There were small explosions of heat lightning far away. Marlowe saw them from his front stoop through the trees, past the tops of houses, flickering in the clouds over the next city. The black sky erupted with shivers of electricity that made him feel good he was close to shelter. Two figures approached from a block away on the sidewalk. He was luckier than them. They were going to get drenched soon when the storm came. They walked steadily, crossed Wright Terrace, and passed in front of his house.
“You’re going to get soaked,” he offered, smiling in the darkness.
“We’re going to get soaked,” the first man told the second. “He’s right.”
“No, we’re not,” said the second. “That’s heat lightning.” He turned to Marlowe. “Right?”
“Yep, it’s heat lightning.”
“It’s miles away,” the second man said. He was addressing the first man, Marlowe, the lightning and whoever else might be listening.
Raindrops began swatting them. The first man held up his hand. “Nuts!” he said. “Hey, mister, can we stand on your porch for a minute?”
Marlowe looked at them. They seemed harmless. He hardly ever saw anyone walking around here, though. But whoever did walk at night around here usually proved to be harmless.
“The car,” the second man began. Then he stopped.
“Sure,” Marlowe said. The two strangers followed him up to his porch. The rain got worse and fell in sheets that blew onto the porch, like it was chasing them.
“Ordinarily, heat lightning results from the discharge of negative ions created from the friction of ice and water particles bumping into each other at the bottom of a cloud,” Marlowe said. “But these are not ordinary times.” He wondered what kind of times they really were. Everything he read pointed to imminent disasters.
“Can we come inside a minute, mister?” the first man said. “We’re getting soaked.”
Marlowe studied them again. A minute ago they seemed harmless. Now, with this rain, he wasn’t sure. They were probably just common criminals. Why weren’t they driving? Everyone drove nowadays. “Sure,” he said reluctantly.
“Any port in a storm,” the first one said as they got in. He was medium height, dressed appropriately for the summer heat, in those slacks that offer an elastic waistband, loafers, and a Ban-Lon shirt. He looked like he would be at ease anywhere. “We won’t stay long. The rain’ll pass.”
“I’m going out in a while.”
“Where were you going?” the second man said. He had a quieter aspect than the first man. To Marlowe he looked like a real thinker, a schemer. He planned things.
“Just out.”
“That’s heat lightning,” the second man said. “It’s going to rain real hard. As soon as that’s over with, we leave.”
“Well, where were you going, anyway?” Marlowe asked.
“We’re supposed to see a man named Donovan.”
“Don’t you have a car?”
The first man laughed. “See, Donovan was going to sell us a car. We’re on our way to meet him to buy the car.”
Marlowe did not like the first man. The first man put his hands out, stretching them across the arms of Marlowe’s armchair, like they belonged there. Marlowe didn’t like the second man either. The second man, the thinker, sat rigidly on the sofa, his legs uncrossed, his back straight. He resembled a porcelain Siamese Cat Marlowe had seen once in the Field Museum. He had talked his father into buying him an ice cream cone, then buying a ticket for the special Egyptian Mummy exhibit, and that is where he saw the porcelain cat. He had always wanted to grab a baseball bat and break the feline into a million pieces. Even now, that thought was on his mind as the men stared at him, two porcelain intruders nudging their way in and violating the sanctuary of his home just off Wright Terrace. He could probably reason with the second man.
“So, you’re in a hurry to buy a car?”
“No,” the first man said.
“Yes,” the second man said.
“OK. That’s heat lightning. It’s far away. It’ll rain in Aurora, in Elgin, but not here. I mean, not for long, I mean.”
“You know a lot about the weather.”
“I’m a meteorologist,” Marlowe said.
“So, you know a lot about meteors, too, huh?”
“No, a meteorologist knows weather. Astrophysicists know meteors.”
“So you know weather and the names of everything. Do you have any beer?”
Marlowe had a case of beer in the basement. “No,” I don’t have any beer in the basement.”
“Do you have any beer in the kitchen?”
“Listen,” he addressed the second man. “It’s not going to rain for long. In fact, I think it’s stopped. Why don’t you just be on your way? You’re making me nervous.”
“Hey, Stanton. He says he’s nervous. He doesn’t look nervous, does he?’
“No, no, he doesn’t. He’s a meteorologist. Have you ever met a nervous meteorologist?”
Marlowe always tried avoiding trouble. Trouble made him nervous, and he was nervous to begin with. Then people used to say he was yellow. If you’re a man, you hate that. Just because you try to reason with people instead of fight them, people assume you’re a yellow-bellied pussy. His father thought he was yellow. The porcelain cat in the Field Museum felt the same way. He remembered the cat like it was something far off and long ago but also within easy reach. It was just a statue. But if the cat had been a living, breathing jungle cat, his tail would have twitched and it would have attacked Marlowe, thinking him to be another kind of cat – a scaredy cat. Thus, the baseball bat. He read about baseball bats, meteors, the weather, all in the hopes that reading would make him less nervous. But it had just the opposite effect. Reading made him a real weirdo.
“I just realized I do have some beer in the basement,” Marlowe said. “Maybe if we all have a beer I’ll stop being nervous.”
“What a reasonable guy,” the first man said.
Marlowe went to the kitchen and got the baseball bat. He’d been waiting years for this. His father had it coming. The porcelain cat had it coming. The first man, with his cool demeanor and Sans-a-belt slacks, had it coming. But the second man had it coming even more because he resembled the porcelain cat. Marlowe went into the living room and smashed the second man in the head so hard his brains splattered all over the wall and the first man. Marlowe’s wall just stood there, but the first man wiped brain matter and myelinated nerve cells off of his chin and started screaming hysterically. Marlowe thought ‘This is what beer drinkers do when confronted by a Louisville Slugger. They scream.’ He might have read that once.
Then the first man ran outside as the rain continued to build, slowly at first, then gradually harder and harder as the heat lightning changed into real honest-to-goodness storm lightning, without any pretext of being far away or harmless or pussy-like. It was a goddamned hard rain meant to fell tree limbs, strike down folks who should have feared it, track down people who did fear it, and raise havoc in general. The first man ran around in circles, clutching his head, his elastic waistband going in and out like an accordion. Then a car pulled up. It was a jalopy. Whoever drove it recognized the first man, because a door opened, he got in, and the car drove off into the rain. The car screamed a bloodcurdling scream as it disappeared down Laramie Avenue.
Marlowe put down the bat, got a roll of paper towels and cleaned the second man’s brains off the sofa, popped open a beer and picked up the book he’d been reading right before he saw the heat lightning. It was all about meteors and stuff.
