One can only guess at how her internal homing mechanism brought her to that part of Islip for she actually lived on the One-hundred block of Ocean Avenue in the town of Amityville, in a Dutch Colonial built in the mid-Nineteen Twenties across the driveway from our place, an ordinary Colonial built a decade or so earlier. It was a home that was only a little more distinctive than the rest of the fine homes along Ocean Avenue in that it sat sideways on its riverside lot. From our attic room we could wave hello to hers, as she could ours. Being the best of friends, we rarely had to. Why wave hello to our own empty room?

When last we checked in on her, she was still sleeping off the troubles of that weekend. Laid out on top of her bedcovers, she looked like a battered shipwreck on its side, with arms and legs the cargo booms slumped by gravity to her side. She had been sent to the hospital for evaluation and treatment of her various injuries. These included; bruising around the left eye, lacerations on her right hand around the knuckles and a palm sized bruise on the calf of her right leg. Also noted were what appeared to be blood stains running down the front of her bikini top and shorts with no apparent source, as well as her agitated refusal to allow a pelvic exam. By Saturday evening she regained enough lucidity to check out - albeit against medical advice - and we and her mother took her home.

With a exhaustion that people knew to respect, she was allowed to sleep though Sunday to the following evening before finally rousing long enough for an unheated can of chicken noodle soup as supper. We had been sitting vigil at her bedside to this time when she groggily insisted that she was all right and we could go home and she would be all better in the morning and if it would make us feel better we could leave the shades open. Being a warmish day and being that her room didn't have an air conditioner we left the windows open as well.

And so ended a minor family tragedy that June weekend. A minor column for the suburban newspapers at best if they didn't have something more spectacular to report on that weekend. As it turned out, they would. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Now the Platt family children were all adults out of school with jobs or a family so Jennifer awoke to little more than an empty house and the comforting sound of the wind blowing through the curtains. She wasn't completely abandoned; positioned in her approximate line of sight on the night stand was the latest in Space Age communication tools, a Philips Compact Cassette cartridge perched jauntily upright atop it's Norelco "Carry-Corder" player.

"Hello Jen. It's your mother. I hate like blazes to leave you alone dear but they really need me at work. The Hughes people want to do another dry run and they need me on the boards. Oh! They told me they're going to try to do a link-up with that English band you like so if you're feeling better later maybe I can send a car for you? "

Jennifer's mom was an audio technician at NBC and the "Hughes people " were from the Hughes Aircraft's space and communications division. The Nineteen Sixty-four Tokyo Olympics were going to be broadcast via satellite later that summer and she was part of the team working out the bugs in the system at NBC's end. There's really is no point in explaining "that English band you like " is there? In Nineteen Sixty-four there was only one English band people ‘liked'.

"Janice said she can come over around nine thirty, ten o'clock but if you need her for anything you can always give her a ring. Uhhhh... Jamie is going to be working all day and I've been in touch with your father. He says he's cutting his trip short and will be back from Alaska by tomorrow afternoon... "

"Jen, you are really in no condition to go out and about. I know you like to tough it out, but just for once do a smart thing.... "

"Oh the twins want to say something to you... "

One could hear the rustle of a microphone being passed around.

"Hey Jennums! I know we said we wanted to takes so pictures of you at work and everything but it's really not that important... We can do it some other day. Shannah and I, we're going to ride into The City with Avi later on to to do some shooting at Penn Station. Jamie says they're gonna open up some walls... Hey give us a call when you get up. We're 'GEMINI-One-Three-Nine' at Empire Messaging "

Mother returned to the microphone as Jenny made her way to the shower.

"Oh, I talked to Sheriff Misener and they're still looking for that car of yours. Oh and just so you know they're flushing the fire hydrants today. If you could go around and run all the taps for a few minutes... "

One of the joys of small town life is hydrant flushing day. Sediment gets kicked up and everyone's tap water comes out blackish brown for a few seconds and you get to pretend you're Marion Crane.

It was around ten o'clock when Jenny called our messenger service. We were on the Van Wyk just outside Idlewild airport. To get a message you listened to a special radio channel for your identification which told you there was a message waiting for you. The Empire Messenger company used a system of magnetic striped punch cards where the operator would put yours in the line and the machine would read your ID off the stripe. You then had to find a telephone to call the exchange. Then you got the number you were supposed to call back to. Or if you knew you were going to be paged you just called back directly. The wonders of the Space Age!

Jenny was standing before the bathroom mirror taking stock of the weekend's damage when we got back to her. Jenny was a tall looking girl of breath defying slenderness with only a hint of breasts and curves, like those Nineteen Twenties flappers. She was at least a head taller than us and we're about five foot two. Despite such a lithe body, her head was fairly normal sized, which gave her a look of sophisticated elegance. She loved to wear her hair in a high off-the-top ponytail that with her high hairline, exposed one of the most magnificent foreheads this side of Beluga whales we've ever seen. Her eyes were a light blue and set under the kind of high thin eyebrow Hollywood starlets can only pencil in.

When she wasn't smiling her face had the smooth appearance of sealskin but when she smiled two diagonal lines running from cheek to chin would break up the otherwise squared off form. Her chin had a prominence that reminded us of marionettes, only hers was well proportioned and framed.

Today poor Jenny would have to deal with a bit of a shiner. Nothing a bit of mascara and eye shadow can't hide but to be on the safe side she would rely on a pair of Ray Bans. But what to do about the hair?

Her hair was a magnificent creature in its own right. She usually ran it off the top in a ponytail that could cover her breasts with its length and volume but she could pin and clip it into a confection only a few inches in height, which is what she was going for today.

"So.... you've finally decided to join the world of the living? Why don't you stay home and lick your wounds like a good girl?"

"Noooo... If I stay in this house I'll never want to leave. I'm just going to show my nose at the office and finish out the day."

"Screw the office. You shouldn't even be in The City with that leg of yours. You know how all the animals try and eat the wounded ones..." "Ohhh... it's not so bad. Look, I'll walk to the train station and if I make it OK I look for you at Penn Station otherwise I'll go back home.... I'm fine."

Against our better judgment we let it go at that guessing that whatever she'd gone through, the need for the "normalcy" of a day at work overrode basic common sense.

She had set up her space on the top floor so that she get ready for work without even having to go downstairs for breakfast if she chose not to. She had one of those cube refrigerators from college tucked into the leg space of an obsolete writing desk with a dormitory hot plate set on top. There was a ritualistic elegance to the way she folded over a paper towel to make a plate for the two slices of cinnamon toast she had every morning that we can recall without hesitation. She made her coffee with one of those fat round glass percolators that looked like the cover for a fluorescent lighting fixture, breaking off a chunk of chocolate from one of those large Hershey bars for added flavor.

Breakfast done she would draw the shades to get dressed for work. She would have to wear long socks instead of stockings to cover that welt on her calf. She also chose one of her longer skirts a dark gray pleated number and a basic white button up blouse. Slipping her feet into her 'sensible' boating shoes she crossed from her room to her office across the stairwell.

She rolled up some blueprints to stuff into her old rucksack. Shaped like a snail, she'd made it herself as her one concession to frivolity. She had an affinity for snails, calling them 'natures engineer' even designing a logo gram of a snail shell and compass for her business cards. The snail shape was rather practical in rucksack form with the 'shell' holding books and supplies and the 'body' the right proportions for blueprints. Since most students carried their rucksacks on one shoulder she'd designed hers with one mono strap. So at least she would be bearing most of her weight on her uninjured left side. Before heading for the stairs she grabbed up her Carry-Corder, a pair of headphones and a couple tape cartridges. Jenny's morning commute would have tunes.

Her walk to the station took her across busy Merrick Road and through the town's business district, still smarting from the recent widening of Broadway in the late Fifties. Not that we could tell the difference. We were summer visitors and the only building we have any recall of is their baby Flatiron building which still stood. That and the drugstore Jenny would take us for sodies and ice cream which had been demolished. Somewhere along the way she stopped at the bakery for her Monday treat, a box of imported English tea biscuits. She also bought doughnuts for the people at work. There's an interesting story for later about that.

