Monica was having a martini, which she quite liked; she was listening to Keith speak knowledgeably of current political and financial and legal and moral crises, which he saw as “mutually interrelated.” (The word crisis was a favorite of his, as was the word impasse.) Keith’s irony was so gentlemanly, so carefully modulated, Monica could not always determine its significance. Did Keith detest the present administration in Washington, or was it the administration’s critics he detested?

At one point during the lengthy dinner Monica heard herself say wittily, though perhaps not entirely appropriately, “Maybe there is no solution because there is no problem,” and Keith regarded her with a quizzical smile.

Keith Renwick, a lawyer trained at the University of Virginia: tight-curled graying hair, warm moist intelligent brown eyes, a habit of nodding just perceptibly as he spoke: not explicitly aggressive but very much, one could tell, his own man. Monica liked him when she was apart from him rather more than she liked him when they were together, but perhaps that would be no problem—she’d felt the same way with Harold, early in their relationship.

After a long while Keith said: “There is always a solution—if you know whom to contact.”

They were not lovers and there was some doubt as to whether they might ever be lovers—which of them would take the risk, make the irrevocable irremediable gesture?—and even friendship was doubtful, friendship was quite doubtful, but they were companionable together; they were an attractive couple, together.

And Keith was capable of surprising Monica, too: she hadn’t the right to feel complacent about him.

For, as it turned out, Keith was extremely interested in survival—in survivalism. The survival of a nuclear holocaust, the breakdown of American civilization, that sort of thing.

Monica, knowing little about the movement, was surprised to discover a considerable library in Keith’s apartment, magazines and handbooks—Survival News, Best about Backpacking, Live off the Land, You and Yours, Rifles & Handguns Guidebook, Survive! When she questioned Keith he was evasive at first, then spoke with mounting enthusiasm and authority. Of course, he said, he didn’t take the paramilitary aspect of the movement too seriously (“Paramilitary?” Monica asked), nor did he make it a fetish to go camping, hiking, backpacking, under hardship circumstances, except for a few weeks each summer. Still, he said, seeing Monica’s look of startled interest, no one can deny that the United States is extremely vulnerable to nuclear attack; and that, contrary to the most pessimistic theories, a good percentage of citizens could survive. “Of course these citizens would have to know how to go about it,” Keith said, smiling faintly. “It won’t be an amateur’s world, postholocaust.”