Two cops started to charge around the V-parked cruisers and thought better of it when he put a shot over their heads.

“Jesus Christ what a snafu!” somebody cried out in shrill disgust.

The man in the plaid shirt was on his lawn now, kicking up snow-bursts. Something buzzed by his ear, followed by a report, and he realized he was still looking over the chair. He heard the front door being tried, and then the man in the plaid shirt was hammering on it.

He scrambled across the floor, which was now spotted with grit and plaster that had been knocked out of the walls. His right leg hurt like a bastard and when he looked down he saw his pants leg was bloody from thigh to knee. He turned the lock in the chewed-up door and released the bolt from its catch.

“Okay!” he said, and the man in the plaid shirt burst in.

Up close he didn’t look scared although he was panting hard. There was a scrape on his cheek from where the policeman had tackled him, and the left arm of his shirt was ripped. When the man in the plaid shirt was inside he scrambled back into the living room, picked up the rifle, and fired twice blindly over the top of the chair. Then he turned around. The man in the plaid shirt was standing in the doorway, looking incredibly calm. He had taken a large notebook out of his back pocket.

“All right, man,” he said. “What shit goes down?”

“What’s your name?”

“Dave Albert.”

“Has that white van got more film equipment in it?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the window. Tell the police to let a camera crew set up on the Quinns’ lawn. That’s the house across the street. Tell them if it isn’t done in five minutes, you got trouble.”

“Do I?”

“Sure.”

Albert laughed. “You don’t look like you could kill time, fella.”

“Tell them.”

Albert walked to the shattered living room window and stood framed there for a second, obviously relishing the moment.

“He says for my camera crew to set up across the street!” he yelled. “He say’s he’s going to kill me if you don’t let them!”

“No!” Fenner yelled back furiously. “No, no, n-”

Somebody muzzled him. Silence for a beat.

“All right!” This was the voice that had accused him of bluffing about the explosive. “Will you let two of our men go up and get them?”

He thought it over and nodded at the reporter.

“Yes!” Albert called.

There was a pause, and then two uniformed policemen trotted self-consciously up toward where the news van waited, its engine smugly idling. In the meantime two more cruisers had pulled up, and by leaning far to the right he could see that the downhill end of Crestallen Street West had been blocked off. A large crowd of people was standing behind the yellow crash barriers.

“Okay,” Albert said, sitting down. “We got a minute. What do you want? A plane?”

“Plane?” he echoed stupidly.

Albert flapped his arms, still holding his notebook. “Fly away, man. Just FLYYYYY away.”

“Oh.” He nodded to show that he understood. “No, I don’t want a plane.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want,” he said carefully, “to be just twenty with a lot of decisions to make over again.” He saw the look in Albert’s eyes and said, “I know I can’t. I’m not that crazy.”

“You’re shot.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you said it is?” He was pointing at the master fuse and the battery.

“Yes. The main fuse goes to all the rooms in the house. Also the garage.”

“Where did you get the explosive?” Albert’s voice was amiable but his eyes were alert.

“Found it in my Christmas stocking.”

He laughed. “Say, that’s not bad. I’m going to use that in my story.”

“Fine. When you go back out, tell all the policemen that they better move away.”

“Are you going to blow yourself up?” Albert asked. He looked interested, nothing more.

“I am contemplating it.”

“You know what, fellow? You’ve seen too many movies.”

“I don’t go to the movies much anymore. I did see The Exorcist, though. I wish I hadn’t. How are your movie guys coming out there?”

Albert peered out the window. “Pretty good. We’ve got another minute. Your name is Dawes?”

“Did they tell you that?”

Albert laughed contemptuously. “They wouldn’t tell me if I had cancer. I read it on the doorbell. Would you mind telling me why you’re doing all this?”

“Not at all. It’s roadwork.”

“The extension?” Albert’s eyes glowed brighter. He began to scribble in his book.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“They took your house?”

“They tried. I’m going to take it.”

Albert wrote it down, then snapped his book closed and stuffed it into his back pocket again. “That’s pretty stupid, Mr. Dawes. Do you mind my saying that? Why don’t you just come out of here with me?”

“You’ve got an exclusive,” he said tiredly. “What are you trying for, the Pulitzer Prize?”

“I’d take it if they offered it.” He smiled brightly and then sobered. “Come on, Mr. Dawes. Come on out. I’ll see that your side gets told. I’ll see-”

“There is no side.”

Albert frowned. “What was that?”

“I have no side. That’s why I’m doing this.” He peered over the chair and looked into a telephoto lens, mounted on a tripod that was sunk into the snow of the Quinns’ lawn. “Go on now. Tell them to go away.”

“Are you really going to pull the string?”

“I really don’t know.”

Albert walked to the living nom door and then turned around. “Do I know you from somewhere? Why do I keep feeling like I know you?”

He shook his head. He thought he had never seen Albert before in his life.

Watching the newsman walk back across his lawn, slightly at an angle so the camera across the street would get his good side, he wondered what Olivia was doing at that precise second.

He waited fifteen minutes. Their fire had intensified, but no one charged at the back of the house. The main purpose of the fire seemed to be to cover their retreat into the houses across the street. The camera crew remained where it was for a while, grinding impassively away, and then the white Econoline van drove up onto the Quinns’ side lawn and the man behind the camera folded the tripod, took it behind the truck, and began to film again.

Something black and tubular whizzed through the air, landed on his lawn about midway between the house and the sidewalk, and began to spurt gas. The wind caught it and carried it off down the street in tattered rifts. A second shell landed short, and then he heard one dunk on the roof. He caught a whiff of that one as it fell into the snow covering Mary’s begonias. His nose and eyes filled with crocodile tears.

He scurried across the living room on his hands and knees again, hoping to God he had said nothing to that newsman, Albert, that could be misconstrued as profound. There was no good place to make your stand in the world. Look at Johnny Walker, dying in a meaningless intersection smashup. What had he died for, so that the sheets could go through? Or that woman in the supermarket. The fucking you got was never worth the screwing you took.

He turned on the stereo and the stereo still worked. The Rolling Stones album was still on the turntable and he put on the last cut, missing the right groove the first time when a bullet smacked into the quilt covering the Zenith TV with a thud.

When he had it right, the last bars of “Monkey Man” fading into nothingness, he scurried back to the overturned chair and threw the rifle out the window. He picked up the Magnum and threw that out after it. Good-bye, Nick Adams.

“You can’t always get what you want,” the stereo sang, and he knew that to be a fact. But that didn’t stop you from wanting it. A tear gas canister arched through the window, struck the wall over the couch, and exploded in white smoke.

“But if you try something, you might find,