One of the oddities of the Long Island railroad were their split-level railcars designed to pack in as many commuters as possible without using fully double decked cars. From a center aisle you could step up and enjoy the view or step down into a private cubbyhole for you and three close friends. It was tradition in our little circle to go for a high seat on the trip into The City and get a low seat on the ride back. Sort of like that line about hills and caves they used to repeat in the Roaring Twenties comparing youth with age. Jenny had been trying to wade through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead for the better part of the spring so she likely broke with tradition and took a low seat. She always did when she took a book with her.

By Nineteen Sixty-four the view out the train window was an endless array of tract homes and business strips that thickened into apartment buildings and factories as you drew nearer to The City. Jenny, a life-long Islander could still recall stretches of open farmland along the way as recent as her early teenage years. With her family in the construction trade, she wasn't one to decry the encroachment of "civilization" - though she still proudly saw herself as a "small town girl".

So she rode into the city, well cocooned from the big story of the day. It wasn't till she got to the end of the platform at Penn Station that she came face to face with what had been talked about on practically every media outlet in The City. At the end of the station platforms were these bins that the commuters tossed their newspapers into after the trip. Jenny was considering adding Ayn Rand to the pile, when she caught sight of the cover page of one of the tabloids. They had a map of the Great South Bay from the Suffolk County line to Sayville with an arrow running from Gilgo Beach to Hecksher Park with the headline "Surfer's Night Ride of Terror".

Everyone by this time had called his unknown savior the "Surf Angel" based on the report that a tall, thin, long-haired girl had been seen struggling to pull his body, which had been secured on the back of his surf board onto the beach at Hecksher Park. It was clear that the surfer who had a dislocated shoulder and possible spinal damage as well as severe blood loss could not have gotten that far alone but there was no agreement that the girl was just someone one the beach who'd pulled him in or had actually ridden all the way with him.

Jenny was not one to pick through trash yet she still drew a handful of the different papers in a slow incredulity that hinted of familiarity. After a few moments of reflection she tossed the lot, pocketed her book and looked above the station platform for a familiar face.

"Hey! Thanks for ripping up the busiest station in the city in time for Worlds Fair! Just what we really needed!", she yelled to a figure on a scaffold.

For about a year now Penn Station was slowly being demolished while still maintaining operations by the tiny swarms of worker ants called humans. Jenny's brother James (who preferred being called Jamie than Jim) was one of the supervisor ants laying bits of the foundation steel for the new buildings, an office tower and a sports stadium. It was complicated work, which is what the Platts were good at.

"Well just think ma'am, you'll be able to go to a Knicks game without stepping onto the street."

Jenny was not a basketball fan and in Nineteen Sixty-four not many people were Knicks fans.

"Well.... throw in a bowling alley and we'll call it even."

The announced plans for the new Penn Plaza called for a bowling alley.

"Hey, where are the twins?"

This is the part where we come in. You see, "we" isn't just a literary affectation. "We" are a pair of dicephalic conjoined - what you'd call 'Siamese' - twins named Shoshanna and Ariel Brillstein. We'd been friends with Jenny since Nineteen Forty-eight when our family rented the middle floors of their family's former home for summer vacations while they occupied the attic and basement. Our family is well off enough that we could afford to work as a freelance photojournalist which is why we were at Penn Station taking pictures of the new ruins of Pompeii.

Curiously it was our interest in cameras that got Jenny interested in us. That first summer we stayed at her place, she would avoid us darting up and down stairs or ducking behind doors. We thought it was us but we also noticed she'd do the same with anyone of our family. It seems that since we were paying for the use of the space, her being in it would "detract from value received". The girl had a strange sense of integrity.

Well we had acquired one of the first Polaroid Land Cameras later that August and went around the village to explore. Jenny found us by the town's Flatiron building and couldn't contain her curiosity. Seems she was a fellow gadget hound and had always wanted to see a Land Camera. It was a bit of a shock to her when she realized we were staying at her place for the summer, so good had she been at avoiding us. We pretty much became her shadow for the rest of the summer as she introduced us to the rest of her friends. When they'd ask about us being 'Siamese' she casually correct them "Oh, they're from Oklahoma not Thailand". Such was her way of accepting people the way they were we don't think she ever took notice of the way we were. At least she was good at other forms of concealment.

We showed ourselves from behind a severed column as nothing but two disembodied heads.

"Uhh we had a little trouble over on track nine. They're looking for our torsos as we speak."

Jenny's face broke into a smile. She loved that sort of humor. Jamie would give her all the Gehan Wilson cartoons from his Playboy magazines if only to be able to have a subscription to Playboy magazine in the first place.

"Did you guys get the shots you wanted?"

"Ehhhh... Not so good. Not so bad."

Sighting her though our zoom lens we noted, "You certainly look like something the cat dragged in and swatted around in the bathroom. You sure you shouldn't be home in bed?"

"Oh I feel worse than I look. No point in wasting a sick day on actually being sick. You coming with?"

She started looking around for the exit. With each weeks demolition the station had a feel of what Londoners went through during the Blitz with walled off little corridors surrounded by wreckage leading every which way.

We ought to note at this point that one of Jenny's class projects was her own replacement for Penn Station. She had reasoned that if your going to disrupt people's daily commute, you should give them a great landmark so she designed a one hundred thirty-five storey skyscraper as the campanile to her seventeen storey stadium dome. The stadium would've been a study in exposed steel beams that would recall the latticework of the Penn Station's train shed.

The tower was remarkable in that she'd designed it so that it could be built in up to three forty-five storey phases, each one an independent skyscraper with separate 'sky lobbies' linked by express elevators. She loved that sort of marketing gimmickry. Because this building was to go over railroad tracks, she came up with a diagonal bracing system that transferred much of the floor loads to the sides and corners so that she could use thinner columns on the interior. As remarkable as that was she had the math to prove it could work and at what cost.

"Whatever happened to that Penn Station project of yours?"

"Oh I traded it."

"Traded it?"

"Yeah. You know my friend Cheryl? Her dad's firm is doing a one hundred storey building in Chicago that has the same structure as mine so they traded my plans and tables for architectural services on my next project. They wanted to study my building to see if theirs is any worse, I suppose."

Such was the self-effacing modesty she regarded her work.

Her place of work was only a few blocks from Penn Station but since our brother Avi was still around with his car we drove. It was an old factory building perched on a block that been otherwise cut up by one of the entry ramps to the Lincoln tunnel. By all rights the Leonard Briss & Co. Building should have been torn down as well. We remember taking pictures of the pile as the top floors blazed away back in Nineteen Sixty. It was a nice smokey blazey fire yet the building somehow lived and someone in a city that can't tear itself down fast enough thought it'd be worth the while to slap a few coats of paint and reopen. The building had all the charm and grace of that book warehouse in Dallas where the President had been killed from. With double height floors, you did get a lot of light and least there was plenty of on-site parking.

"Well at least the neighbors are nice and quiet", we shouted above the din of trucks thundering their way to New Jersey. Referring to an Italian Line billboard for their coming luxury liners "And you get a nice view of the sea!"

Jenny looked to the billboard. "They're doing those funnels wrong. They're supposed to look like those old battleship cage masts. Nice slogan though..."

The slogan read "See the world of Tomorrow this year. Sail the ships of Tomorrow next!"

It's a good thing we had Avi with us because the old elevator had one of those heavy wooden doors you had to open by hand. We can't imagine how Jenny managed the last six months or so.

"Oh Avi, could you do me a favor and bring these in for me?" She asked holding the box of doughnuts. "They've never figured out who brought these in and I kind of like it that way."

"Uhh... OK but I really don't figure what for."

"Well I always got the impression they don't really like me here and I don't want to give them the satisfaction. Besides they're day olds I get practically for nothing. I'd look stupid taking credit for that"

"You sure have strange ways of doing things."

