"The question is, what happens to Bill's pictures?"

"This is completely up to you. I make some pictures available to publishers or the media but only if the writer gives consent. This is how I support the project, along with several grants. I have a travel grant I absolutely depend on. Magazines would do anything to run a photo essay on Bill Gray. But I don't want to do pictures that make a revelation, that say here he is after all these years. A simple study piece is better. I want to do pictures that are unobtrusive, shy actually. Like a work-in-progress. Not so permanent and finished. Then you look at the contacts and decide what you want me to do with them."

"These are the answers we were hoping to get."

"Good. So life goes on."

"And what happens ultimately to your pictures of writers as a collection?"

"Ultimately I don't know. People say some kind of gallery installation. Conceptual art. Thousands of passport-size photos. But I don't see the point myself. I think this is a basic reference work. It's just for storing. Put the pictures in the basement of some library. If people want to look, they come and ask. I mean what's the importance of a photograph if you know the writer's work? I don't know. But people still want the image, don't they? The writer's face is the surface of the work. It's a clue to the mystery inside. Or is the mystery in the face? Sometimes I think about faces. We all try to read faces. Some faces are better than some books. Or put the pictures in a space capsule, that would be fantastic. Send them into space. Greetings. We are writers of Earth."

The elevators climb and fall, the clock rotates, the bar slowly turns, the signs appear once more, the traffic lights change, the yellow taxis come and go. Magno, Minolta, Kirin, Sony, Sun-tory. What does Bill say? The city is a device for measuring time.

"There are kids up there. See them? Around the twentieth floor. Can you believe it?"