Two men, hands in their pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, stood on the sidewalk on the north end of the park nearthe entrance to the W hotel. They were watching the demonstration, just staring, fascinated. Neither held a picket sign. Leighpointed them out to Eddie.
“How about those two?” she said.
“Whatever,” Eddie said.
Leigh approached the two men. One was Caucasian, the other looked South Asian, maybe Indian, and both appeared to be in theirmid- to late twenties.
“Excuse me, my name’s Leigh Shore, from Urbanity.com,” Leigh said. “I was wondering if either of you would like to do a shortinterview about what’s happening here today.”
“No, thank you,” the Indian man said. “We’re just browsing.”
“How about you?” Leigh asked the other man.
He hesitated before responding.
“All right,” he said.
“Hey,” the Indian guy said to his friend.
“It’s fine,” the second man said.
“Great!” Leigh said. “What’s your name?”
Another brief pause, then, “John Bianco.”
“All right, John, would you mind letting your friend here hold your bag? It’s got a logo on it, and rather than blurring thatin post it’d be easier just to keep it out of the shot.”
John Bianco removed his shoulder bag and handed it to his friend. Said friend appeared to be having some sort of quiet, mostlyinternal seizure.
“Fantastic. Now, if you could just stand here.” She pulled John by his sleeve, positioning him so the demonstration was athis back. “And when you answer my questions, talk to me, not the camera. Okay?”
“No problem,” John answered.
“Eddie, you good?” Leigh said.
Eddie nodded.
“All right, set. Go ahead,” Leigh said.
“Taping in five, four, three,” Eddie said, counting down on his fingers at the same time, indicating the last two numberssilently, pointing at Leigh as he hit zero.
“I’m Leigh Shore,” Leigh began, “and I’m here in Union Square, at the site of New York City’s Oracle demonstration. Theseevents have been staged today in major cities across the globe, with the intent being to coax the mysterious prophet intorevealing his identity. I’m talking to John Bianco to get his thoughts on what’s happening here today.” Turning to face him,she continued, “John, have you been here all day?”
“Since this started, yes.”
“And you live in New York?”
“That’s right.”
“What brought you down here today?”
“Same thing as most of these people, I suppose. I wanted to see what will happen.”
“Do you think these rallies will bring the Oracle out of hiding?”
“I doubt it,” John said.
“Really?” Leigh said. “You seem very certain. Why not?”
“I just think that if he’s keeping himself out of the public eye, he probably has a good reason. I mean, you think he isn’talready aware that the world wants to know who he is? What, he’s going to come out of hiding just because all these peoplesay please?”
Leigh nodded, smiling. She liked this guy. He had a point of view.
“A lot of people here today think that the Oracle has a responsibility to share his gifts with the world more directly thanhe already has,” she said. “To make himself available, to help humanity navigate away from any disasters that might be loomingon the horizon. What’s your take on that?”
“I think it’s his business. I think we don’t have the whole picture about what’s going on with this guy, so when people assignhim motives or responsibilities, it’s just sort of silly and frustrating.”
“Frustrating? That’s an interesting choice of words. Why are you frustrated by how people feel about the Oracle?”
“I just think people need to get over it, I guess. Let the guy be.”
“But yet, here you are.”
John Bianco gave a short, quick laugh.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
Behind them, from somewhere deep in the middle of the crowd, shouts rose up, loud enough to drown out the speakers at thesouth end of the park. Leigh and John Bianco turned to see what was going on, but it was hard to make out anything from wherethey were standing.
Eddie grabbed her arm.
“Come on. We’re leaving,” he said.
“Why?” Leigh said. “What’s happening?”
He nodded at the mounted police at the edge of the crowd. They were all on their radios, and some were beginning to push inward,letting their horses clear a path.
“They can see better than we can, and I’m sure they have spotters on the rooftops. Something’s going on in there, and we don’twant to get stuck in the middle of it.”
The noise from whatever was happening in the center of the crowd was growing louder, and now a few screams could be heard.The mobile uplink antenna for the van closest to the disturbance was swaying in increasing arcs, presumably as the van hiddenby the crowd was pushed back and forth. As Leigh watched, it toppled slowly into the crowd like a felled tree.
Leigh glanced at John Bianco and his friend. They were transfixed, staring at the burgeoning chaos. The Indian man turnedand grabbed Bianco’s shoulder, trying to pull him away.
“Oh . . . oh no,” she heard John Bianco say, quietly.
He took a step toward the crowd, and the Indian man put his other hand on Bianco’s arm, forcibly rotating him away from thecenter of the park.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “We have to get out of here, Will, right now!”
“But it’s happening again!”
Leigh had a moment to wonder what that could mean, until a fresh round of screams reached her ears. Her head whipped around,back toward the center of the square, where she could see clouds of white smoke billowing up in the midst of the demonstrators.
“Eddie,” she said. “We need to get in there. We need to see what’s going on. Document it.”
A bottle smashed onto the pavement two feet away, exploding into a hundred tiny blades.
“Fuck that. That white smoke is tear gas,” Eddie said in her ear, taking her by the arm. “The crowd will stampede, any second.Leigh, we have to—”
A second bottle crashed directly into the camera Eddie was holding in his free hand. He dropped it, cursing, and the camerafell to