"I know" She gave him a peck on the cheek and the box of doughnuts as the elevator stopped on the top floor. "We're getting off here. You get off on six. The break room is the second door to the right."

The Drake & Van DeLay offices were quite a marvel at building reconstruction. Except for the elevator and service core at end we're standing on and a stairwell at the farthest corner from us, the top three floors had been completely gutted out. New steel beams painted a dark blue ran up the sides of the space to hold up a fairly robust truss system in the ceiling. Rods suspended from the trusses held the floor we were standing on as well as the one below.

These floors didn't extend the full width of the building, they were only about the width of two draftsman's table and a center aisle which had translucent glass floors. Looking across the atrium we could see a stairwell on the far corner connected to these floors by another set of suspended walkways that were held away from the outer walls by a couple feet or so. All in all, if you wanted to tell the world you were an 'Architect' with a capital 'A' you couldn't do worse.

"Well Jenny it's nice of you to grace us with your presence. We're about to have a meeting would you care to join us if it's not too much trouble?"

"That was Walter the Drake of 'Drake and Van DeLay'" Jenny asided to us. "He's a bit of a dick. Thinks he's Cary Grant".

"Uhmmm no... that's okay. I've got stuff to finish up here."

"If you don't mind my asking. What is it exactly that you do around here?"

"If you don't know maybe I should stop doing it. Maybe I should stop coming in altogether. It's your call."

"You'd like that wouldn't you. You must have something really big on Van DeLay to be talking like that."

Before Jenny could answer, Avi made his entrance with the doughnuts. It was a nice loud stompy old-time vaudeville entrance. It's amazing the New York mannerisms he'd been able to soak up for all the time he hadn't spend in The City.

"Heyyyyaa! Do-nut man! I gotcher do-nuts here! Sorry 'bout bein' so late but they changed my route around!"

If Jenny had been a scheming person, she couldn't have found a better way to diffuse the situation. The staff had cleaned out that box of doughnuts before Avi could flop it onto the break room table and Drake had lost his audience.

"So what exactly are you doing around here?" We knew why she'd been hired officially. It was some sort of earthquake research project that needed a building subject to constant vibration. We also knew the real reason but we'll save that for later.

"Well now I'm just filing papers and cataloguing Mister Van DeLay's work. He wants to publish his memoirs I suppose."

"Why on earth would you stay here? We've only been here five minutes and we can feel the hate off of Walter Drake all the way up here." "Yeah... I know... Well I did the six months on the contract. If he wants me out I'm not going to complain."

One of the interns drifted over bearing a doughnut. "Uh.. hey, I saved one of these for you."

"Oh that's all right. I don't really like doughnuts."

"Oh that's right you like those tea biscuits. Uhhh... who are your friends?"

"Well they're here to get some pictures of me in the office. Van DeLay approved it. I have the memo right here..."

Jenny began to swing her snail rucksack around to get at the shell.

"Oh that's OK, I'm not Drake's enforcer. Well uh.. thanks for the doughnut. Man if it weren't for these it wouldn't be worth working here. That Drake don't pay us nuthin'..."

He made his way down to the other end of the floor as we pulled out our camera equipment. Jenny pulled out some of the blueprints to work out how she'd pose with them. She was such a natural at that sort of thing that if it weren't for her interest in architecture she could easily have been a model - or a dictator, she'd studied from the same book of theatrical poses Hitler had. No kidding.

The best shot we were able to get was her "thinking Lenin" pose before we were interrupted this time by a red-haired girl dressed in art house black. From Jenny's brief but noticeable cringe we could tell it was someone she wasn't comfortable around. Given that the office was otherwise all stag, we deduced that she was Emily, Walter Drake's girl.

"Hi Jen!" She seemed friendly enough. "I was wondering if we could go out to lunch together. I wanted to talk to you about your contract here..." her voice had trailed off when she noticed us.

Jenny was still on the subject of lunch.

"Oh that's all right. I'm just going to work through lunch and head home a little early. I only have a few reports to type up and I'll be done here."

She noticed Emily staring at us and got remarkably bitchy. Some people bring out the worst in Jenny.

"They're what you call J-e-w-s... You know those funny people with all the money trying to take over the world and all that..." We'd long ago been used to Jenny's twisted humor but Emily was indignant.

"Umm.. My mother is half Jewish."

"Well let that be a lesson to you. It isn't polite to stare. People might get the wrong ideas."

When Jenny knew she'd been wrong she always used that sort of save. She would be all modesty and self-effacement in the face of praise but she never liked being wrong. Engineer's pride we suppose. It made the sincere apology to come more palatable.

"Oh I'm sorry about that but I'm just very protective of my friends. You'd think they were the Beatles with the way people bother them in some places."

Mollified yet confused, Emily made her retreat.

"Do you suppose someone ought to tell her bangs and a ponytail went out with poodle skirts and the sock hop?"

"Now you guys, she's not a bad person. She just tries too hard. She's got a nice look and two people who are so infatuated with the Nineteen Twenties they were their hair like the Dolly Sister shouldn't be talking fresh about others should they now?"

She said that with an exaggerated manner meant to diffuse her criticism.

"Oh Jenny!" This time it was Walter shouting from below. "I thought I'd take the staff out to lunch to discuss an upcoming project. Would you like to come with?"

"Oh that's all right. I have some things to finish up here."

We will never understand the workings of office politics and the gamesmanship involved.

"So are we going to stick around the office or are we heading out for lunch."

"I thought we go over to N'eddie's. I had some things in here I wanted to get her approval on. Hey what's Avi's call sign at the exchange?"

"Just use ours. He'll get the message."

We passed the time waiting for Avi by working out a comedy bit using some of the building models. Jenny found for us some buildings shaped like X's and O's so we were talking like German art professors as we arraigned the building along a grid of streets and only just coincidentally playing Tic-Tac-Toe.

"Iv you putz zis vorm in ze sczhape uf ze werks in ze constanz und ze contextz uf ze flingen graben..." we'd intone with all gravity as we laid X building aside O buildings with a wave of the hand to show a line of three uttering something like "Ach! Nein! Nein! Nein! Ze form und ze vunction uf zee flitzen gritzen..." as we cleared the board for another go-round.

"Say, are you guys going to do anything with this act of yours you're working on?"

"Well we're scheduled to make an appearance at the Oklahoma Pavilion on our birthday. If they like we might get to do more stuff next year. What'd they do for your birthday?"

"Oh they did a newsreel gather round with a bunch of Doctor Couney's patients and some of the old nurses. I bet I was the skinniest person in the bunch! You know parents tend to overfeed preemies so a lot of them get pretty hefty when they grow up. Robert Moses was there and everything."

One of the more bizarre happen stances in our lives was the fact that we and Jenny were both born on the grounds of and were subsequently 'exhibits' at the Nineteen Thirty-nine Worlds Fair. Jenny was one of those "incubator babies" that used be shown at Coney Island before hospitals were willing to treat them. For our part, we apparently decided to surprise ma and pa while they were touring the baby incubator exhibit. It was a breech birth and on account of that our mom was considered too ill to return home so the Fair, sensing a public relations opportunity, let us live in one of the houses in the 'Town of Tomorrow' till the Fair closed for the season. Supposedly they offered to let them stay over the winter, but the publicity was starting to bother pa and Jenny's parents had offered a place to stay well out of the limelight till mother got better. They've been friends ever since.

"Well I showed him some of my work and he suggested I might contribute to their "Buildings of the Future" project. That's what I wanted to see N'eddie about."

Jenny pulled out a thick portfolio, held it up a second and put it back in her rucksack to indicate what she was talking about. A car horn bleating to the tune of Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits indicated that Avi had arrived.

"If for no other reason, you should quit this job on account of this elevator"

"It's not so bad. You get to build up your arm muscles! A nice... healthy... workout!"

