June sat on a bench at the bus station, a folded newspaper left-handed above her head to stave off the rain. A man approached through a brook-babble of headlights. She watched until he was fully visible, then looked away. He wiped the bench with a brown-stained shirt and sat beside her. “You can almost hear the smog through the rain,” he said. She nodded and started in on her nose. “Ain’t it something,” he said. “Hasn’t rained in years. Now it won’t stop.” She glared at the streetlamp and rubbed her nose harder. It was a tick, something borne of the houses un-homed inside her. When the bus arrived, they crept up the triplet of stairs and sat beside each other. It was empty, just them and the driver, webs of dust and window-smudges. All was silent, save the brakes and the faintness of their living. It was nice at first, then, after a few blocks, there was a sudden shift in decibels, a crashing of glass and steel. “Abandon ship!” the driver said, though he was somehow unscathed. June pushed the gristle around in her nose and felt the bones splinter, grind, and pierce snotty membrane. The man had lost his sight and was hyperventilating. June grabbed his thigh and held it to comfort him, continuing to rub the pulp in her nose with the other hand. When the flames finally reached their feet, a calm came over her, then him, and she said, “What’s your name?” “Name’s October,” he said. “I fucking knew it,” she said. Tiny red streams ran from the dark where his eyes had been. Her hand came away from his thigh, then the other from her nose, and they embraced—squeezed each other, fat-lipped and cup-half-fullish, for what seemed like hours. Dirty puddles grew light-dimpled on the floorboard. If there were sirens of any kind, they never reached them—just cold metallic patter and the crackling of dying embers in the night. They stayed like that until the rain came harder, faster, fuller, and put what was left of them out.