I want us all to live together, father used to say. The second floor sky should have been Stipe’s floor. Below it, down in the void, there should have been my floor, Ivanka’s floor. Now, when it’s all come to nothing, I’m standing on the second floor heaven, looking through the plastic opening at the ruined father’s castle, and I’m thinking. I’m not thinking of his empire, but of mine. I’m thinking of my years in Pliva5, the foreign trade section, my own company, then my second company. I’m looking around me at the darkening seafront, thinking of all the lighted windows, wondering how many of those people take their evening aspirins, analgesics, nose drops or cytostatics, and whether all those people know that thirteen percent of all they take with water or inject or sniff has been imported into Croatia by the woman who is now standing like an apparition at the top of a devastated staircase. I’m reminded of the master plan that I must present in the bank tomorrow, but I can’t remember what it is about, I can’t recall a single word of it.

My heels are upon firm ground, my toes are in the abyss. I’m standing on the edge, half a foot safe and half a foot doomed, and I can’t remember anything, I just feel my head spinning more and more.

5 Pliva, big Croatian pharmaceutic corporation.