By the time Kirby reaches the parking lot, he realizes that he's known for weeks. Months, even. It was the same with the beaches. The same with the floods, the hurricanes, the sea level. Didn't he know all of this was coming? Didn't everyone? They've known for years. Decades. It didn't make any difference. None at all. Because now it's here and despite all that knowing, he's lost. Everyone is. They had all hung their hats on the question of proximity. Yes, it will be bad, they'd said to one another, but we have years. We have time. Somehow we'll solve this along the way. He doesn't even have the energy to be angry.

The only thing surprising about any of this is that he's alive to see it. That's the real bet they all made, isn't it? It will come. But not until we're gone.

He put his trust in electricity, in a kind of civilization that requires politics and oversight and dollars. The house isn't worth anything. And once the power goes and the supermarket folds and the gas stations sell their last gallon, money won't be worth anything, either. Not here. They'll be gone by the time all that happens. They'll go and he'll work and he'll earn: doubling down on this doomed infrastructure elsewhere. Someplace where he probably won't be alive to see it collapse. Is the idea that he probably won't be there to see it fall apart a comfort to him? It isn't, not anymore. The strange thing is it used to be.

They fought so hard to keep a world that was not meant to stay the same.

They both know the looping shape of pain—it changes and quiets but never ends. There is a strange comfort in its constancy. Memories of what was lost are also reminders of what was held.