"I hate to break you three up but I just picked up a shipment of those Muntz tape decks for the new store..." Avi was putting down roots in the New York City area by opening up an electronics store in Amityville and had been scouring the Radio District in his old Nineteen Sixty Impala. Oh, how we loved the "fishbowl" windows of that car. You could lay in the space behind the back seat and practically see the sky there was so much curved glass. We squeezed in with the cases of tape cartridges and Jenny sat up front for our ride to the ESB. With lunchtime, traffic, we probably would've done better time riding Jenny's snail for the four and a half blocks.

Being from Oklahoma it was quite a revelation for us to learn that for all its fame and glory the Empire State Building was a marginal building in a marginal neighborhood with an equally marginal tenant list, that drew mostly people from the textile trade since the Garment District is so close by. The big companies were downtown or above Forty Second Street on Madison and Park Avenues so the Empire State Building got the kind of small business tenants that figured people would be impressed with the address.

Like the Edelson family, who ran Panorama Publications, one of the largest publishing companies almost no-one's ever heard of. Their flagship product, Panorama Magazine does about three quarter million in sales and we have yet to see it on a newsstand anywhere - even the ESB's. It seems to survive on subscriptions only. In fact it did quite a brisk business as a waiting room magazine and several custom editions are printed for the various types with advertising and articles specifically catering to doctors offices, barber shops, beauty salons or auto repair shops.

Most of the articles are bought from other publications like the Reader's Digest does with the rest from freelancers and the wire services. The editorial staff, almost all family, handled their other stock in trade, namely the various trade, service, hobby and minor sports publications with exotic titles like "The Laundromat Operators Quarterly", "Modern Maritime Engineering" or "Jai Alai Highlights".

Naomi, who everyone called N'eddie was given the heady responsibility at age twenty-six of running much of the day to day editorial operations and proved reasonably adept at running a company that had been largely set up to run by itself. She'd even set up a masthead for her interests in UFOs and other unexplained phenomena as well as science fiction called ParaNorma Magazine, a title suggested by Jenny.

Their relationship was a wonderfully symbiotic one. Jenny would gladly pound out an article on nearly any topic with little more than a press pass and maybe car fare to the whatever event she wanted to show up at - we mean cover. N'eddie was more than happy to oblige. Jenny's articles were reasonably good for the deliriously short deadlines she could manage and more than reasonably priced.

Their conversational relationship seems to be entirely based on a rather morbid running joke about the Great Jewish World Domination Conspiracy. It seems Jenny had had enough of one of those soapbox orators and rather acidly reminded him that if Jews were truly that 'evil' that everyone would try to join them because true evil is truly beloved in the heart of man that people only hate those that are truly righteous and good. It got a laugh from the crowd but as Jenny walked away, N'eddie simply couldn't help herself...

"Uhmmm Jen... that conspiracy stuff's for real. Shit's going down Thursday. Don't tell anybody I told you. Your family is safe."

Avi left us on the North entrance to the ESB to get a parking spot. Although there was an open space right in front. he opted for the garage. No-one in Jenny's circle of friends would park near the ESB, not after what happened to Jenny a few years ago. But we'll hold that for later. There are places in every city that are of significance to a select few. For our little tribe, it's the parking spot three spaces from the corner.

"N'e-e-e-eddie! N'e-e-eddie! N'EEEEEDDIE!"

N'eddie's eleventh floor office window was open so we took the opportunity to practice some good old-fashioned Oklahoma cattle calls. It amuses the passers-by and it bugs the hell out of Naomi.

"All right you guys! Knock it off! No! Don't come up! I'm coming down!"

Awkward silence as we waited for her to come down the eleven floors. Avi had time to join the lineup.

"She must be taking the Kosher elevator down", Jenny noted.

"The wha-a-at?", we replied.

Avi explained. "They have these special elevators in all the hospitals and stuff so that Hassidic Jews can use 'em on the Sabbath. They're set to stop on every floor and wait a minute or two for people to get on or off."

"How come you know all this, Avi? You haven't been around The City that much longer than we have."

We were taking a shot of the ESB using our Hasselblad with Polaroid back, pointing the lens straight up to the spire. The viewfinder was on top, making it perfect for the trick shot we were trying.

"Well, I guess I don't spend all my time in The City taking pictures..."

"Oh hush you, this is gonna be good!"

The little ritual of ripping the film sheet though the rollers and waiting a minute to peel back the cover rewarded us rather grandly....

"Look at that. A nice big stinky Convair 880..." We had exposed half of the picture out by the airport.

"That's not an 880," Jenny noted, "That's a 990. You can see the Küchermanns..."

"Oh yeah the 'bull testicles'", Avi added...

Jenny took a second look at our composition before turning it back to us.

"That's not really that funny. That really happened back in the ''Forties." She noted with more declaration than recrimination. "Mum and I were over at Thirty Rock when that happened. It was so foggy all we saw were some of the flames. One of the elevator operators dropped seventy floors into the basement and somehow lived."

Feeling a bit guilty we started to tear it up but Jenny whisked it away.

"Don't do that! It's Art."

She considered the photo for a few seconds.

"You know what would happen if the Empire State Building ever did get knocked down. They'd probably hold some sort of competition to rebuild in whatever was the latest fad in architecture. No one would dare suggest that maybe people like the old building and maybe they ought to just build it back and some gaudy awful monstrosity would rise in its place sanctified by the ruling class in this city who care more for getting a good write-up in the society page than for what might be truly good for The City."

"You are one cynical lady, Jenny!"

"Oh... If I wanted to be cynical Avi, I would have added that all the tribes in this city smelling a dollar being spent would have their hands out to grub something for their little fiefdoms...."

"Hey guys! Sorry I'm late. Some joker flipped the Kosher switch on the ride down. We were stopping at every damn floor... What? What's so funny?"

"Jenny was just telling us about those... We don't get none of that stuff in Oklahoma."

"Well I suppose I ought take you kids out for some Kosher pizza."

"They make Kosher pizza? Now that we gotta see."

"Well then. About... face!

We turned towards the street and sure enough, there was a storefront bearing the sign "Pizza Tel Aviva". And to think we'd been amazed at the Frontier Deli in downtown OK City. We know a little about Kosher in that we have to keep the "meats" separate from the "dairy" foods and that we weren't supposed to eat pigs or shellfish. A kosher pizza meant you were pretty much getting bread sauce and cheese. But you had a choice of size. An eight cut sliced twelve ways was ordered on account of the fact that we and Jenny had smaller appetites.

"We have our own stomachs but they're small ones."

Apparently you can even get Kosher fountain sodies so we ordered some. Jenny opted for an Apollonaris with a slice of lemon. We looked around for booth to wait for our pie. The joint had two place tables in front of the windows and U-shaped booths in the center and back row. Planters filled the voids behind the seat where the U's made their turn with trellises holding plastic tomato vines adding to the atmosphere. Seats were plush red naugehyde, the ovoid tables were green with a white formica top. To our surprise about the only sign of Judaism were the Hebrew lettering on the menus and condiment packets.

Joining our party was an older bearded fellow we all knew as The Professor. He was in charge of the part of Panorama that serviced the college and research institutes. Something to do with something called "peer review" publications. He was who Jenny was supposed to see today. Jenny took the center seat. We and Avi sat to her right and The Professor and N'eddie took the left. The Prophet has something to show her disciples.

She drew the portfolio from her bag with the deliberation of Moses bringing forth the tablets. It was a zippered affair the size of a loose-leaf notebook stuffed to the point that she had to keep pinching the sides as she opened it. We'd half expected the contents to glow with some sort of divine light from the angels but it was a rather underwhelming stack of folded plans, charts and tables. Great Architecture isn't made from much but The Professor treated each document handed to him with the same reverence one would give to holy scriptures. Then Jenny brought out The Model.

It was small enough to fit in the confines of a portfolio and had been folded flat and there was a moments pause as Jenny set it up. It was a clearly a building but it looked like no building we'd ever seen. Or rather...
It stood on legs like those buildings in The Jetsons but these were the substantial legs you'd see on fine furniture. Curiously they didn't stand on the corners but stood in the middle of the façade.

