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And him? Well, we know all about that, don’t we? We know this bubble’s going to pop sooner or later. You’ll wake from this dream and find yourself back in reality, chump. You’re so far out of her league it isn’t even funny. You’ve got some nerve—carrying this thing as far as you have. Why waste the time? Why waste
her
time? If you really love her so much, do her the favor of her life and cut it off now. Give her a chance to find someone who deserves her.

He knew she’d have a fit if she got wind of these thoughts. And he felt bad keeping them from her—they had agreed not to keep secrets from each other, and for the most part he’d kept his end of the bargain. But these feelings of inadequacy were proving harder to shake than a shadow. Jennifer had a mother and a father who doted on her. He had a mother who barely noticed he was there, and an overbearing brute of a stepfather who wished he wasn’t. She had a good education and a bright future. He had a high school diploma and six credits at Ocean County College. She had an older sister she spoke with almost every night. He had no relatives he could stand, much less communicate with. He couldn’t suppress the notion that he wasn’t
contributing
anything to the relationship, that he brought nothing to the table. She had so much, he had so little. The disproportion riddled him with guilt. And depression. And, most of all,
fear
—the stark, white terror that one day she would wake up, realize she could do so much better, and toss him like a toothpick.
What was I thinking?
she’d wonder as she walked off, arm in arm with someone else.
Just what in hell was I thinking?

He shivered at this image and doubled his determination to concentrate on his driving. The entrance to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge came up at the end of Long Beach Boulevard. He eased into the parking lot and discovered, with a certain selfish pleasure, that he was the only one there.
Makes sense—how many other people would be visiting an LBI wildlife refuge on a weekday morning in May?
He grabbed his camera bag from the back seat and got out, not bothering to lock the tired ’92 Honda Accord that served as his sole mode of transport. And she drives a 2004 Camry. Another way she outclasses me hands down…. He slung the bag over his shoulder and began to walk.

The air was warm and sweet. He loved nature, loved being in the middle of it. He spent the first few moments just looking and touching, feeling and admiring. Then the professional side of him remembered why he had come, and he took out the camera. It was a basic model—Pentax K-1000, the camera high schools give to their Photography 101 students—but it was all he could afford. Much to his surprise, it had served him very well. It had no automatic features, but he came to love that. Having full control gave him more room to express himself, and the dependency forced him to stretch his abilities to their limits.

He brought the camera to his face and turned it sideways. All shots would be taken this way today—portrait instead of landscape. They needed covers back at the
SandPaper
. Mark’s boss, the paper’s photo editor, told him to shoot at least a hundred. The theme was spring, with a nod toward the coming summer. Mark had worked there for nearly two years now, as both a writer and photographer. The exposure had made him something of a minor local celebrity.

He spotted a prothonotary warbler atop a little shrub. It was the first one he’d seen this year. He attached a zoom lens and eased toward it.

When he felt close enough, he brought the camera up and twisted the lens into focus. Through the viewfinder he found a beautifully composed frame—the animal’s primary yellows against the burning blue of the morning sky. He was awed by the sheer austerity of it and found it impossible to click the shutter for a moment.

The bird took flight when his cell phone twittered. He tried to get the shot anyway but he knew he’d missed it. He pulled the phone from his belt and flipped it open, then closed it when a voice on the other end asked if he’d be interested in having his kitchen remodeled. So much for the National Do-Not-Call List.

As if to punish the device for disturbing his work, he turned it off.

Ricki Lake would be on first, then Sally Jessie. And then, best of all…
Jerry
.

BethAnn Mosley thought Jerry Springer was a god. He wasn’t exactly a celebrity in her mind. He wasn’t cute enough, like Tom Cruise or that hunk of all hunks, Brad Pitt. (She in fact had several pictures of Pitt stark naked, and in suggestive poses, on her computer. She’d downloaded them from the Web and wasn’t even sure it was really him—they might have been faked, with his head imposed on someone else’s body. Nevertheless they sufficiently served her purposes.) No, Jerry Springer was a god because his show had the best content, the best conflicts, the best…
hate
. Even though she would never admit it to anyone, she
loved
hate. It was as addictive as the Doritos, Coca-Cola, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that formed her staple diet. This was to say nothing of marijuana and, when she could afford it, a bit of ecstasy.

Sometimes she would tape Springer, and if it turned out to be a particularly violent episode, she’d watch the explosive moments over and over. She loved the enraged look on people’s faces when their resolve finally gave way and they tried to kill each other. God, how she loved that. Why didn’t that happen more often in real life? She supposed it did, but not in
her
life. She liked pushing people’s buttons, liked trying to get them to those heights of irritation, but even in her best moments she couldn’t seem to inspire the kind of rage Jerry provided. She’d heard somewhere that a lot of his shows were scripted, so maybe that was why they seemed so perfect. She didn’t care. The pleasure she harvested far outweighed any concerns over artistic integrity.

The Ricki Lake Show
paused for a commercial break, so she raised the remote and began flipping. To her right was an open bag of Fritos. To her left, a pint of Chunky Monkey with a spoon sticking out of it. A can of Coke was trapped between her flabby legs. The rest of the six pack was in an ice chest on the floor, awaiting its fate. All the curtains in the trailer were drawn, all the windows shut tight, both doors locked. A giant metal cocoon.

Ricki
ended ten minutes later and BethAnn sighed. It would be exactly four minutes and thirty seconds until Sally started her monologue. She glanced down at the cordless phone and felt a familiar sense of dread. She’d put this off as long as possible. There were no spare minutes left.

Brian picked up on the second ring. “Hello, Beach Haven Acme, this is Brian Donahue, how can I help you?”

