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In this reat featureless slab of the Ahts and miles slithered by, road hypnosis castdead, and the tohere I was raised--a doppelg&au of Destruction, passed through unre downstreaht of people I’d known, friends I’d ht of a table with flowers and crystal and a view of the sea, and a night--a sad and beautiful night--when in falling snow I had carried s, and ht of Liz

The lights of New York rose frohtlike a soprano I entered Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel, abandoned the car on Eighth Avenue, and set out on foot I stopped in the first tavern I came to, an Irish pub with a heavily lacquered bar and sawdust on the floor A seemed out of the ordinary; such is the insularity of New Yorkers that as happening in the eneral crisis Seated alone at the bar, I ordered a Scotch, not intending to drink it, but discovered that I wanted to and, ly, that it caused no ill effects It was delicious, itsupon s: I was not the least drunk, and I badly needed to piss In the men’s room my body released a stream so powerfully percussive it ; it seemed there was no bodily pleasure that had not been amplified a hundred-fold

But the real object of ame was on I waited until the last pitch was thrown and asked the bartender if he would switch to CNN

I did not have to wait long: "Colorado Killing Spree," read the chyron at the botto Reports were cohout the state: whole families obliterated in their beds, toithout a utted like trout But there were also survivors--bitten, but alive It just looked at s of the trau more? No one had done the math yet, but I did Per my instructions, for every nine killed, one had been called into the fold The hospitals were filling with the sick and injured Nausea, fever, spasms, then…

"That’s so next to me When had the adjacent stool become occupied? A certain urban type,and lawyerish, with an intelligent, slightly pugnacious face, a speckling of day-old beard, and a little paunch he kept tips and a blue suit and starched white shirt, necktie loose around his throat So for hi himself to face them yet, not after the day he’d just had

"Don’t I know it"

On the bar before hilass of wine Our eyesti odor of nervous perspiration he’d atteth of"Haven’t I seen you in here before?"

Ah, I thought I darted my eyes around the room There were no wo anyone?"

"Not until now"

He s "I’m Scott Lethis suit, I left hiht of visiting my old apartment but discarded the idea; it was not, had never been, home What is horaphical fulcrum, a place so saturated with memory that within its precinct the past is always present It was late, after two AM, when I entered the main hall at Grand Central Ter since closed, sealed behind their grates; the board above the ticket s listed only ered: the ubiquitous transit police in their Kevlar vests and creaking leather accoutre for a train that had long since departed, an old blacka dust mop, earphones stuffed in his head At the center of the endary timepiece Meet me at the kiosk, the one with the four-faced clock…It was New York’s most celebrated rendezvous point, perhaps the most famous in the world How many fateful encounters had occurred in this place? How hts of love? How enerations walked the earth because a ed tobrass and opalescent glass? I tilted , 125 feet overhead Inadulthood, its beauty had been muted by layers of coal soot and nicotine, but that was the old New York; a thorough cleaning in the late nineties had restored its gold-leaf astrological iinal luster Taurus, the bull; Ge his water; a alactic arhts A little-known fact, though not unacknowledged byof Grand Central is actually backward It is a ht sky; lore holds that the artist orking from a medieval manuscript that showed the heavens not from within but from without--not mankind’s view but God’s