"I figure this would be an "institutional" building like a bank headquarters or something like that. There's too much noise on the first seven floors of this city so why bother putting floors on them? Anyway it opens up the plaza space."

Instead of an all glass façade or a steel cage Jenny's building consisted of alternating ribbons of windows and what looked like aluminum panels reminiscent of the buildings that used to go up just after the war.

"I've got an idea for a paneling system that'll let you use straight sheets of metal without having to emboss a pattern on them. I got it from the way they make surf boards..."

One side had an exposed view of the skeleton of the building. A series of overlapping triangular frames pointed the various loads of the building to the legs. Now we saw why they stood to the middle. The Professor inquired as to why she didn't put the frame on the outside where it could be admired.

"Well I don't think it's all that pretty and besides it'd save on maintenance costs. Anyway I don't like to show off that way..."

The real show stopper was its top. Jenny gave it a forty-five degree angled crown with the pointed top clipped off slightly and with a flat area at the base. In an abstract way it reminded us of Jenny's head and shoulder but there was method to the design.

"I had two ideas in mind. I thought it would be nice to install some of those solar collectors on there so the building can generate some of its own electricity. Barring that it might be used to collect rainwater for the air conditioning system. I figure you could put the radiator on the tall side"

She pointed to an large square void on what would presumably be the North side.

"It ought to look really nice with some lighting. Would make a nice movie screen wouldn't it?"

Jenny was always coming up with things...

The Professor was duly impressed but the true seal approval came with our pizza. The waitress was one of those Italian grandmother types, short and a little bent over but positively gleaming with good cheer and maternal affection.

"Ooooh that's a nice one! You gonna enter that in the Worlds Fair? You'd prob'ly take first prize hands down. Oooh that's a nice one!"

Being rural Oklahomans at heart, we fell in love with her for thinking you could enter buildings in a Worlds Fair like it was a prized cow. She wasn't even that far off the mark.

"Well this is actually going to be my doctoral thesis but there were people from the Worlds Fair committee interested in it. I don't think they're giving out prizes for it."

"Well you should get a million dollars for it. Not that the government won't take most of it..."

The days when the government would take up to ninety-six percent of your million dollars were only a few years ago. Miss Sharperelli (we saw her name tag) gave Avi and N'eddie a loving pat on the shoulder and bade us to enjoy our luncheon.

With Jenny's presentation effectively over, we settled into feeding ourselves. If the Nineteen Fifties contributed nothing else to the culinary realm, it was letting the world know about the wonder of pizza. It was the sustenance of many an adventure into the city with and without Jenny. By college we could live for weeks on little more the golden crusts of 'Za. One would expect a connoisseurship to develop but like our fellow Sooner Will Rogers we'd yet to meet a slice we didn't like. And we still have yet to.

"We never would've guessed there were Italians that were also Jewish."

"Well doi! Where do you think we've been for the last two thousand years?"

Jenny couldn't resist N'eddie's opening.

"I don't know, hiding in The Bunker waiting for the 'Go' signal?"

"Shhhh! Not in front of the Goy!" N'eddie hissed jerking her head toward The Professor who was coughing his intention to leave the table. Starting to rise, he remembered something, sat back down and turned to Jenny.

"Oh by the way do you have that incident report filled out yet. I wanted to get that before the disciplinary committee."
"Oh I think I still have it back at the office. You know, he isn't a bad architect and as far as I can determine the mistake really wasn't his. Looks like Emily got him to sign off on something without really looking at it. She doesn't do that a lot..."

"Oh... speak of the devil!" we muttered to ourselves. We could see a flash of red ponytail thought the screen of trellis and vines. She had been holding court with her semicircle of friends this whole time. The clatter from the kitchen and the din of conversation and the omnipresent television in the corner had kept our parties in anonymity.

"I really wish I could figure her out. She seems like a cool person but she just doesn't seem to want to fit in? I'm always inviting her to stuff but she just blows me off..."

"Maybe she doesn't like you."

"Oh, don't be absurd! I'm the most likable person I know."

"Maybe it's because you're Walter's little girl."

"But then she would be sucking up to me like everyone else in the office does. She won't even ask for a paperclip."

"That's cuz you get the cheap supplies."

"Well, with all the stuff you guys steal, I gotta save money somewhere! Building co-ops doesn't put a lot on the dinner table... Oooh, I wish we could get a nice fat office building job again..."

"I did some digging and I found an article Jenny did a couple years ago for 'Modern Building'. She did something on how to adapt the new styles to New York City's old setback codes. Here's a before and after. Look familiar?"

"Hey! That's our Park Avenue building!"

"Yeah, but look how she varied the façades so it broke up the different masses - made the low part look like a podium, middle part looks like service equipment. Look how it brings out the tower section. Frankly, that's a much nicer building. Heard on the grapevine she's got something big for the Worlds Fair."

"So are you saying we should keep her on?"

"You could ask. From the looks of her she's got one foot out the door already. Not that I blame her. You'd think she had a shining red nose the way people treat her around here."

"You know I did invite her to that formal thing I was throwing last winter, but she didn't show up. It was my best party. I had my famous escargot and everything. Or at least nobody saw her. I found her crumpled invitation on the floor in the lobby. When I asked her about it the next day, she just looked at me funny, like she'd been there the whole time. I just can't figure that girl..."

"You know what would really be funny. If she was sitting behind us all this time."

"She said she was going to stay at... the... office..."

"I hate to be the one to ask the one thing we're all thinking about but Jenny... what the fuck happened to you this weekend? I've been getting wire reports about some dumb surfer and every so often something about you turning up missing. What's goin' on?"

"All I remember is volunteering to go on a beer run and getting in the car. I caught some guy on a bicycle in my headlights and hit the brakes hard. The next thing, I'm getting the five o'clock wakeup needle at Brunswick. I got nothing else... And before you ask, I wasn't even close to bein' loaded!"

"Oooooh! Maybe you were taken up to the Mother Ship!" N'eddie paused to change voices half mocking excitement to business conspiratorial. "Oh course if you can remember anything about that we could really use a couple hundred words of it at ParaNorma. We can keep your name out of it. Not a problem at all."

Avi had a point to make. "Yeah but the problem is... Jenny wasn't wearin' a watch that evening. I was there that day. In all those stories the ab-duc-tees have a look at their watch and find out a whole bunch of time is missing."

"Well we were wondering something. What's up with you and that Emily girl. She looked almost as smitten with you as that guy who offered you the doughnut."

"Well... as I said, it's like she tries too hard. At first she thought I was one of those Beatniks so she'd suggest going to places in The Village. Well I had that job to do and I wasn't supposed to be going out after hours so I politely begged off. This one time she suggested we try and get in to Andy Warhol's studio for laughs. Well I didn't have the heart to tell her I knew him anyway and could get in like nothing. I didn't want to show her up so I had to bat that one down..."

As we were listening the television had a breaking report about that surfer. We were only half listening but it seems he had come to enough to give his name, Douglas Montelli and hometown of Glen Cove. He didn't have much else to say except there even though he kept going in and out on consciousness there was definitely a woman with him the whole time he was in the drink.

"I almost had a good look at her this one time when she was on top of me. I could see she had some sort of paddle... when all of a sudden this... fish... jumped into her like somebody threw it at her. Then something got on top of me kept pushing me down into the water. Before I went out I felt something catch on my head..."

A remarkable bit of live theater ensued when he reached up the top of his head to feel some knotted part of his hair - it was that thick bushy kind Southern Italians grow so well.

The attending physician took a look at it and found to his horror and to that of the viewers at home a long row of hair had been methodically tied in rows of little knots to cover a fairly extensive scalp wound. Picking the remnant of what they judged to be a shark's tooth from his skull he exclaimed "My god! You've been scalped!" as the interview was unceremoniously ended.

"Oh no! He was helping me with my project! He had invited me to go surfing with him that friday... Oh that's just awful..." I think we all were hoping she'd recognize something more from that but nobody was going to push the matter.

