Jack says, “Are you sure you’d survive in the wild? Is that something you’re up to?” Thinks that where I’m from they breed survival out of you, that girls get born domesticated and men can’t help themselves. I tell him he’s sexist, and Jack replies, “That attitude gets you nowhere,” and lists me reasons that are Biblical, then we’re talking De Niro, Scorsese, the fact that every action film or comedy has a male lead, or if it doesn’t, it’s almost accidentally – like Angelina in Salt.

In bed I listen the heating tick off, waiting to wake when it clicks back on. I list the things I’ll do, the things I won’t, work out the number of days I’ll survive when the world goes. I remember Bible studies in high school, how we’re all waiting for the end to show up, to start again, and I struggle to find points, blunt or otherwise. I wonder how long I’d like to last when the power’s out, and the lights off make you shocked at every shadow, same as at ten when streetlamps and branches made Gremlins on the wall outside Dad’s office. And that’s not something you recover from, like Catholicism, or so I’ve heard.