there was fire.

I laugh under lights but as I pull up my hood and shine my flashlight over the dark sidewalk - dark walls - the wind wails and sighs through cracks.

I am scared.

Stars and distant highway lights are the brightest illumination right now. Wind whips clouds from moon. The windmill sits dark. Silent. Blue Christmas lights hushed for now.

They tell me that the transformer blew, that they saw it. "It kept pulsing and then all of a sudden it exploded and there was fire," they say. People in Bridgehampton said it looked like a lightning strike.

I smile as they play cards in the dark - scream as the handle to the vacant room gives way and sprint up the stairs, leaving Deana bewildered but chasing me. We sit in the common area and the emergency lights extinguish. One. By. One.

Outside, wind warns.

And yet for light, for the electric pulse and collective sigh of relief - the return to just another night -

I will wait a moment longer.