But she now said, "Yes."

Instinctively feeling that it was the only way she could get Shelly Lowe to do the film.

"I'll let you know in a day or two for sure."

Rune was now out looking for atmosphere footage and for establishing shots-the long-angle scenes in films that orient the audience and tell them what city or neighborhood they're in.

And there was plenty of atmosphere here. Life in the Tenderloin, Times Square. The heart of the porno district in New York. She was excited at the thought of actually shooting footage for her first film but remembered the words of Larry, her mentor, as she was heading out of L amp;rR studios that night. "Don't overdo it, Rune. Any frig-gin' idiot can put together ninety minutes of great atmosphere. The story's the important thing. Don't ever bleedin' forget that. The story."

She eased into the swirl and noise and madness of Times Square, the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway and Forty-second. She waited at the curb for the light, looking down at the accidental montage embedded in the asphalt at her feet: a Stroh's bottle cap, a piece of green glass, a brass key, two pennies. She squinted; in the arrangement, she saw a devil's face.

Ahead of her was a white high-rise on the island of concrete surrounded by the wide streets; fifty feet up, the day's news was displayed along a thick collar of moving lights.

"… SOVIETS EXPRESS HOPE FOR…"

The light changed and she never saw the end of the message. Rune crossed the street and passed a handsome black woman in a belted, yellow cotton dress, who was shouting into a microphone. "There's something even better in heaven. Amen! Give up your ways of the flesh. Amen! You can win the lottery, you can become a multimillionaire, billionaire, get everything you ever wanted. But all that gain cannot compare with what you'll find in heaven. Amen! Give up your sinful ways, your lusts… If I die in my little room tonight, why, I'd praise the good Lord because I know what that means. That means, I'm going to be in heaven tomorrow. Amen!"

A few people chorused withamens. Most walked on. Farther north in the Square, things were ritzier, around the TKTS discount ticket booth, where one could see the huge billboards that any out-of-towner who watched television would recognize. Here was Lindy's restaurant, with its famous and overpriced cheesecake. Here was the Brill Building-Tin Pan Alley. Several glossy, new office buildings, a new first-run movie theater.

But Rune avoided that area. She was interested in the southern part of Times Square. Where it was a DMZ.

She passed a number of signs in stores and arcades and theaters: stop the times square redevelopment project. This was the big plan to wipe the place clean and bring in offices and expensive restaurants and theaters. Purify the neighborhood. No one seemed to want it but there didn't seem to be organized resistance to the project. That was the contradiction of Times Square; it was a place that was energetically apathetic. Busyness and hustle abounded but you still sensed the area was on its way out. Many of the stores were going out of business. Nedick's-the hot dog station from the forties-was closing, to be replaced by slick, mirrored Mike's Hot Dogs and Pizza. Only a few of the classic Forty-second Street movie theaters-many of them had been grand old burlesque houses-were still open. And all they showed was porn or kung fu or slasher fiicks.

Rune glanced across the street at the huge old art-deco Amsterdam Theater, which was all boarded up, its curvaceous clock stopped at five minutes to three. Of which day of which month of which year? she wondered. Her eye strayed to an alleyway and she caught a flash of motion. Someone seemed to be watching her, someone in a red jacket. Wearing a hat, she believed. Then the stranger vanished.

Paranoid. Well, this was the place for it.

Then she walked past dozens of small stores, selling fake-gold jewelry, electronics, pimp suits, cheap running shoes, ID photos, souvenirs, bootleg perfumes and phony designer watches. Hawkers were everywhere, directing bewildered tourists into their stores.

"Check it out, checkit… We got what you need, and you gonna like what we got. Check it out…"

One store, the windows painted black, named Art's Novelties, had a single sign in the window. leisure products. YOU MUST BE TWENTY-ONE TO ENTER.

Rune tried to peek inside. What the hell was a leisure product?

She kept walking, listing against the weight of the camera, sweat running down her face and neck and sides.

The smells were of garlic and oil and urine and rotting food and car exhaust. And, brother, the crowds… Where did all these people come from? Thousands of them. Where was home? The city? The burbs? Why were they here?

Rune dodged out of the way of two teenage boys in T-shirts and Guess? jeans, walking fast, in an arm-swinging, loping roll, their voices harsh. "Man, mothafuckah be mah boss but he don' own me, man. You hear what I'm sayin', man?"

"Fuck no, he don' own neither of us."

"He try that again, man, an' I'll deck him. I mothahfuckin' deck him, man…"

They passed her by, Rune and her camera, as she taped a visual history of Times Square.

A place like no other in New York.

Times Square…

But every Magic Kingdom needs its Mordor or Hades and tonight as Rune walked through the place she didn't feel too uneasy. She was on her quest, making her movie. About the bombing but not about the bombing. She didn't have to justify the creepy place to anyone or worry about anybody's shoes but her own and she was careful where she put her feet.

Behind her, a huge snort.

Fantastic! Knights!

Rune turned the camera on two mounted policemen, who sat rod-straight in their saddles, their horses lolling their heads and stomping solid hooves into the piles of granular manure under them.

"Hey, Sir Gawain!" Rune called. They glanced at her, then decided she wasn't worth flirting with and continued to scan the street with stony gazes that streamed from under the visors of their robin's-egg-blue helmets.

It was when she looked down from the tall, chestnut horse that she saw the red jacket again. It vanished even more quickly than earlier.

A chill ran through her, despite the heat.

Who was it? she wondered.

No one. Just one of the ten million people in the Magic Kingdom. And she forgot about it as she turned the corner and walked up Eighth Avenue toward the site of the former Velvet Venus Theater.

Along this stretch she counted six porn theaters and adult bookstores. Some had live dancers, some had peep shows where for a quarter or a token you could watch films in little booths. She stuck the camera through the door and shot a sign(only one person per booth. it's the

LAW AND OUR POLICY. HAVE A NICE DAY) Until 3 big guy selling tokens shooed her away.

She got some good footage of commuters on their way to the Port Authority and their homes in suburban Jersey. Some glanced in the windows; most wore glazed faces. A few businessmen turned quickly into the theaters, not pausing at all, as though a gust of wind had blown them through the door.

It was then that a humid wind carried a sour stink of burn to her. From the theater, she knew. Rune shut off the camera and strolled up the street.

Still spooked. The paranoia again. But she still could hear, in her memory, the terrible bang of the explosion. The ground moving under her. Recalling the bodies, theparts of bodies. The terrible aftermath of the bomb and the fire. She glanced back, saw no one watching her.

She continued along the street, thinking: The press coverage of the event had been good. Newsat Eleven had devoted ten minutes to the incident and the story had been a hook for aTime magazine article on the trends in adult films ("Hard Times for Hard-Core?") and one in theVillage Voice on the conflict the bombing presented to the First Amendment ("Disrespecting Religion and Abridging the Press"). But, as Larry had predicted, those were all spot news stories, hard news. Nobody was doing a human-interest piece on the bombing.