INSIDE BOOK 22

NEON — COMING SOON

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There are districts which endure grief privately, closing their shutters, lowering their voices and placing a small lamp beside whatever chair shall never again be occupied.

Mercer Ward was not one of them.

Mercer Ward had never possessed a private emotion when a public notice might be printed, stamped, witnessed, taxed, displayed in three windows and discussed beside a cheese stall. Its joy required tickets. Its indignation required forms. Its civic pride required a trestle table, two clerks, a rope line and at least one sign beginning with the word OFFICIAL.

Its grief, therefore, had become administrative.