| Unwelcomed Attention
The mood was subdued in the car as they drove the rest of the way into the seething heart of New York. Jack was guiltily glad to have got away and grateful that it was Ava who would be breaking the news about Ray.
He felt oddly detached from his surroundings as he wandered down Broadway. Everywhere was bright and well-lit. People surged along the wide-open streets in great waves, spewing out from the theatres and the restaurants in their hundreds. Great skyscrapers plowed up from out of the busy traffic on every street in sight. And as he finally came to Times Square, there was a sense of something truly giant in the air – not just the massive neon hoardings cranked up high over the city, or the TV screens the size of a condo, or the buildings that outstretched and outshone the night sky. There was a brash, rough-and-ready optimism about the place, the feeling that you could come here and stuff would happen. That anything was possible.