Fun day in the Big Apple. People were returning home at the end of an afternoon of shopping, gallery-going, matinees, exhibitions. It was raining. The only way to have stopped a taxi in mid-Manhattan would have been with a shot. He stood in the flooded street trying to hail one with a hand raised like that of an overlooked auction bidder while Jane sheltered beneath her umbrella on the curb. Behind her a man was trying to steady himself against the wall while taking a shit. The place he had picked, consciously or not, was especially well suited to his purpose, for on the wall in artistic lettering was sprayed, SHIT PISS FUCK NIGGER KIKE WOP. The changing of the stoplight down the avenue from red to green released the stampeding herd of traffic as from a pen. Between times he joined Jane. He was worried more even than usual at this hour over her. She looked so forlorn! In furtherance of her career, they too had done their Saturday gallery-going, always an ordeal but this time devastating.