"Oh what was I talking about... Oh right. Well sometime over the winter she sends me this invite to some sort of shindig at her father's place. Send a nice engraved one too. It said something about 'en costume' and I had that waitress number I keep for the clubhouse in the trunk so I showed up in that. Well they took one look at me and whisked me right into the kitchen. I figured they were having their little joke so I didn't make a fuss. Besides they were serving snails and who serves snails at party for young people?"

"Jenny... we hate to tell you this but 'en costume' means formal dress. Even we know that."

"Well Emily comes back into the kitchen fuming at the cook for some little thing and looks straight at me. Straight at me like I was... nothing. Then the next day she shows up at my desk wondering why I snubbed her party. All I could do was just... look at her."

All we could do is stare at the slow-motion train wreck that was about to happen. At this point Emily was peering over the trellis at out conversation. As she mouthed the words "But I serve snails..." a horrendous racket ensued from the kitchen - first was the brief scream of an old ladies voice then the crash of lot of dishes. It was a sound hard-wired to the pit of Jenny's subconscious and we all knew what was coming up.

"Ohhh... Oh no... I think I'm going to be sick... Oh I'm going to be sick!"

She wavered for a second as we all scrambled to get out of her path. She had enough situational awareness to chose N'eddies side of the table to scrabble out from but instead of turning left to the bathrooms the arc of her movement sent her in a beeline to the kitchen door which was opened enough to reveal a beckoning trough sink. Jenny always preferred sinks.

"Well gee lady if you didn't like it you could've just sent it back at the counter! We'da given you your money back!"

The busboy was trying to be cheerful. Jenny still had a few coughs to go before she could even begin to think of a witty comeback.

We turned to Emily and warned her, "If you know what's good for you, you were never here and you'll get out of here before Jenny sees you. You are the last person in the world Jenny needs to run into right now."

She wavered for a second trying to reconcile the natural concern for one's fellow man and the stark instructions we had given her. She has some sense in her head and backed her way out of the booth taking her companion with her to the door. It was the boy with the doughnut.

The Italians in the kitchen, sensing a damsel in distress, were all over her with offerings of comfort - and food. Seeing a bruised eye though her mascara, there were at least three solid offers to "take care of" whoever had attacked her.

"Oh I've been under a little bit of stress lately. You know how everybody 'keeps up with the Joneses'? Well were I'm from, we're the 'Joneses'." It was a weak effort but she can't always come up with gems can she now? Being this was a restaurant run by Italian Jews there was no way she'd leave the premises alive without a tureen of that great Jewish cure-all - chicken soup.

"Well..." She declared, still brushing at her blouse with a tissue, "I guess lunch is on me today!"

As she returned to the embrace of her pizzeria booth's semicircle of friend she began poking and prodding at the truss work of clips and pins supporting her creation in hair as if checking for structural integrity.

"You know how soldiers would come back from The War and say that the rest of their life is just 'extra time'?" she mused to no-one in particular as she gazed into the reflecting pool of chicken broth and noodles before her.

"I really think... this is 'my extra time'. I don't how much of it I'm gonna get but I'll be damned if I waste another minute more of it at Drake and Van DeLay than I have to. Let's just make this a lunch... two hours."

For Jenny that was a major concession. As Jenny worked on her soup, we finished the remains of the pizza in silence. When we were down to the crusts Jenny nudged the soup a little towards us so we could use it as a dipping trough. She sat back to contemplate the view to the street.
"Uhh... your not looking at The Spot are you?" we inquired. Not that you could see it from here.

"Oh I'm looking at that dark-skinned fellow in the window seat. Look at the way he's eating. Slow and deliberate like a preacher practicing a sermon. No... don't take his picture... Just sit and watch. People don't sit and watch anymore."

He was a youngish looking man with a look and comportment that hinted at great wisdom. His head was shaven but you could tell he had a high hairline like Jenny's. His mustache was thin and scraggly as was his beard and together they formed an thin reef of facial hair around his mouth.

"I bet Janice would like to paint him. Oh he stopped doing what he was doing... You know I think I remember him from Pittsburgh."

"Why do you suppose he'd be eating at Kosher pizzeria for?" We had to ask.

"Black Muslims", Avi guessed. "They have to eat the same Kosher stuff we gotta eat. What do you suppose he does for a living."

"Probably runs carts on Seventh Avenue. That'd be our guess but what do we know? We're from Oklahoma."

Jenny had the final word.

"He's a photographer. He's trying to get out his camera without you guys noticing. Now I know he's that guy I remember from Pittsburgh."

It was N'eddie returning from the can that knew him by name.

"Nick-a-a-a-ay! What are you doing taking pictures of my friends?"

"N'eddi-i-i-i-ie! I don't know what your talking about!"

The two old liars settled into the booth. Jenny still kept a protective eye on him.

"So who's your boyfriend N'eddie?" Avi couldn't resist a little ball busting. You live on the Isle of Long enough you begin to pick on their quaint little customs.

"This is Nicky Schwinn! You've heard me talk about him. He's one of our stringer photographers."

"Yeah. My auntie runs a messenger service up in The Building. She's got a police radio on so she can tip me off to stuff that's happening."

"Hey I thought you were going to spend the summer on the dunes. You wanted to get some artsey nature stuff..."

"Ohh. You get sick of that after a week. Besides I had to come into The City to get my camera fixed. Some crazy lady nearly ran me down last Friday. The gods got her good. I saw her car floating off into the bay."

That got Jenny's attention.

"She wasn't in it was she?"

"I couldn't tell I got so spooked when she hit the brakes and kept sliding, I went over a sand dune and into the marshes. Weekend wasn't a total loss. I think I got something of that surfer everyone talkin' about." He drew some eight by tens from his side bag.

"The waves and the rain had really picked up and there were these two nut jobs out in them. It was getting dark so I had to break out the fast film and really push the contrast in the lab..."

The picture were mostly grain with little detail but you could make out human forms in the waves. Each picture drew them closer and closer...

"This is where they hit... And that's where I lost sight of them. Rip tide musta taken them clean out to sea while they were under, cuz I did not see them come up..." he shivered a bit with the thought that he'd seen the moment two of his fellow men died. "The worst thing... there was this little running along the beach screaming for someone, probably one of the surfer. There was nothing else I could do but take her down to this bonfire party I'd seen on the way up the beach..."

"Too bad you didn't get any of the girl." Jenny noted with surreal detachment on being touched by the long arm of happenstance, "That kind of human interest stuff really sells."

"At that point I wasn't a photographer any more. Besides, I'd seen her earlier that day and she does not like people with a camera. She was hassling this guy with a movie camera, calling him a pervert and stuff..."

That piqued Avi's attention for reasons we'll explain later.

"So how long have you been at this?"

"Man, I've been doing this since I peddle on a bicycle and hold a camera at the same time. I got my first big scoop in 'Fifty-six. There was this girl who stepped in some dog shit so I went to get some pictures of her dealing with it and got this instead..."

"Oh, I don't think I need to see that again." Jenny said as she moved to block his hand.

"Oh man... don't tell me you were also that lady with the car. Cuz that would be too much freaky to take in one sitting."

"OK, I won't. But you probably remember me from Pittsburgh."

She motioned to us for 'The Line'. It was our one anonymous moment of fame.

"You know what would be a fun way to torture a Negro? Take away his color. It would destroy the identify he'd had built up for him by society. Strip him of his immunities..."

"You! You're the 'Home-wreckers'! Oh damn! Please excuse me while I pick up the pieces of my blown mind!"

The Home Wreckers was one of Jenny's rare forays into horror fiction. She'd written it as a radio play and it aired once for Halloween on a college station in Pittsburgh. The title was actually spelled 'The Homme Wreckers", a word-play on what the story delivered. These two utterly evil twins capture and slowly dismember a Mafia hit man, surgically removing the bones and muscles from his arms, legs and neck while kibitzing like two manicurists at a salon. It aired once and Jenny destroyed the recording yet it still gets notice from time to time.

"Damn those cats were E... vil!"

