She didn’t remember going in the bathroom, but when she blinked again, she was standing on cold tile in front of the sink. Burt was making noises, awful sounds like creaking bedsprings. Water. She turned the tap on and stared in panic at the gushing stream. Jesus God, what kind of freak scene was this? There was one cup, goddamnit, just one wrapped in plastic. She grabbed for it and ripped the shrink-wrap off and the thing came apart in her hands in sharp plastic shards, and from the other room Burt was making those sounds.

“I’m coming!” she yelled, and picked up the ice bucket.

The smoke alarm exploded into a scream, drilled into her head like a white-hot needle and pushed at her in waves on her skin. She put her hands over her ears but that didn’t help; her throat hurt and she realized she was screaming, too, but she couldn’t hear it over the alarm.

I have to get out of here, she thought very clearly. I’ll get the goddamn water and I’m gone. He’ll be all right, the ambulance is on the way.

The ice bucket was too big to fit under the faucet in the sink. Too big for the toilet—no, too small. She ripped the shower curtain away from the tub and stood there panting and clawing at the faucets until a thick stream of water gushed into the ice bucket.

Her chest hurt. She braced herself against the cold tile wall and saw stars.

Right about the time the bucket was halfway full, a cold nasty spray of rusty water came out of the ceiling and drenched her hair. She dropped the bucket and looked up in utter shock at the whirling silver sprinkler.

Okay, okay, it was all over now. She could just get the hell out, he was going to be okay. The sprinklers were on. It couldn’t possibly be as bad as it had looked, everybody thought these things were worse than they really were—

She came around the corner into a thin horrible cloud of smoke, and through it she saw the white fire flicker and die on the thing that lay in a tarry mess of melted carpet.

His eyes were white, like boiled eggs. They leaked.

The alarm hiccuped and stopped. There was some other sound, something high and thin—

Velvet put both hands over her mouth to stop screaming. Her ears felt bruised and full of blood.

She stuffed the bra in her purse and threw the blouse over her shoulders, stuffed her feet into her shoes, wrapped the mink around her. Poor little drowned-rat mink.