an avenging angel there. "Shouldn't we refer to it as Him?"

"She, you mean," Minnie said. "The old masculine idea that God must be a man is just so much ego-wash. Why, the feminine principle is evident all through the universe. Why, why, you just can't say Him when—when—"

Minnie had never been too strong on ideas. She ran out of breath and stood, panting and pushing back her hair.

After a while we talked about it calmly, and listened to the radio. There were more speakers and another survey of the countries that had heard the second announcement. At two o'clock I told them to go home. It was no use trying to get any work done that day. Besides, there were no customers.

The subways were running again when I reached the BMT, and I rode to my home in Queens.

"Of course you heard it?" My wife asked me at the door.

"Of course," I said. "Was it spoken by a woman in her middle-thirties, with just the trace of a Queens accent?"

"Yes!" Jane said. "Thank God we can agree on something!" But of course we couldn't.

We talked about it all through supper, and we talked about it after supper. At nine o'clock the announcement came again, from behind and above our shoulders.

"Judgment of the inhabitants of the planet Earth will be held in five days. Please prepare yourselves for final examination and departure. That is all."

"Well," Jane said. "I guess She means it."

"I guess He does," I said. So we went to bed.

The next day I went in to work, although I don't know why. I knew that this was It, and everyone else knew it too. But it seemed right to go back to work, end of the world or not. Most of my adult life had been bound up in that store, and I wanted a day more with it. I had some idea of getting my affairs in order, although I knew it couldn't matter.

The subway ride was murderous. New York is always a crowded city, but it seemed as though the whole United States had moved in. The subways were so tightly jammed the doors couldn't even close. When I finally got out, the streets were filled from one curb to the other. Traffic had given up, and people were piling out of cars and buses anywhere they were stopped, adding to the jam in the streets.

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