"You know I actually got into trouble over that story," Jenny noted "A few minutes after airtime, this lady comes storming into the station all upset cuz she thought I was making fun of her husband. He'd been struck by lightning during the war while on a bombing mission and only had feeling in his hands and feet."

"I'd never heard of him in Pittsburgh but to be fair, I might have heard about that from my dad since we had an uncle in the Air Corps and he loved telling us stories like that. but I was going for a Holocaust revenge fable anyway. That and the idea of a severed head still living of the veins and arteries attached to its former body. That was pretty nasty."

"Barbara Waczinski. I remember her. The Campus Legend. She used to live in this big old mansion her parents left her up in Squirrel Hill. Fancy place.... Had a pool in the basement and everything. She liked having student over during the winter for Hawaiian pool parties. She'd prop the old man up in a chaise lounger so he wasn't left out. Everybody loved them."

"Well I told her that I'd taped the show long before going to college and that I'd cleared it with the station before running it and they didn't say anything about it. I told her that even if I'd known about his condition, I would've still run it since I wasn't picking on of him it but I wouldn't fought for it if told I couldn't on account of him. She seemed to respect that I guess because she invited me me over to house a lot. They were a nice couple but a little weird in the sex department. She had to do all the work in bed so every once in a while he'd have on of his war buddies take care of her the way she liked it while he watched... or was taken care of by his buddy's wife... Wait a minute... 'Used to live'?"

"Didn't you know? They had a house fire about a year ago last April. He got out OK but they found her passed out in the bathroom. She's still in a coma.... What a tough break for him. He was finally getting to the point where he could get around more and now he's got to take care of her. Good thing her parents left her some money."

"Gee N'eddie. I wish you'da said something to me about this. Wasn't there anything on the wire service?"

"Well there wasn't really much about it and you were sick enough getting all worked up over Scott. I didn't see any point in throwing another thing you couldn't do anything about on your plate. No point in giving you two ulcers at once."

Short pause as Jenny considered her reply.

"Ohhh... Well... You were looking out for me.... I think.... maybe we better stop talking before we kill someone else off. Anyways... I gotta get The Professor his damned report..." Turning to us she added. "What time did mother say she wanted me at the studios?"

"Well at three to three thirty they're going to try and hook up with the BBC. They've got a Beatles TV concert going off in Norway or something. Then Carson is going to do a coast to coast dry run before he does his real show."
"Oh we'll have plenty of time. I'll just pop in and out."

"So what are you going to tell them?" We were hoping for a nice big 'Fuck you and I'm out the door'...
"Nothing! I'm just not going to show up. No point in them worrying about something they can't do anything about!"

Jenny managed to slink back to her desk unnoticed or at least unregarded. She had hidden the report she was to type up in a box of typewriting paper inside the case of her old college Royal portable. The doughnut boy was busy with his work at the other end of the floor so being in a pestering mood we left Jenny to her typing and went off to bug him for a while.

From this end of the floor we could see Van DeLay's empty office at the far wall - it looked like a ballpark luxury box. Looking at the floor below we could see Drake and his girl at their respective desks. We got a snap of Jenny at her typewriter. Since drafting tables aren't any good for typing on, she had the little Royal propped on a filing cabinet as so we got a nice angled view of her best side.

"You gotta remember my mother was a fan of William Holden and never heard of The Catcher in the Rye..." And so William Holden Caulfield apologizes for his name. "I do like his Nine Stories compilation. You know they made a movie about the one from Connecticut?"

We didn't know that. We asked him about what he was doing up on the Siberia floor with Jenny and he gave us the back story about how Van DeLay's people were on this floor and were laid off when Van DeLay checked himself into some sort of sanitarium. One of those clinics for "exhaustion" - wink, wink. He had no loyalty to either architect so he settled up here to keep Jenny from being too lonely.

If he ever had any hopes of getting closer to Jenny they would soon be dashed and for no good reason. None of us noticed as Jenny walked over to his table bear an armload of office supplies. Will idly scooting himself around in his space allotment in his chair had stuck his foot out into the corridor and sent Jenny face first into the glass floor.

"Oh gee. Sorry about that. Didn't see you walking there." His first natural instinct at seeing someone fall was to try to laugh it off. We knew Jenny didn't like high places much and this building in particular. She gave him a stare that was part 'Et tu Bruté?' with the rest being cold raw naked fear.

"Oh god... no... I swear to god it was an accident! Are you OK?"

"I was going to give you some of my office things... You said you hated the stuff they use here."

Trembling and sniffling, she meekly gathered up the supplies from the floor as she peeled herself off the floor. On her knees, she shoved them into his space allotment, took two long drafts of breath and finished the struggle to her feet. Tears were welling in her eyes as took a few more drafts of air. The limp she'd been trying to hide all day was plain to see as she ran back down the corridor for the ladies room.

"God... damn... the way she just sucked it up and took it... Why aren't you going after her?"

"Oh she doesn't like people to see her crying. It's just one of those things with her. We just let her have it out in privacy."

We heard the sound of the elevator moving and saw a flash of motion from the counterbalance. Jenny was going to have one more humiliation that day. We moved over to the open walkways to watch the floor show. An older man and what looked to be his son stepped out of the elevator on the lobby level. Drake sees them from his office, calls out "Hey Fred! I'll be right down!" and troops down the stairs that wrap around the elevator shaft to greet him. Fred introduced his son Donny and pulling some papers from his vest pocket, got down to why he was there.

"I got this memo from someone named Jennifer who had some good ideas for our Spanish Harlem project..."

Like a good doctor, a good architect keeps up on the latest studies, methods and research. Jenny's access to Panorama's treasure trove of obscure bulletins and papers rewarded her with a nice little gem on the living preferences of Latin Americans. It seems they're still a bit more formalistic and don't like the open kitchens popular nowadays because kitchens are seen as a servant's space. They also don't like the front door to open right into the living room.

She also included notes suggesting that if you moved a column here or there you'd be able to use some newer equipment that'd get the job done faster. She even had a list of what equipment various contractors had and how many payments they still had on them.

Jenny had also covered a benefit dinner held by several construction firms in support of a company that had built a new highway system for Cuba only to get shafted when Castro took over the country and stopped payment on any debts. From that she was able to pick up another useful item.

"She also mentioned that she found a supplier that was stuck with some plumbing fixtures intended for a project in Cuba that was looking to unload them cheap. Says they'd be just the thing for our buildings. I check it out and it's a pretty good deal."

Drake had had his fill of Jenny and now he had his excuse.

"Well this is just damned unprofessional! It's bad enough I have to put up with someone else's pet project but at least it wasn't on my dime. No she's going into my clients..."
"Now don't go off like that Walter. I met her at a benefit dinner. I don't think she even knew I was working with you. Frankly I think she was trying to make a sale."

"Well who asked her to meddle in my affairs? I'm going to have a nice long talk with her. And then I'm going to show her the door!"

With that he stormed out the door and up the wraparound stairs to Van DeLay's floor with Fred and Donny bringing up the rear. Jenny was still in the can so they had to satisfy themselves with rooting through her desktop.

"You know you really ought to settle down and your really shouldn't be going through her things like that."

"Ahhh. We have no secrets in this office. Now what's this..."

They had her building.

"That's actually pretty good Walter. Take the funny top off and I could rent it tomorrow."

"No I'd keep the top. Company could use it on their letterhead"

We made it to within two desks before Jenny found them.

"Hey! Hey! What are you doing! Get out of that! That's private property!"

That got the office prairie dogs up from behind their desks.

"Come on now... we have no secrets in this company..."

We had never seen Jenny this furious with anyone, she would actually get very cold in her fury. Drake seems to enjoy her rage as he played 'keep-away' with the her portfolio. Jenny drew an open hand back for a smash in the nuts but he caught it with his free hand and in a single motion whirled her into Van DeLay's office and slammed the door to dress her down in relative silence. The click of the lock meant there was nothing more we could do but pack the rest Jenny's things.

