But it tasted good to all three of them. Outside the diner again, with coffee in cartons for Groff and Polly Chesbro for them to drink at their leisure, Mrs. Goudeket said, "Listen, what are you going to do now? You still have business here, Mickey?"
Groff shrugged. "That's what I came up for. But I doubt I can do anything about it today."
"So stay overnight at Goudeket's Green Acres," she said hospitably.
"You think we can get back there?"
"Must be somebody with a car. I can pay."
Groff looked around. There were a lot of cars, and not many of them were going. As he watched, a big sedan chugging down the road with a load of dirty-faced children coughed and stopped. A man in a Legion cap, red-eyed and bearded, got out and wearily opened the door for the kids. They apathetically began to trudge down the hill to the temporary hospital.
"Out of gas," Groff said. "They're all running out of gas."
And then one car that was not out of gas, a low-slung sports job, came rocketing along the road, took a turn too fast and skidded on the mud-slick street. Its fishtail swerved left into a fire hydrant with a crash that made the dishes behind the diner counter rattle. On the rebound the car's remaining energy sent it nosing to the right through the plate window of a clothing store. By then it was burning fiercely from the tail. Two figures, dark in the glare of burning gas, spilled frantically from the bucket seats and flailed their way through the smoke and jagged glass.
"Come on!" Groff yelled, a general invitation to perhaps half a dozen weary, red-eyed men standing about with coffee cartons of their own. They ran for the smoky blaze; it beat fiercely against Groff's forehead and cheeks. He found himself almost racing crazily into the flames before he stopped. Groff peered into the holocaust and saw nothing.
A man tugged his arm, drawing him back a couple of yards. The man said, preoccupied: "That was Ed von Lutz's little car. A Porsche. Ed's got a garage, he had that thing for advertising."