Status Updates From Operazione Shylock

'Pipik. He was the smell of incense and old, dried blood. I smelled every second of every minute of my last twenty four hours, smelled like the container of something forgotten in the refrigerator whose lid you pop up after three weeks.'

On the epilogue now

'The crowd is as huge as a crowd at a bowl game, tens and tens of excited fans, snugly layered with clothing and warming their dark insides with steaming containers of coffee'.