chase scenes serial #12
air it was clear how much of the city the hospital monopolized. It was an incredibly utilitarian city. I would call it gritty but it was meticulously clean. It was gritty in the sense that it was quotidian. There was no affectation or posturing to appeal to anyone save the people who needed it to survive. The folks popping in and out of Coffee Break buying their regular flavoured drinks held a small town familiarity on their sleeves that, as I watched them silhouetted against the glass storefront, not the pane that was covered from head to sill in flavoured syrup, contrasted to the bleak wide streets with ‘For Lease’ signs and empty storefronts. Perhaps they chose this desolation as their town aesthetic. It would not be so easy to sell out‡. From the window of the hotel I could see a TGI Friday’s, Staples, and Pier One, crouching outside the perimeter, waiting for the last picture show to play so that it could smother the town in signs and seal up all the windows. Bismarck was not somewhere that needed more than one of something. The coffee shop we had sought out for our introduction to the city was long gone, Coffee Break was fittingly visible from that intersection. So if they had planted an additional ‘BISMARCK’
