"All the attention we get is what makes our work so different from what you and I did as soldiers. Now I sometimes feel as if I'm part of a circus that has come to town. People pester me with questions, ask to have their pictures taken with me, ask for my autograph, want to buy me a drink or take me to dinner. It's incredible."

"The daring young man on the flying trapeze, are you now?"

He laughed. "Believe me, Jess, we get the royal treatment practically wherever we go. And you know what, chum? It feels great."

"I bet it does," Jess replied, also laughing.

"You ought to try it sometime," he cackled. "Hell, everybody ought to have the chance to be in the spotlight at least once in their lives."

* * *

"Guess what?" Jess asked his wife as he rushed into the kitchen where she was rinsing a bowl of strawberries.

"What?"

"I saw a ghost today . . . someone I haven't seen in years. We were in the Army together."

"What's your friend doing here?" She smiled. "Haunting some old house or something?"

"You could say that I guess. He's here to blow up the Dakota."

"You'd think he'd've had enough of that sort of work in the Army."

"This isn't the same thing at all, Alma," Jess insisted. "He's the toast of the town these days, not some raggedy soldier anymore."

Throughout dinner Jess talked about Midge, so that he almost seemed to be an invisible guest at the table. He recounted some of the projects Midge had told him he had worked on, marveling at all of the different places Midge had visited in the country and at the enthusiastic reception he had received in many of those places. Midge was as much of a celebrity, he told his wife, as that fellow in Texas who puts out oil fires all around the world.

"He scarcely knows anything more about explosives than I do," Jess said, "yet he's regarded as some kind of wizard if you will."

You could be him, Alma thought to herself, knowing exactly what was going through her husband's mind this moment. You could be crisscrossing the country, earning pocketfuls of money and being treated like someone special if you didn't have to be stuck here with your pregnant wife.

The more Jess went on about his old Army acquaintance, the more suspicious she became that he was going to leave with him after the blast on Sunday. Ever since she became pregnant Alma had expected Jess to go away again, unable to accept the responsibility of finally settling down and raising a family. She had always assumed he would leave her for another woman, not to blow up buildings, but one served the same purpose as the other she supposed so long as his independence wasn't threatened.

She would not be able to track him down this time she knew, she was too far along in her pregnancy to be wandering all over the place. She had become as slow as an old woman during the past month, breathing heavily just climbing up the stairs. She grimaced a moment, recalling the long drive she had made last time in search of Jess, finding him barely conscious in a dreary little lounge at the coast with a woman twice his age. This time, if he left, he would be gone forever she feared.

* * *

Late on Friday afternoon, two days before the blast, Midge invited Jess to accompany him as he supervised the loading of explosive charges on the cast iron columns in the basement and first floor of the Dakota Building. They proceeded cautiously through the restricted area, through all the rubble from the walls that had already been knocked down by the workers, slowly circling the exposed columns. They had been trained in the service to demolish targets without regard to the effects of the blast, but the demolition this Sunday had been designed to minimize the damage to other property in the neighborhood.

"If you kick the supports out of a building," Midge reminded Jess, "the only way it can go is down."

Jess remembered. "Kill the body and the head dies."

"There you go, chum."

After a moment, Midge paused before a column on the first floor then looked at Jess, smiling tautly. "Do you want to decorate this tree?"

"Are you serious?"

"Sure, why not? You're qualified. You received the same demolition training as I did."

"All right, if you say so."

"I say so."