Both were located in Chelsea, a neighborhood that changed block by block — while L&R's building sat next to an overpriced, gentrified restaurant, Lame Duck's squatted in a gray and greasy stretch of Korean importers and warehouses and coffee shops. Rune smelled garlic and rancid oil as they walked along the street. Cobblestones shone through the asphalt. Battered cars and delivery vans waited for another day of abuse on the streets of New York City.

They walked into the lobby of the building, stained with the residue of a thousand halfhearted moppings. Shelly said, “I'll be right down. I just have to check the scheduling board. Is it too dark to shoot some exteriors?” She nodded toward the video camera.

Rune said she would.

The security guard said, “Oh, Miss Lowe, phone message for you. It says urgent.”

Shelly took the pink message slip, read it. She said to Rune. “Be right down.”

Rune wandered along the sidewalk outside. She held the camera to her eye but the low-light warning flashed through the eyepiece. She put it back into her bag. The garlic was making her hungry and she wondered what there was to eat at pornographic film parties.

Food, like everybody else, girl. What do you think? Shelly's just like anybody else. She —

“Hey, Rune!” Shelly's voice filled the street.

Rune looked up but in the gloom couldn't see which window she was calling from. Then she saw the actress outlined in a third-floor window. She called back, “What?”

“I'm shooting at eleven tomorrow. You want to watch?”

“I guess,” she said quickly and then just as quickly realized that she did not in fact want to see the shoot. “You think it's okay?”

“I'll make it okay. Let me make this call. I'll be right down.” She vanished inside.

This could be totally weird. What was the set like? Would the crew seem bored? Did the sets turn into one big orgy? Maybe some of the actors would proposition her — though if all the actresses were tall and blonde and beautiful like Shelly that probably wouldn't be a problem. Did men and women just walk around naked on the —

The ball of flame was like a ragged sun, so bright that Rune instinctively threw her arms up over her eyes, just saving her face from the bits of concrete and glass and wood that hurtled into the street, on the heels of a roar so loud that the slap of the concussion landed like knuckles all over her body.

Rune screamed — in terror at the thundering volume and in pain as she slammed into a battered Chevy van parked on the curb.

Smoke rising, flames...

For some time Rune lay in the gutter, her head wedged against the concrete curb, her face resting in a patch of oily water. The ringing in her ears so loud she thought a steam pipe had ruptured.

God, what happened? A plane crash?