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They alking now, shivering She was hugging herself He turned up his collar and pulled the halves of his sportcoat tight together

"How much of the hour has passed?" Connie asked

"Damned if I know I’ve lost all tier?"

"Maybe"

"Less?"

"Maybe"

"Shit"

"Maybe"

To their right, in a sprawling recreationalvehicle storage yard behind heavyduty chainlink fence croith razor wire, loo elephants

"What’re all these cars?" Connie wondered

They were parked on both sides of the road, half on the narrow shoulders and half on the pave the threelane street to no more than two lanes It was curious, because none of those businesses would have been open when the Pause hit In fact, all of theht hours earlier

On their right, a landscape behind which a tree and shrub nursery was terraced halfway up the canyon wall

Directly under one of the pole la Her blouse was open, and his hand was inside,marble breast As far as Harry was concerned, their frozen expressions of ardent passion, tinted sodiuh the car as about as erotic as a couple of corpses tuether on a bed

They passed two automobilerepair shops on opposite sides of the threelane, each specializing in different foreign makes The businesses fronted their own parts junk yards heaped with cannibalized vehicles and fenced with high chainlink

Cars continued to line the street, blocking driveways to the businesses A boy of about eighteen or nineteen, shirtless in jeans and Rockports, as thoroughly gripped by the Pause as everyone they Ca at the occluded sky as if there was soedout bliss on his face

"This is weird," Connie said

"Weird," Harry agreed, flexing his hands to keep the knuckles fro too stiff with the cold

"But you knohat?"

"Fath of the threelane blacktop, all of the businesses arehouses Some were built of concrete block covered with dustcaked stucco, stained with rust fro countless rainy seasons others were entirely of rew more numerous in the final block of the street, which deadended in the crotch of the canyon In so the road to one lane

At the end of the street, the last of all the buildings was a large warehouse unidentified by any company naated steel roof A giant FOR RENT banner was strung across the front, with a Realtor’s phone nuhts shone down the face of the structure, acrosstractorandtrailer rigs At the southwest corner of the building was a suys in their early twenties, steroidassisted physiques bulked up beyond eightlifting and diet alone could achieve

"Couple of bouncers," Connie said as they approached the Pause frozen men

Suddenly the scene made sense to Harry "It’s a rave"

"On a weekday?"

"Must be so"

Io, the rave phenoers and those in their early twenties anted to party nonstop until dawn, beyond the eye of all authorities

"Suess, and smarter than some"

Rave proht or two,the event from one spot to another to avoid police detection Locations of upcoround newspapers and in fliers handed out at record stores, nightclubs, and schools, all written in the code of the subculture, using phrases like "The Mickey Mouse Xpress," "American Xpress," "DoubleHit Mickey," "Get Xrayed," "Dental Surgery Explained," and "Free Balloons for the Kiddies" Mickey Mouse and X were nickna more commonly known as Ecstasy, while references to dentistry and balloons aswould be for sale

Avoidance of police detection was essential The theal rave partyas opposed to tas, and anarchy

Harry and Connie walked past the bouncers, through the door, and into the heart of chaos, but a chaos to which the Pause had brought a tenuous and artificial order

The cavernous rooreen lasers, perhaps a dozen yellow and red spots, and strobes, all of which had been blinking and sweeping over the crowd until the Pause stilled theht found some partiers and left others in shadows

Four or five hundred people,as fifteen, were frozen in either the act of dancing or just hanging out Because the disc jockeys at raves invariably played highly energized techno dancebass that could shake walls,celebrants had been Paused in bizarre poses of flailing and gyrating abandon, bodies contorted, hair flying The men and boys were for the most part dressed in jeans or chinos with flannel shirts and baseball caps worn backward, or with preppy sportcoats over Tshirts, though so women wore a wider variety of clothes, but every outfit was provocativetight, short, lowcut, translucent, revealing; raves were, after all, celebrations of the carnal The silence of graves had replaced the boo music, as well as the screaht combined with the stillness to impart an antierotic cadaverous quality to the exposed curves of calves, thighs, and breasts