Something caught in his throat and he began coughing. The bloody city was full of dust and dirt. He looked up through the yellow light at the sky. Buildings going down, new ones being put up all over the place. His coughing began to ease and he looked across at the GTI again. Four cars back was the alley leading into a building site with a half-dozen ways out to other laneways and streets. The handles of the plastic bag holding the brick dug into his fingers. His fingertips had gone numb. He moved the bag to the other hand and swung it in short arcs. Its motion gave him strength. He imagined the car window shattering, a shower of glass in slow motion exploding around him. Ten minutes gone. He let two cars pass and stepped out into the street. He couldn’t stop staring at the GTI now. It seemed to move, to float. He put his palm on his chest but his heart thumped harder.

“Deserved it,” he murmured.

Mister GTI had been in such a bleeding hurry to get into the pub for last call that he’d parked in a stupid place. He was probably a wheeler-dealer who made money just picking up a phone. Maybe he played the stock market or something. He had holidays in Spain or the States, someplace where all the women have blonde hair and look like models. He looked over the roof of the car at the glass-sheathed building behind it. Christ, he thought, and shuddered. All glass: someone could see out but he couldn’t see in. No, he thought then. If it was dark outside. The lights in the building were on so you could see in and they couldn’t… or was it? The glass held only the violet and yellow of the night street. Even the cleaners’d be gone home now.

He stepped out of the shadow. In the window opposite he saw himself sliding, misshapen and jerky across its surface, the bag beside him.