Amelia Aldaine lived in an eleventh-floor apartment. The apartment had a balcony--- From it you could see the tall buildings of the city and on days when the sun was particularly bright, the windows burned with such intensity it blinded those whose eyes came into to contact with it.
Amelia, with coffee in hand would peer over and see infinitely the great gestures of exhausted hearts that showed on their faces in the form of spots, see the tiny specs of people walking by suspended in motion, imagine picking them up and letting them fall to their deaths, saving only those who did not struggle---Or with eyes half squinted and with the great kiss of her thumb, squishing them like bugs.
Her imagination was wild and her dreams dirty.
Oh, how they were dirty. Like an orgy of saints.
She told people she was born in the Roman century. This was not true. She was born in the American century.
She lied because she was embarrassed of the century that bore her.
She was seeing the man across the hall---Charles Beckett. He was proud to have been born in the American century.
He wore a dirty vest and had a belly that hung over his trousers, his gut like a black sun....