fishy mouth hanging open, his own eyes. . watering. Miriam frantically considers the options: Eileen is beside them, Barbie Jesus at her breast, absorbed in her fugal feeding state — Clive is drunk and distressed, balling his fists in his Fair Isle, hunching into the shrubbery, then hunching back out. . because he cannot bear to miss whatever’s going to happen. As for Maggie. . the tricoteuse . . on she clickety-clicks — although it’s worse than that, because, holding the yashmak of her handiwork up over her mouth, she mutters, Jump, and then a little bit louder, Jump. Her eyes are bright with childlike desire, and it can only be crazy childishness that allows her to believe her next Jump! — which is very loud — remains unattributable. Podge peers down at them alclass="underline" Are you sure I should jump, Maggie? she says. I mean, golly, I do want to. . And I shan’t blame any of you if I’m not lifted up with the Maharishi and Meher Baba and taken through the rainbow door to Sector 6. If I do, um, just bash down on to the patio. . and I’m all smashed up, I’m worried. . I’m scared I’ll be fat — I don’t awfully mind being deaded, but I can’t stand being fat. . Miriam is stricken by all this stasis: shackled to her husband, to the residents. . to Barbie Jesus and bloody Willesden by her own inertia. The fall yet to happen plummets through her imagination: Podge, an outcast from heaven — her streak through these few short feet sickeningly prolonged, giving them time to admire the onrush’s artistry as it arranges her hair into a blonde semblance of wings. . a skinny angel. Do something, Miriam begs, or at least say something! — Movements, when at last they arrive, have a provisional feeclass="underline" No one actually does anything — instead they strive to illustrate the form their actions might take, were we by any chance to perform any: Oscar tries to jump up at Clive, his paws scrabbling on the stocky man’s thighs — Eileen tries to remove Barbie Jesus from her breast — Irene tries to get a forsythia bush to lift her — Miriam tries to reach the back door to 119. She has clear images of the knob turning in her hand, the chipped crockery on the shelves of the old dresser, the faded Axminster runners in the hall and on the flights of stairs she pelts up, a pillowcase dumpy with dirty laundry on the first-floor landing, the photo-booth strips of Podge striking poses Sellotaped to the wall beside the unmade girl’s disturbed bed, and Podge herself, her shock smoothing to relief as Miriam throws an arm about her waist and hauls her bodily back in through the bedroom window — none of this actually occurs, any more than Zack’s efforts to catch the falling girl amount to much more than a shuffle forward and a tentative movement to. . offer her a cup of Mellow Bird’s! — It’s left to Podge, whose elbows really do decisively bend, then extend — it’s left to Lesley, whose arm really does lunge through the window in time for him to grab the back of her dress. I wonder if one day you’ll say that you care . . If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly be there . . Podge dangles from the end of Lesley’s. . string. Her tartan mini-dress is a noose around her armpits, her bared body thrashes from side to side, rendered all the more shockingly naked by the scraps of her underwear, and the plumes of perished mortar and brick dust her heels drum from the Concept House’s worn façade. — Now at last. . at last! . . Miriam’s husband sees fit to act: really passing the jar of Mellow Bird’s to her and stepping forward to stretch up his hands and capture Podge’s bare feet. . flying fish . . and for a moment, before the girl slithers down into Zack’s arms, Miriam sees the peculiar look he exchanges with Lesley up above and knows. . something sexual has passed between them — all of them. Since the general spell has been broken, she’s prepared to act upon this information right away — and would do so, were it not that, as they all gather round and reassure Podge — Of course you didn’t look fat, darling — and the girl’s sobbing subsides beneath their soothing, a distress call Miriam realises she’s been hearing throughout this crisis, but has repressed, rises to a bubbling screech: Help! He-elp! HEL-EL-EL-ELLLLP! and dies. — There’s no room for everyone on the landing: they mill about bumping into each other, some ricocheting off into walls, others rebounding through doors or rolling down the short corridor and into one of the two smaller back rooms. Yet others cannon into the banisters and end up as part of the general confusion. There’s no room for everyone on the landing, and he can’t identify any individuals — only a generality he knows to be. . everyone, because, although he and Miriam reached the bathroom first, and did their best to maintain a professional demeanour, everyone else was close behind. There are no individuals — and there are no discrete sounds — instead a low hubbub assails him, which could be collective human distress or — and this seems just as likely, given the aqueous light and moist atmosphere — the queasy quale of seagull-and-seashore. Nudging up against a man and a woman who, although sobbed by racks and loosely embracing, are still managing to revolve in the awkward space, Busner attunes his ears to: Oh roister-doister li’l oyster, Down in the slimy sea, You ain’t so diff ’rent lyin’ on your shell bed, To the likes of l’il ol’ me — a signature that calls to his mind a signer — and through the open door, sitting on the sag-bag in front of the orange crate supporting Roger’s typewriter, he discovers Claude, with the gory corkscrew-cum-tin-opener clotted together with the rest of the bloody pendants on his pathetically stained and fanatical bare . . chest. . LESS PASSION FROM LESS PROTEIN — LESS FISH. . Shock ebbs away — and surges back: Busner stands on the bleak foreshore of his own consciousness, seeing the red bath-water. . Fort . . and the white bivalve floating in it, sucking in the protein-rich nutriment through one orifice and bubbling it out through a hole corkscrewed in its throat — Da! Claude completes his couplets: But roister-doister you’re somewhat moister, Than I would like to be. . and falls silent. Completely silent — so silent Zack hears the susurrus on the landing, hears also Michael Lincoln on the phone in the halclass="underline" Possibly an accident, quite likely something more serious, at any rate the police should attend. Attend . . it has a decorous sound, it betokens beadles and dance cards — but Zack’s received these particular attendees enough to know it won’t be like that. Before they attend there’s this awkwardly shaped hiatus — an elegant spiral staircase boxed in with plywood, one in which the predator remains free to peck a key . . peck another . . peck a third . . and sigh: I didn’t do it, y’know. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t want to — I’ve wanted to stick a shiv in the bastard ever since I first saw him, but I didn’t do it. — Claude pecks another key on the typewriter and laughs sourly: It’s like, Gourevitch, right, he’s such a fucking creep, he always wants to be in on the next thing, he thinks he’s so goddamn avant-garde — well, yeah, he beat me to it. Did it to himself before I could. . — Thankfully the ambulance men attended first. Zack remembers Miriam coming out from the bathroom, wiping her hands bloodier on one of the towels and saying to them as they stood there on the landing. .