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Page 6.
Chapter 5.
 Jeff parked his VW on a rain-slicked street where trash lay soggy in gutters. Tawdry billboards defaced the stained walls of once-pretty buildings. On one corner, a fat man in expensive sports shoes leaned into a dented car, exchanging a packet (drugs?) for cash. A youth carried a huge radio that thumped out rape-rap. Two skinheads in leather and boots strutted past, glaring, promising some future racial battle.
Trying to figure how to begin his book, Jeff resolved to wander the buildings and corridors until his theme percolated up. Fat chance, with all these modern distractions, he thought.
Here was a place he had not been to yet, the Americas Building, a slender step-pyramid of pink granite and glass rising forty-five stories toward a climax of aluminum sheathing, complete with streamlined gargoyles. Jeff rode upward in an ancient mahogany elevator and emerged on a flat roof just below a massive clock tower.
Pelted by stinging raindrops like thrown mercury blobs, he explored the windy roof looking for that angle, that point of view, that for a moment would bring to life the elusive present long gone, the ambiance planned by the long-gone architect.
The city streets spread beneath him. The round clock face made faint clattering sounds as its machinery propelled steel minute and hour hands over a mosaic with sans-serif lettering and numbers.
Jeff realized suddenly that there was almost no railing. He could step over the edge and go sailing down, perhaps into the past, more likely into oblivion.
At that sickening moment, as his brain and his stomach wrenched, he realized that he was having a subliminal thought of suicide. A watery pink light surrounded him, the color of Depression glass. His hair hung plastered over his face, which bubbled with rain drops. His coat was soaked and hung heavily. He leaned against the brick facing of the clock tower, breathing and swallowing convulsively, staring at the streams of headlights far below. For an instant, the long plunge down into the swim of rain and headlights had exerted a pull on him.
Where was this coming from? He had a sense that some "other" was momentarily intruding upon his mind. He knew people once in a while had these dark thoughts, but why me and why now he wondered. The clock towers loomed before him like big sad dogs. Their square or round faces sent a message of unchanging mystery. We are all prisoners of time, they seemed to say. There you are, frail human, and here we are, great ships insulated against wind, rain, and frost. We all huddle together hoping for the best. He listened to heartbeat of traffic in the canyons below, the wail of a siren, the bleat of a cab, the honk of a truck. He wondered who, or what, had intruded on his mind for the split instant, nearly causing him to throw himself down into the chainsaws of traffic and concrete.
A voice startled him: "You."
He turned around.
A man in a long coat stood just under the shelter of the clock face, lighting a cigarette. The match flared, then was jettisoned like a smoking missile. The smoker was a gray man with a hard face and a small sour mouth. Under a dark hat brim, slate eyes glittered like blades. Jeff remembered that such a guy was throwing ladies into clocks.
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