When I came home around 6 it was still day light and my husband had been and gone, and left a note: Power Failure. Which meant there was no cooking to be done. I went looking for candles--none. It grew dark. Very dark. Silent too: no fridge hum, no voices, no music across the street. No little green lights on the electronics. I found the head lamp I bought to ride my bike around the MacDowell Colony last September. Finished reading the New York Times. The German couple renting downstairs for 3 months while the owner is in Zimbabwe met my husband coming back, said the power had been off since 4 pm, and they were going out for dinner.  We had salad, cheese, bread, wine. While we were eating, with a mag light paperclipped to the Japanese lantern, the lights flickered on--and off again. My husband decided to go back to the music building. I got my book--Kundera. I've been working my way from Ignorance through some of the essays in French Pleiade--and I read it with a flashlight, perhaps for the first time since I was a kid reading under the covers with an ear out for footsteps coming up the stairs. My grandmother caught me once; I made her promise not to tell. She must have kept her promise because I don't remember a sequel.