I stood at the window, my arm around Jane. We couldn't say anything for perhaps ten minutes.
"Well," I said to her finally. "Well, well."
"Well," she said. We were silent for a few more minutes. Then she said, "Well," again.
There was nothing else to say.
I looked out the window. Below me the city was sparkling with lights; the sun was coming up, and everything was deadly quiet. The only sound I could hear was the buzzing of an electric sign. It sounded like a broken alarm clock, or like a time bomb, perhaps.
"You'll have to go back to work," Jane said. She started to cry. "Although I suppose ten years is only a second in eternity. Only a second to Her."
"Less," I said. "A fraction of a second. Less."
"But not to us," Jane said.
It certainly should have ended there. Judgment day should have come, bringing with it whatever it brought. We were ready. All the worldly goods were disposed of, in New York and I suppose, in the rest of the world. But ten years was too long, too much a strain on goodness.