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engines everywhere. The street has been sealed off and is filled with people. Jim is panicked and dizzy. No one seems to know what the situation is. He finally spots his secretary, standing tall above the crowd.
    “I’m so glad you’re all right,” she says.
    “What’s going on?” Jim asks.
    “Bomb threat,” his secretary says.
    Jim sees Mr. Patterson leaning on a police car and goes to him.
    “Train, Train, I’m so glad they found you,” Patterson says. “That’s it then, we’re all out.”
    “Is there really a bomb?”
    Patterson looks grim. “Could be,” he says. “Don’t really know. We’ve got a couple of difficult cases coming up, could be related. Remember Wertheimer?” Patterson says, referring to someone who was let go under strange circumstances a few months earlier. “Could be Wertheimer. You never know what a man will do.” Patterson nods, tapping his fingers to his head, indicating the possibility of insanity. Train nods vigorously along with Patterson. “Go home,” Patterson says. “Call it a day.”
    Jim shakes his head. “My briefcase is inside. I’ve got calls to make.”
    “Go on,” Patterson says, flicking his fingers as if shooing Jim away. “Go home.”
    Jim lingers. He doesn’t want to go home. He wants to go to work. He is the Man of the Year. His plaque is up there on the thirty-fourth floor, just next to his desk. He has to decide where to hang it. Jim walks down Lexington Avenue to Forty-second Street, feeling rejected, disconcerted by the absence of his jacket and briefcase.
    He thinks of a bomb and imagines it buried in Patterson’s plant, launching the tall tropical wonder like a missile. The plant crashes through a single window on the thirty-fourth floor as though heaved in anger. A second later all the windows blow out, and a ball of orange fire claims the floor.
Whoosh
, the world is up in smoke.
    *  *  *
    Jim takes the two-forty train home and walks up the sidewalks, warm and clear with afternoon sun. The streets are full of station wagons, carpools going in all directions. He has the clear impression from the looks drivers give him that the sidewalks are not intended for use by anyone except women with strollers and children under twelve.
    He passes the spastic boy that he sees every evening, except in foul weather. The boy is never out in the mornings, and Jim imagines that because of his twisted shape it takes a very long time to get him dressed and fed. He stands in matching pants and shirt at the foot of his parents’ driveway, frozen in a bent, painful pose, giving Jim a clear idea of what a cast-iron jockey would look like if it were struck by a car or truck.
    The boy sees Jim and waves. Jim waves back. He never speaks because he’s afraid the boy will talk to him and perhaps he won’t understand what the boy is saying and then it will get complicated and even more depressing, so he leaves it at the waving.
    On this occasion Jim worries that perhaps he has confused the boy by coming home early and maybe the boy will do something like go inside expecting dinner to be served. Perhaps his mother will think his action is proof of her suspicion that he’s regressing and that he really is getting too old and difficult for her to care for and before supper she will call the institution and arrange for them to come and collect him by morning.
    Jim has the urge to go back down the block and explain his arrival, but the idea of explaining is too exhausting and he resigns himself to feeling guilty.
    Jim’s key doesn’t open the door. Instantly, he’s afraid that he has walked to the wrong house, he has forgotten his own address, he will become like the spastic boy and stand frozen at the end of the driveway until someone, his wife he hopes, drives by and recognizes him.
    He goes from the kitchen door to the front door and back again. He jumps up and looks in the window and feels comforted when he sees his loafers lying empty in the hall. The familiarity