Chapter 2

2: Everyone knows what nothing looks like.  That's what makes watching a building get torn down seem so tedious and time-consuming.  When a building is being constructed, only a handful of people know what the finished product is going to look like.  The architect, the contractor, maybe a few others.  It is a work of the mind long before a single nail is driven.  Then it becomes a work of the hands.  That's what Bill Ahn, the Korean owner of the A Mart thought to himself as he watched the mechanical claw slowly crunch away at an old condemned office building like an alligator eating a whale bit by bit across the street outside his store window under his scrutiny.
  Every once in a while, instead of grabbing something with its jaws it would swing sideways and knock over a wall or a doorway.  Bill sat there with his sandwich and coffee musing silently to himself about which support beam was going to fall prey to the ravenous predatory steel teeth of the machine next.
  Bill was only slightly overweight, mostly due to his tummy which came about from his wife's lovely Asian cooking that he over-eagerly indulged in.  He was most comfortable in a polo shirt and his favorite pair of gray slacks which he wore with brown penny loafers.  His hair was thinning on top which left him with what he called a "halo of hair."  His thin, silver colored rims on his glasses gave him a wise look.
  When he finished his lunch he turned his attention back to work.  Bill owned the Asian food store which his wife had named the A Mart.  He and his wife, Cassandra, whom everyone called Sandy, ran the store and they could always count on word of mouth to bring in plenty of business.  There were plenty of regular customers as well as a constant influx of new faces.  They mostly had Korean and Chinese food products, but they had a wide variety of exotic fruits imported from Thailand and Hawaii.  When the store had first opened, Sandy baked cookies shaped like the letter A and put icing on them to hand out to customers as they left.  Each customer would be handed a cookie along with a warm, "Have an iced A," from Bill and Sandy.  This attracted many people and now anyone in Marble Cliffs instantly recognized the friendly slogan, "Have an iced A."  Their television commercials starring Sandy with her signature cookies and catchy tagline were also quite popular locally.
  Bill closed a little early on this day because he wanted to get home to his wife.  They called each other Yobo and Sayo which was their cute take on the traditional Korean telephone greeting, "yobosayo."  A couple weeks ago Sandy thought she felt a small lump in her right breast.  He told her she should get a mammogram and maybe even a pap smear for good measure.  "I think you're ovary-acting.  I hate my mammy and my pappy," she said.  She always had a way with words that still made Bill laugh even after all these years together.  He ended up calling the doctor himself to make the appointment for her because he knew she was a procrastinator.  This was the day of her appointment and he wanted to hear the results.  When he stepped out of the building he looked up at the sky and noticed a daytime moon.  That had always been his favorite thing to look at in the sky.  It had usually meant good luck for him so he hurried home and prayed to God that it was a good omen.