"The van attendant hurried into the old theatre, striding up the aisle, eyes adjusting to the dim light, searching side and about for something to carry a body on.
Drawn instinctively to the right of the stage and to the wreck of a vertical piano, (it had no keys), he lifted its long board top.
Easily removed, but, surprisingly, inside---a hen's nest with two or three large beige eggs.
As he raced back out with the piano top, he wondered how a chicken could ever nest in such
a spot. How could it find a way to get under the heavy lid regularly enough to warm the eggs?
He could ask his partner but he probably wouldn't take to such irrelevancy."
"What are you reading that crap for?", he heard his partner grump. Jack lowered
his paperback, turning his head to look at him standing in the sun outside the parked police van.
"It's funny, it's got two guys just like us..."
"Nobody could be like us. Get out of there and let's go up and get that guy."
As he already shifted out of the van, heading for the stairs after Albert. The book, tossed onto an off-kilter stack of pop bottle, maps and clipboard, slid out into the street. Its title half visible.
Up the steep, narrow stairs more quickly than usual, an angle turn to the left with more steps,
in dimming light and, at a last little turn in brighter light, presumably from an office where he could hear the Inspector's voice, stood Albert staring back at him.
"What'd you come all the way up here for? Go back down and find something to carry 'im out
on, ya lunk!" Jack turned and hurried back down again, trying not to hit the wall at the bend.
Outside, already back in the sunlight, he thought of the theatre piano in the book and said
out loud, "Whoa, deja vu!!"
He headed straight for the theatre, passing the van on his way, with its open sides and steering
on the right. (Which Albert had to drive in the right hand lanes). He wondered what his book
would've had to say about what was coming next.
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