“Brian…it’s me.”

She sounded feeble, elderly. An old woman on her deathbed imparting her final thoughts.

“BethAnn? You sound terrible.”

The sincerity was still there, she thought, and that was good. She’d held onto this job for almost fourteen months now—a personal record. Most of her other employers caught on pretty quick. But not this guy. He seemed utterly clueless.

“I feel terrible. I’ve been throwing up, and I’ve had diarrhea, and—”

“Well, just stay home then. We’ll hold down the fort.”

Hold down the fort
. What a Brian phrase that was. So gung-ho, so all-American.

What a schmuck.

“Thanks, I really appreciate it. And I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. We don’t have control over these things.”

“I just feel bad because it’s inventory day. There’s so much work to be done.”

“Don’t feel bad. Just feel better.”

Another Brianism; her stomach knotted. She wanted to choke people like this.

“Thanks. I’ll call tomorrow.”

“Righto.”

She turned the phone off and tossed it aside. It landed at the other end of the couch, buttons up. If it rang she’d ignore it; she wasn’t expecting any other calls today.

She smiled. It was a horrible, demonic smile. She knew who Brian would call to take her place—Jennifer King. Jennifer was the only other person in the store who knew how to use the inventory computer. That damn thing was ancient. Monocolor screen (black with glowing amber characters) and so slow to respond to commands that half the time you wondered if you had entered them correctly. But Jennifer went to the trouble of learning how to use it. Didn’t complain that it was out-of-date or that it was slow. Just sat in the lunchroom in the back, on her own time, and read the manual over and over until she’d mastered it. Another gung-ho schmuck. Her and her nonstop talk about her beloved boyfriend, the hotshot writer and photographer for the
SandPaper
. She was another one who should be choked to death.

She tried to envision the sinking look on Jennifer’s face when Brian broke the bad news. She knew Jennifer was supposed to meet Mark for lunch today at Forsythe. She knew that because
everyone
knew it. Jennifer was always giving updates; the Mark and Jennifer newsletter. This would shatter those plans. Jennifer would be sad, but she wouldn’t complain. Nope, not her. All-American girls like her never did. She’d just carry on like a trooper and keep the disappointment to herself. But it would be there, and knowing that was good enough for BethAnn Mosley.

Sally finally came on. Then the Fritos ran out. BethAnn cursed and got up with a groan. She kept her stash in a chest-level cabinet so she wouldn’t have to bend or stretch. It was jammed—potato chips, pretzels, popcorn (all three varieties—plain, cheese, and caramel). This was one of the practical advantages of working in a grocery story. She chose Munchos this time.

Jerry was next, so it was a good thing she got the new bag when she did.

Zaeef
kept his eyes closed and his hands folded the entire trip. He thought about many things, but mostly about the paradise that awaited him. What fools these people were. If they only knew. They cherished and clung to their mortality as if it possessed true value, never suspecting there was a better world waiting on the other side.
This
was the hell and the purgatory. Obliterating the nonbelievers was Allah’s work, Allah’s will. The Americans were the greatest heretics. They not only clung to their lives, they clung to their money and their material goods with equal fervor—sometimes more. They were soulless and godless. Zaeef believed this with every ounce of his soul and felt no remorse for what he was about to do. In fact he felt excited about it. Excited and eager. This was the high point of existence. It would earn him passage into the great kingdom. It would exalt him in the eyes of the Almighty. Once the videotape he left behind—the one where he explained what he was doing and why—was found and played on news channels across the world, he would also be a hero of his people. Not that heroism interested him. Well, that wasn’t completely true—it interested him inasmuch as it would encourage others to choose a similar course. That was something to be thankful for. But he could not dwell on it for long.

The plan was so simple and yet so powerful. Smuggle a radioactive device onto a plane bound for Washington DC and detonate it upon landing, rendering the city uninhabitable for a few decades. They believed their biggest challenge would be getting the device on board, but it turned out to be ridiculously easy—they simply bribed an airport employee to do it for them. They’d searched for months for just the right candidate and finally found him when the Schiphol Airport laid off nearly a hundred people in a cost-cutting move. Employees were given a month’s pay and three weeks to find work elsewhere. With so many embittered workers, the stage was set. An offer of ten thousand dollars and a story that the box contained a hundred pounds of cocaine was all it took. They even gave the guy some as a “bonus.” Airport security in America had tightened like a vise, but that didn’t mean it had tightened everywhere else. The Americans could increase their control over planes that left their soil, but they couldn’t do much about the flights coming in. Great Britain and a number of other high-profile U.S. allies had increased their security, but the Netherlands was chosen for this operation because it was relatively easy to overlook. No one would suspect a flight from Amsterdam posed much of a threat. Once again the devil would be caught with his guard down. Zaeef smiled at this and allowed himself the very mortal sensation of personal gratification. He had watched tapes of terrified Americans reacting to al Qaeda’s victory of September 11, 2001. Thinking it would happen again, and that he would be the cause of it, was very gratifying indeed.

He opened his eyes and checked his watch—just after eight. The pilot had announced a few moments earlier that they were expected to land about ten minutes ahead of schedule. That suited him just fine.
The sooner the be
—

The plane rocked violently and Zaeef was almost thrown from his seat. Others tumbled into the aisles. A woman screamed, compartment lights flickered, and then a second and more violent jolt came. Overhead compartments flew open, vomiting their contents.

Zaeef had purposely left his carry-on bag unzipped. The plan once they’d landed in Washington was to simply get up from his seat as soon as they stopped moving, reach inside, and press the button on the detonator that had been disguised as a can of shaving cream. The bag now rolled out and fell onto his head, then to the floor, spilling items everywhere.