Georgia was in the music library, knitting little silver skulls on a shawl, and listening to the radio, when Jude wandered into the room.

“…3,000 scientists signed the strongest statement yet on the subject of global warming,” said the newsman. “The letter paints a dark picture of the earth’s future, warning that melting ice caps, super hurricanes, and coastal flooding are inevitable if the global community doesn’t act decisively to address climate change. Concerned consumers are advised to consider lowering their energy consumption, and to look at alternative energy cars…”

Jude flipped the radio over to FUM. They were playing Soundgarden, Black Hole Sun. Jude turned it up.

“What the fuck you do that for?” Georgia said, and chucked a sewing needle at the back of his head. It bounced off his shoulders. Jude ignored it. “I was listening to that, asshole.”

“Now you’re listening to this,” Jude said.

“You’re such a dick.”

“Oh hell,” he said, turning back toward her. “They were wetting themselves over global cooling, twenty years ago. Remember that? No, probably not. Big Bird didn’t talk much environmental science.”

She threw the other sewing needle at him. He ducked, stuck an arm up to protect his face. The needle glanced off his wrist. By the time he looked up over his arm, she had huffed out.

Jude followed her into the kitchen. She bent into the fridge, to paw out a bottle of that cranberry red stuff she drank now, one of her wine coolers. To Jude, it tasted like Kool-Aid, as prepared by the Rev. Jim Jones.

“It’s a crock,” Jude said. “Nobody knows.”

“Everybody knows,” she said. “There’s data that shows the earth’s temperature has been rising every year for the last fifty years. No one argues that.”

He had to clamp down on a laugh. It was always funny to him, when Georgia used words like data. He was maybe not entirely successful at disguising his amusement, because she threw the cap of her wine cooler at him.

“Will you stop throwing shit at me?” he said.

She turned away on her heel, glared back into the open fridge for something to munch on. Her lips were moving, as she whispered angrily to herself. He caught just a word here and there: fuck; Jude; ignoramus.

He eased around the chopping block, slipped up behind her, and put his arms around her waist, clasping her body to his. At the same time he peered over her shoulder into the refrigerator. Nothing to drink except those fucking wine coolers.

“C’mon. I hate when we fight about stupid shit,” he said, and slid his hands up to give her melons a squeeze.

“It isn’t stupid shit,” she said, elbowing him off her, and wheeling around, her eyes giving him the old death ray. “Take a look at your cars. Why you got to drive everywhere in those shitty gas guzzling old cars of yours? Just because they make you feel like a badass? First it was the Mustang, then it was the Charger. They both get about three miles to the gallon, and when people are stuck behind us in traffic, you can see ‘em turning black in the face from breathing your exhaust. You ever thought about taking yourself out and buying a nice responsible hybrid—one of those superlow emissions vehicles that get such great mileage?”

“I was thinking about taking myself out to get some beer,” he said, and burped in her face. “Oops, sorry—runaway emissions.”

She punched him in the chest, gave him the finger, and told him to eat shit, roughly all at the same time. He turned away, laughing, grabbed his black duster off the back of a chair.

“The people who drive hybrids look like weenies,” he said. “I wouldn’t be caught dead.”

He left her in the kitchen, and cut through Danny’s old office, headed for the driveway. Jude opened the side door, shaking his head, and stepped out into the Atlantic Ocean.

He hadn’t expected it to be there—the ocean hadn’t been waiting outside the front door yesterday—and he sank straight down, his motorcycle boots filling with icy seawater.

“Blub,” he said. A jellyfish moved past him in pulses. He turned to go back inside, but the currents already had him, and he was rolled away through dark water. The hubcap of his Dodge Charger sailed by. Shit, he thought, the Charger. It had to be underwater too. The engine, the leather upholstery, the custom radio system…the whole thing was probably fucked.

Then Jude drowned.