Valley right to our front door. If only I’d had a crystal ball, I could’ve bought lots of oceanfront property right here in Wichita. Then I’d be living in a castle, richer than sin, like Montrose, instead of this rat-hole office....

Look, it’s simple: INside the Wall is a country club; OUTside the Wall is Calcutta.

“The temperature is thirty-five degrees Celsius.” Her voice was smooth and sultry. “The wind is blowing at a speed of twenty-eight miles per hour from the northwest. The sky is not clear.”

I still needed something to steady my nerves, so I opened the safe under the desk, hauled out the battered espresso maker and plugged it in. Making coffee required real progress, since I actually had to get up out of my chair and go to the bar sink in the corner for the water.

You’re wondering if I ever peed in the sink, living alone as I did in that room, but I protest. I decline to answer. A man has a right to some privacy.

I sat back down in my chair and poured the water into the top of the espresso maker.

“Ozone alerts continue. The ultra-violet index exceeds ninety-two percent, and sunscreen levels of sixty-five or higher are strongly recommended.”

As the little machine built up a head of steam, the aroma of the bean teased my nostrils. It was the good Columbian stuff, black market and expensive. I inhaled pleasurably. The good stuff was hard to get. The embargo against trade with the Latins had landed coffee on the same list as cocaine and bananas. I suppose the movers and shakers, who understood that sort of thing, didn’t want our cash heading south. Too bad I wasn’t a pothead--you could get as much of that as you wanted.

I looked out the window and stared at the blank face of The Wall. Its surface had been formed by some heat-fusing process that gave it a metallic, glassy blue-grey sheen, as slippery as glass and nearly indestructible.

“There are cyclone warnings, with the probability of a major tornado event increasing to sixty-three per cent.”

We had screwed up the weather in almost every imaginable way, but the tornadoes were the worst. I hated the tornadoes.

The dream is always the same. I am walking down an aisle carrying a girl in my arms. There are crowds of people on both sides of the aisle, watching me. Their mouths are open as though they are shouting or singing, but I cannot hear them. All I can hear is the howling of the wind.

The girl in my arms changes. Sometimes she is an innocent child staring at me; sometimes she is injured and bloody; sometimes she weeps; sometimes she is dead; sometimes she is naked and sexy,