You Get Sparks

A young woman has a man in her bed, and they’re sweating and working hard at the thing they’re doing together, when the tornado siren begins to scream across the apartment complex. Her cat hurries into the hamper. The world outside is a jaundiced yellow and the curtains have gone still.

He stops, hands still on her hips, and says, “Shit.”

“Keep going,” she says. So he does.

By the time they’re done and sprawled on top of the sheets, the siren has stopped and the light is back to the sad autumn color it was before.

“How I knew it wasn’t a big deal,” she says, “is that when there’s a real tornado you get sparks shooting from the electrical outlets.”

They’ve only just met. It strikes him as one of the strangest things he’s ever heard, on what is turning out to be one of the strangest days of his life. They will see each other twice more before one of them gets needy and sours the whole thing, but today there is no tornado.