Well we could do a play by play. Spotting the microphone in the satchel holding Jenny's Carry Corder we grabbed that and drew a monocular from our camera bag .

"Welcome ladies and gentleman to the Monday Murder Matinee coming straight to you from the Brisco Arena in the scenic wonderland of Hells Kitchen! And when visiting Hells Kitchen be sure to drop by Hell's Delicatessen. Good food. Reasonable prices. The Main Event is being brought to you today by Geolitz - makers of fine architectural drafting equipment. Geolitz - ask for it by name."

Ushering the Fred, Donny and Will who'd joined in on the spectacle back to a position where we could peer into the ring we continued...

"We've got a real David and Goliath mixup on the card today, pitting the Prince of Park Avenue, Walter Drake at six feet one and a half and weighing in at one hundred eighty-six pounds against The Girl from Amityville. She may look like a featherweight at five foot ten and three quarters and one hundred and eighteen pounds three ounces but she's got muscles of Core Ten steel. A real pint sized atom bomb."

Now there was a bit of a dustup at the weigh in. There's clearly no love between these two contenders. Now Ariel will be doing play by play and I'll be doing color as according to this, you're an accomplished lip reader..."

"Ear infection in 'Fifty-three. Stone deaf for a year..."

"I remember that year. Had a chest cold myself. Felt like a band clamp. Nasty pain. Nasty pain."

"Well it looks like Drake is really letting her have it. I don't think you'll be able to get much out of him."

"He's moving around too much. I'm gettin' nuthin'' but gahbage..."

"It looks like Jennifer's really studied well the Alice Kramden Fighting Academy's 'Silent Temple Master Technique'. You can see that she's holding her ground while he dances around like Gene Kelly. Good conservation of energy. Not a peep out of her in this round."

"Now he's stopped for a finger wag. Got signal... got range... Ohhh! He just called her Van DeLay's whore!"

"...I don't know what sort of spell you've cast on Van DeLay and as long as its on his dime I really don't care but I'll be hanged if I make changes to a twenty-five million dollar project on the say-so of a twenty-five dollar a day... 'office girl'!"

"Now most women faced with such a withering assault will go for the full frontal defense of their honor..."

"Yes... Yes... Oh yes! She's going for it! Yes! It's the Sergei Varishnikov Deflection! This is fighting history in the making!"

"You don't know me.... You don't know who I am... so I know I can't expect any quarter on your part but I would think you'd give your business partner of twenty-seven years SOME credit for personal integrity."

"The SV Deflection is a actually an extremely difficult maneuver to use properly. Can leave your opponent with an easy counter... Max Westfield tried it with Sonny Liston... Did not go well... Let's see if Drakey can rise to the challenge..."

"Well what kind of quarter does that leave me? Half the company gets laid off when we had three projects on the front burner and you show up under foot with some sort of 'earthquake research project'... We don't HAVE earthquakes in this city!"

"He should've had her there. Clearly he is wearing down, so we're going to take a short break here and fill all you at home on what they're fighting over. If you'll direct your attention over here you'll note that this floor is suspended on these rods going up to that beam in the roof. Note the simple welded box girder construction. Also take particular note that there is another set of rods attached to the box girder holding up the floor below."

"Now Jenny had been in California for most of last year to work on her doctoral thesis and she had a project design that involved a similar suspended floor system. Getting wind of this project from a friend in the publishing industry, she managed to snag a press pass for herself to have a look-see. Well it didn't take a first year engineering student to see that this was within weeks of collapsing but nobody else did, so Jenny made her concerns to Mister Van DeLay."

"As it turns out his original design had been altered without his say so and to complicate matters Van DeLay had come down with a rare nervous disorder and was rapidly going to be in no position to take care of the problem."

"Wanting to save the practice the embarrassment of having it known that their own headquarters was falling apart. Van DeLay put Jenny in charge of not only fixing the defects but of figuring out who made changes to his plans and of checking to see if other project had any of these changes made to them. Jenny, wanting to fix the problem, came up with the cover story of doing an earthquake research project - with this building right next to the truck entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel, it actually made sense."

"Van DeLay told his people to find something else to do for the next six months so they could redo shop drawings and so that Jenny could get her people in to make the necessary repairs and root through the company files. Ironically enough given the animus between them, she's about to give Drake a clean bill of health. Seems the construction firm talked Emily into signing off on the changes. If she doesn't throw any of this in his face, I wouldn't be surprised. Classy lady. Real professional."

"Now back to the Main Event which looks to be a stand-off right now... Nope it looks like Jenny about to call this over."
"OK are we done here? I think we're finished..."

We stopped calling it from this point but the fight wasn't over. Jenny made a move for her portfolio but Drake had a final insult for her.

"I think you should know that any work done while in the employ of Drake and Van DeLay is considered 'work for hire' and is company property unless I hear otherwise from Van DeLay."

"But that's my dissertation! They were going to show it at the Worlds Fair!"

"That's nice dear but you should read your contract. I'm perfectly within my rights."

Jenny took a few deep breaths to tamp down the homicidal urges bubbling within. Properly tamped down, Jenny's demeanor switched to standard courteous.

"Okay... Fine. Been nice knowing you."

Jenny turned for the door and briskly made her way for the elevator leaving Drake somewhat puzzled at the non confrontational ending. Fred, pulling a business card from his pocket made his move.

"Miss, you come by my office tomorrow and I'll pay you double whatever you were making here..."

"Now you know that she couldn't work for anyone for a year. Exclusivity clause... Can't have her trading on company secrets!"

"I'd put her on retainer just to piss you off!"

"Thanks but I think I'd rather work as a bowling alley waitress! You get a better class of lowlifes..."

Jenny noticed a small pull down door against the wall next to the wraparound stairs. Looking back at Drake, she saw her opening and seized her portfolio from under his arm.

"And just so that there will be no doubt..."

She opened the little hatch marked 'Incinerator' and sent her portfolio on its merry way to oblivion. Seeing that the elevator had arrived, she hurled the door open like it was made from balsa to reveal a surprised Emily on the other side. Changing places in an awkward rolling motion as the door ricocheted closed, Jenny disappeared from view and the cab started down on its way to the lobby.

"Hey... Where's Jennifer going in such a hurry? I was going to ask her if she wanted to stay on after her contract ran out... What?"

We could only muster a sheepish grin as we gathered up her things to wait for the next car. Donny had the closing line.

"You know... you two look just like the Dolly Sisters... Are you in show business or something?"

Fred finally turned to Walter to lay down the law.

"I know what you're thinking but I'm not going to do a damn thing about this. You're going to repent and you're going to do so because you're genuinely sorry for what you've done and not because someone had to make you. We will speak of this no more!"

Donny helped us into the elevator and went with us on the way down.

"That was quite a gesture on her part. Too bad they ripped out the incinerator when they rebuilt this place. I could go look and see if I can get at it if you want."

"You know, once she's put something down, she won't want it anymore. Years ago she had these ideas for a new airliner. Made a little book of concept sketches. She had the bright idea of 'predesigning' a family of jet airplanes that you could build as a fifty passenger plane or a five hundred passenger plane. Even had figures to back her up. She even planned for future engine designs. Well some kid grabbed it from her and started laughing at it - namely on account of this one picture showing all the possible engine placements in one go. Well she actually talked him into the merits of her scheme, an airline would only have to train pilots and mechanics on a single system and when she finally got him on her side she torched the book right in front of him. Never drew an aeroplane again. That's how she does things. We probably just lost the next Leonardo DaVinci."

We found Miss DaVinci pacing the street in front of the door head shaking at the loss of her building.

"You know what I bet will happen?" She speculated "I bet the janitor finds the damned thing, takes a course in architecture and twenty years from now, San Juan gets the tallest skyscraper ever designed by a Porto Rican. He'll probably pay for himself too."

And with that, Jenny's grieving process was more or less complete. Taking a few seconds to gaze at her watch she decided, "We still have an hour or two to kill. Why don't we go up to the Burgundy Room and let our hair down..."