Sensation was everything. It was the only thing.
One
Smoke in an armchair and Ashes on a footstool watched Martha Cupp as she moved impatiently from window to window in the living room, their orange eyes as bright as lanterns.
Except for the betrayals of her body, from minor annoyances like gray hair to the greater treachery of arthritis in her hands, Martha felt twenty years old. She was as quick of mind as she had been six decades earlier, sharpened by the wisdom that came from a life rich in experiences.
At eighty, as at twenty, she had no patience for nonsense. To her dismay, the world was more than ever a temple of absurdity. So many people had stopped believing in any truth that offered hope, uncritically embracing instead a belief in the animated inanimate that was computer “intelligence,” in the gleaming but hollow utopia of the Internet and all things digital, in the preposterous economic theories of envious sociopaths, in the absolute moral and legal equality of men and ants and apes and asparagus. In particular, Martha disliked the numerous denominations of End Timers who, like the odious Mr. Udell in 3-H, believed passionately in one existential threat or another, from a looming ice age to an imminent planetary meltdown, to the Rapture followed by Satanic rule and Armageddon. Nonsense.
A few days earlier, their cook and housekeeper, Sally Hollander, had been among the sane. Then suddenly she began talking about vivid and disturbing dreams. She became so distressed by the third round of nightmares that she believed they must be prophetic glimpses of a rapidly approaching doomsday. And now she claimed to have seen the devil in the butler’s pantry.
The city was real, the storm was real, and the window before Martha was real, but the devil in the pantry was rubbish and humbug. Either Sally, previously so dependable and sound of mind, was having a midlife crisis and developing a personality disorder, or the poor woman suffered from some physical malady with symptoms that included hallucinations and delusions. Because Sally was like a beloved niece, Martha didn’t want to consider the second possibility, which might indicate a brain tumor or other dire condition.
A blazing axe of lightning chopped the sky and thunder crashed like a thousand trees felled and falling as one. For a moment the entire city seemed to go dark. But that must have been just a brief blinding effect of the brilliant thunderbolt, because when she blinked twice, the city was out there again, its twinkling buildings and lamplit avenues receding in the murk.
Earlier, Smoke and Ashes, a pair of British blue shorthairs, had remained cat-calm through Sally’s outburst, languid and self-absorbed. Their ears had pricked slightly at the first scream, and their heads had turned toward the source of the sound. But their muscles had not tensed nor had their dense and ultra-plush blue-gray fur bristled in the least. As the housekeeper’s cries of terror softened into sobs, Smoke and Ashes had lost interest and had focused once more on their grooming. The behavior of the cats was for Martha proof enough that nothing demonic had paid a visit.
Edna, Martha’s older sister—eighty-two—had an affinity for nonsense. All her life, Edna believed in everything unlikely, from palm-reading to poltergeists, from the lost continent of Atlantis to cities on the dark side of the moon. At the moment, she was sitting at the kitchen table with Sally, plying the shaken woman with brandy-laced coffee to quiet her nerves and encouraging her to remember—or invent—new details of her encounter with the Prince of Darkness in the butler’s pantry.
Sometimes Martha marveled that she and Edna, being different in so many ways, had built a major business together with so few moments of friction over the years. Martha had a head for business, and Edna was the creator of ever more delicious recipes. Cupp Sisters Cakes became the largest mail-order dessert company in the nation, produced a highly successful line of frozen cakes on sale in supermarkets, and in general rode every wave in the cake business to greater success. The only thing they didn’t see coming was, ironically, the upscale-cupcake craze; none of the many franchised cupcake stores bore the Cupp name. Martha supposed they succeeded because their talents were different but complementary—and because they adored each other.
The company had been sold four years previously, and they had given away half their fortune. Thus far retirement was enjoyable, a series of luncheons and social events, volunteer work with their favorite charities, and plenty of free time to pursue their personal interests. But now this episode with dear Sally. Although Edna was the superstitious one, Martha could not shake the uneasy feeling that with this peculiar incident, her long run of good fortune—and her sister’s—might be near an end.
