behind, no other lights shared the road, only an occasional flash of lightning to indicate the storm hadn’t died, only outpaced them. Then, as they crossed the county line and the road began to cut through the hills that stretched all the way to Roseville and beyond, they caught up to the rain and discovered that the storm had intensified rather than faded. Carl reached forward and turned the wipers up as fast as they would go, but the right one only produced smears. For a mile, then three, then five, the only sounds were the rattle of the engine as it took the upgrades and the noisy but increasingly useless scrape of the wipers.
    “What happened back there, Carl?” Shelly said abruptly, her eyes darting between his face and the “Roseville—15 Miles.” sign.
    “What do you mean, what happened?”
    “You know what I mean! Back in the movie. You were stiff as a board through the whole thing, like you were facing an impatient firing squad rather than the closing credits of a fifty-year-old movie you sort of maybe didn’t quite despise.” She shook her head. “If that’s how you react to something you once liked —I swear I could hear your teeth grinding when the singing didn’t drown it out.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Sorry! Damn it, Carl! Sorry doesn’t cut it. Just tell me what the hell is going on? Are we done? Are you dumping me? You were acting weird Sunday and you’re acting even weirder now! What’s happened to you this week?”
    “Nothing much.”
    “Are you seeing someone else? Are—”
    “I’m not dumping you. I’d never—”
    “Carl.” He heard her take a deep breath. “Look, if it is about getting married—fine. Say so. Say you can’t handle it. Just don’t leave me hanging this way.”
    He recoiled at the mixture of anger and hurt that filled her voice, an echo of the voices in his nightmares. “I just didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I thought I would.”
    “Like hell! You crawled into your own little universe back there and slammed the door behind you. What is it? Tell me or—”
    “Or … I don’t know!” he flared. Harry’s inquisition all over again. “I haven’t been sleeping very well. That’s all.”
    “Oh?”
    “I … that’s all. If there were anything else, I’d tell you.”
    And he would, he thought, trying to calm himself as she shook her head and sniffed angrily. The one person in the world he should be able to talk to was Shelly Fowler. But how could he talk about something he didn’t remotely understand himself? And the one person in the world he didn’t want to hurt was Shelly, but here he was hurting her anyway and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
    She maintained her stiff silence for another mile as the lightning receded into distant flickers far to the east, leaving behind a steady rain