Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 by Penny Publications Page A

came through here." He stopped typing. "That'll be four forty-seven." Jimmy thumbed through his wad of loose bills for a five. "My uncle's restaurant took a beating. A car plowed right into it. I don't get not at least slowing down when you can't see the hood of your own car. And those hail... boulders or whatever, it's like they went after that block in particular. Pretty bad deal."
    Reasoning that any connection would at least lead him to a person with a story to tell, Jimmy got directions to the uncle's restaurant. He left the car behind and set off in the shimmery heat, his dark arms instantly slick.
    A man and a woman stood outside the building in question, a brick building with two entrances on the street, one of which had been left doorless and demolished. He could see a bar beyond the ragged hole. The couple, both with close-cropped white hair, both of the same height and roundly built, stood in the paltry shade alongside bulging white trash bags piled against the wall.
    "We're closed," the man said, making the woman cackle with laughter and slap his pale arm. He remained straight-faced. "Try back at dinner." She stomped her foot this time to accompany her laughter.
    "Sorry, honey," she said to Jimmy.
    "You've got a good attitude."
    "I," said the man, "have no attitude at all."
    "Pff!" objected the woman. "All you got is attitude."
    "Building inspectors are checking to see if we can even go back in," the man told Jimmy. "It didn't fall on us while we were hauling out this lot." He indicated the trash bags.
    "Only so much can go wrong all at once," said the woman, and set her mouth in a line. Neither questioned Jimmy's curiosity about the previous day's events. As it turned out, they had seen the man himself.
    "We all saw 'im," said the man.
    "Who's 'all'?"
    He waved a hand about vaguely. "All of us standing here when the clouds all a sudden turned to water. And there were two other fellas with 'im. One guy had these funny eyeglasses. So thick you could see from twenty yards away that it made his eyes huge."
    "The other one was missing a ear."
    The man turned with exaggerated slowness and regarded the woman. "Where do you get this stuff?"
    "I'm telling you. You weren't standing where I was standing."
    "I was practically wearing your blouse."
    Face squinted shut in a silent paroxysm of laughter, the woman slugged her companion's shoulder.
    A tremendously large beetle emerged from among the trash bags, but when it reached the sunlit portion of the sidewalk, it veered back toward the wall.
    "Other people helped," said the man. "We helped. We helped the man who drove into our front door. That was quite a surprise!"
    The woman threw her hands up at the recollection. "Jee-miny Christmas!"
    "What else can you tell me about this group of people?"
    The man said, "One of them, not the older gentleman, was carrying a machine. Ran off with it."
    "What sort of machine?"
    "I'nt know. Some boxy thing."
    "How would you describe the older man?" Jimmy had left his book in the car.
    "Tall," said the woman, who was peering inside the building now at the sounds of a discussion among the unseen inspectors. "Maybe a Northern accent."
    "I'd say he was a Latin... Latino fellow."
    The woman turned back. "I thought he looked like Father Michael up at the church. What is he, Lebanese?"
    "I could sorta see that."
    The woman gave this a satisfied and considered series of nods, her eyes looking about as if she were comparing visible evidence.
    "So they just drove off?"
    "Um," said the man, and he and the woman looked sideways at each other.
    "Go 'head," she said.
    "It did look like a car, but it went straight up. Like on the end of a bungee line."
    "That's a good description," said the woman.
    "I saw it go up from that alley just there. Makes you think about where flying saucers come from. Are you investigating that? Maybe you don't know what all strange things have transpired here. We're kind of famous for another hailstorm. What, eighty or so years