Before he dies, he sees: a rectangle of charcoal grey sky, framed by two skyscrapers. A woman's heels, her delicate ankles, her nail polish showing through her stockings. Someone's hand, a corona of red painted across the palm, which flashes across his vision and then is gone. Cigarette butts on the sidewalk. The thin white edge of a discarded sign, and the letters FRE CA AM, but the angle it makes against the steps is too sheer for him to read any more.

He sees: a clear blue sky, caught between the sides of squat brick buildings. Paint peeling from a cast-iron fence. Mud under a boy's fingernails as he clutches his rifle to his chest. A girl's smiling mouth. Scotch in a tumbler on a black glass coffee table. The long smooth avenue of a woman's back.

A star, white, on blue and red.