Claude had been kind of a wild guy in college. When he had a car he drove it fast. When he got the chance he climbed fences, buildings, once even, at 3:30 in the morning, the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. His political ideas were outlandish, but he wrote like an angel. They thought his fantasy about bombing the ROTC building a bit strange, but no more so than Angie’s unwillingness to walk in the shadow of the campanile, or Mal’s aversion to long-haired dogs.

Although Angie and Mal and Winnie formed a perfect triangle and needed no one else, when Angie and Claude became an item the others were glad. They tried to expand to a rectangle. Claude probably would have gone with them to Israel if he hadn’t had gotten a good job right out of college.

But nothing Claude did would have stopped his mother from killing herself. He just would have heard about it in Israel instead of in Berkeley. And no matter where he heard of it, the news probably would have pushed him the way it did push him, over the edge into his mental illness.

He lost the job. He bounced up, down, and sideways while the doctors fiddled with his medications. He forsook the meds for a combination of strict diet and Catholicism but by then Angie had married him. She’d gotten those desperate letters and wires from him when she and Mal and Winnie were on the kibbutz. His agony had powered her home, had pulled her arms around him, had made her into a nurturing care-giver for twenty-nine years. While Claude became more Catholic, more aesthete, more rigorous and self-denying. While wild Claude turned into a hunched-over timid opinionated man, who drove annoyingly slowly with his lights always on. While Claude turned increasingly to prayer.

Twenty-nine years. She might have continued till death did them part. But recently Claude began to have visions. He concluded that he must jettison his earthly possessions, and he started the process without informing her. She returned from work a week ago to find him negotiating with some couple to take their living room furniture. A few days later he told her they must leave the Bay Area and become missionaries. That night, just four nights ago, she saw the scabby X’s from self-flagellation on his back. She called Winnie and Mal.

They flew in from Atlanta and Ann Arbor. They each had to endure delays at their airports but once in the air they crossed most of the continent in four skyblue hours. The Mississippi River appeared to each like a creek in Berkeley. They were only aware of the Rocky Mountains because the updrafts produced some turbulence.

The three old friends were together at last again, and not because any of them was dying. They sat in Angie’s study, confident that Claude would be in church for at least another two hours, and they took the measure of their adult lives.

“Who knows how much more time we have,” mused Mal.

“So let’s go for it,” said Winnie. The other two looked questions at her.

“You know I have enough to take care of us,” she said. “Let’s go measure the earth like we always meant to do. Let’s turn away from that Jordan River culvert, that drainage ditch, and visit the Sierras, the high desert, our wild coastline. Let’s go together and measure South America, and Africa.” These were amazing words from Winnie. Winnie was not impulsive.

“Anyway, let’s get you out of here,” Winnie said to Angie, and Mal nodded in agreement.

Then they rose from their seats as one, still in triangle formation, each shocked at how old the other two faces had become, each warmed by the way those old faces still bore the lineaments of youth. When they met they had two decades behind them, and every year seemed an age. Now they had two decades before them, and a year seemed like months. They each reached out two ways, and clasped a friend’s arm. They couldn’t believe it.

But I could. They all think I’m a Luddite but I can use tech when I’m called to. By God. Spycams are so widely available now. I heard their blasphemy and I witnessed what can only be deviant attraction between them.

I’ve had my suspicions for awhile. The first real trigger was when Angie came in that day last August and announced she had to be a good Muslim and wash her feet. She tried to cover that statement with a laugh and a comment about how dusty her toes got in sandals all day, but it made me watch her more. Then I caught her reading the Koran. Sure it was an intellectual exercise. Sure.

My old friends have warped. We were all iffy in college and I’ve been deluding myself that they are more like me than is actually the truth.

I can do tech and I can do weapons. The old ROTC fantasies were not just academic (hah!); they didn’t lack research. And now that the house is almost empty, only an old structure, really four corrupt old structures, will be laid waste. I just have to detonate soon.