7

Not with a Bang

On the evening of the third of April, standing at the window of his pleasant three-bedroom, split-level house and admiring the sunset, Alfred Collins saw a hand rise above the horizon, spread thumb and forefinger, and snuff out the sun. It was the moment of soft twilight, and it ended as abruptly as if someone had flicked an electric switch.

Which is precisely what his wife did. She put on lights all over the house. “My goodness, Al,” she said, “it did get dark quickly, didn’t it?”

“That’s because someone snuffed out the sun.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked. “And by the way, the Bensons are coming for dinner and bridge tonight, so you’d better get dressed.”

“All right. You weren’t watching the sunset, were you?”

“I have other things to do.”

“Yes. Well, what I mean is that if you were watching, you would have seen this hand come up behind the horizon, and then the thumb and the forefinger just spread out, and then they came together and snuffed out the sun.”

“Really. Now for heaven’s sake, Al, don’t redouble tonight. If you are doubled, have faith in your bad bidding. Do you promise me?”

“Funniest damn thing about the hand. It brought back all my childhood memories of anthropomorphism.”

“And just what does that mean?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m going to take a shower.”

“Don’t be all evening about it.”

At dinner, Al Collins asked Steve Benson whether he had been watching the sunset that evening.

“No—no, I was showering.”

“And you, Sophie?” Collins asked of Benson’s wife.

“No way. I was changing a hem. What does women’s lib intend to do about hems? There’s the essence of the status of women, the nitty-gritty of our servitude.”

“It’s one of Al’s jokes,” Mrs. Collins explained. “He was standing at the window and he saw this hand come over the horizon and snuff out the sun.”

“Did you, Al?”

“Scout’s honor. The thumb and forefinger parted, then came together. Poof. Out went the sun.”

“That’s absolutely delicious,” Sophie said. “You have such delicious imagination.”

“Especially in his bidding,” his wife remarked.

“She’ll never forget that slam bid doubled and redoubled,” Sophie said. It was evident that she would never forget it either.

“Interesting but impractical,” said Steve Benson, who was an engineer at IBM. “You’re dealing with a body that is almost a million miles in diameter. The internal temperature is over ten million degrees centigrade, and at its core the hydrogen atoms are reduced to helium ash. So all you have is poetic symbolism. The sun will be here for a long time.”

After the second rubber, Sophie Benson remarked that either it was chilly in the Collins house or she was catching something.

“Al, turn up the thermostat,” said Mrs. Collins.

The Collins team won the third and fourth rubbers, and Mrs. Collins had all the calm superiority of a winner as she bid her guests good night. Al Collins went out to the car with them, thinking that, after all, suburban living was a strange process of isolation and alienation. In the city, a million people must have watched the thing happen; here, Steve Benson was taking a shower and his wife was changing a hem.

It was a very cold night for April. Puddles of water left over from a recent rain had frozen solid, and the star-drenched sky had the icy look of midwinter. Both of the Bensons had arrived without coats, and as they hurried into their car, Benson laughingly remarked that Al was probably right about the sun. Benson had difficulty starting the car, and Al Collins stood shivering until they had driven away. Then he looked at the outside thermometer. It was down to sixteen degrees.

“Well, we beat them loud and clear,” his wife observed when he came back to the house. He helped her clean up, and while they were at it, she asked him just what he meant by anthropomorphism or whatever it was.

“It’s a sort of primitive notion. You know, the Bible says that God made man in His own image.”

“Oh? You know, I absolutely believed it when I was a child. What are you doing?”

He was at the fireplace, and he said that he thought he’d build a fire.

“In April? You must be out of your mind. Anyway, I cleaned the hearth.”

“I’ll clean it up tomorrow.”

“Well, I’m going to bed. I think you’re crazy to start a fire at this time of the night, but I’m not going to argue with you. This is the first time you did not overbid, and thank heavens for small favors.”

The wood was dry, and the fire was warm and pleasant to watch. Collins had never lost his pleasure at watching the flames of a fire, and he mixed himself a long scotch and water, and sat in front of the flames, sipping the drink and recalling his own small scientific knowledge. The green plants would die within a week, and after that the oxygen would go. How long? he wondered. Two days—ten days—he couldn’t remember and he had no inclination to go to the encyclopedia and find out. It would get very cold, terribly cold. It surprised him that instead of being afraid, he was only mildly curious.

He looked at the thermometer again before he went to bed. It was down to zero now. In the bedroom, his wife was already asleep, and he undressed quietly and put an extra comforter on the bed before he crawled in next to her. She moved toward him, and feeling her warm body next to him, he fell asleep.