The day drizzled on and off into the night. Dreariness seeped to a cold-soaked bone. And I was schlepping down that saturated sidewalk, feeling like I was being watched. That cloud rides overhead when one haunts a city that hasn’t another soul in sight. The denizens must be somewhere, and some must be outward-facing. They might be in the shadowy maw of an alleyway or watching from the warmth and anonymity of a darkened room, but the city never went without eyes.

This was the throbbing heart of the city — if, also, the darkened heart of the city. Within a two-hundred meter radius hemisphere of my position who knew how people were seeking heat? Some would be wrestling away from dank recessed pits in the backrooms of minds run amok. While others were in the act of surrendering — plummeting into that dim pit with abandon. Who knew what was happening? But — for some reason — I had to believe that something was. As I pressed a palm to a wet stone wall, feeling for the trace vibration of hyper-living, I had to believe that the perpetual city was still wound.