“Til death do us part,” they had said on the altar, before God, family, and friends. Everyone was there, packing the church with a humid warmth of sweaty body heat. An outdoors ceremony would have been less stuffy, but her mother insisted on being wed before the Lord.

“Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce,” his perpetually single friend had said at the bachelor party in Vegas while drinking sparkling champagne that streamed from the toes of a stripper.

“This is the finest honeymoon suite in the entire area,” the effeminate man on the other end of the telephone had said, “simply to die for. Stunning views of the city from the quiet hill country overlooking a lake resort. Simply. To. Die. For.”

“My wife and I honeymooned there,” the gas station attendant said, “I guarantee you’ll remember this week for the rest of your life.”

They stood together on the balcony, still wearing their wedding clothes, and held ringed hands as they watched nuclear strikes turn night to day and the city to dust.