He jumped!"
     Spattered with blood, John Fitzgerald Lopez stood in the doorway of the WBLT TV production studio, his video camera in one hand and a sack from Chicken Ficken in the other.
    "Who wants a drumstick?"  Lopez moved into the cramped room and set his things down.  He unloaded his camera and tossed the cassette to Janet, the intern production assistant, who shrieked and dropped it.
     "Fitz!  What happened?"
     "Careful with that tape, kid.  Those are the closest shots you'll see on the Chelsea Leaper's happy landing."  He dug into the sack of chicken.
     Janet, a small, energetic woman with radiant auburn hair, picked up the tape and made a squeamish face.  "So that's not your blood?"
     Lopez regarded his jacket, then looked at her, poker faced.  "Does this look like O positive to you?"
     "What happened?"
 Lopez extracted a greasy chicken wing and dourly thrust a straw through the lid of his Pepsi.  He preferred Coke.  "I told you on the phone what happened."
     Janet was loading the tape into an editing deck.  "You said he jumped, Fitz.  You didn't say he landed on you."
     "Well, he didn't, exactly.  He hit a fire escape on the way down and ripped his arm off."
     "Oh! Gross!"
     Lopez bit off a piece of chicken.  "Crowd thought so, too.  Funny.  Just a few minutes before, they all thought it was a great fuckin' idea that he jump."  He looked at her. She looked green.  "Sure you don't want some chicken?"
     "No, thanks."   She turned to the controls again. "How can you eat after that?"
     "Excitement makes me hungry.  You ever get excited?"  His smile was cinematic, chickeny.
     "Oh, please.  Just eat.  Where's Melody?"
     "In the bathroom, throwing up.  The arm landed right next to her."
     "Oh, my god!"
     "You ain't heard the half of it.  Some guy comes outta the crowd, grabs the arm and takes off across Ninth Avenue.  I got a good shot of that.
     "Good grief!"
     "Yeah," said Lopez through a mouthful of chicken.  "I filmed an actual arm robbery!" He exploded into laughter.  Janet shivered.
     "Hey," he said, "this is the stuff we pray for all summer.  I tell you what's lousy, is a slow news day.  That's when you get sent to Jersey City to interview some mental case with a trout that swam up into his toilet.  So far today I got a riot, a rescue and a swan dive onto Ninth Avenue.  It's a freakin' bonanza."
     The phone next to Janet rang, and in a moment she was hurrying out of the studio. "Manny needs something in the control booth.  I'll be back in a minute."
     "Hey, you didn't see the tape yet."
     "It's not going anywhere, thank you," she said, pausing in the doorway.  "By the way, that copy of the Zorro footage you wanted is in your top drawer."
     "Good.  Thanks, kid."
     "Yeah.  I love doing personal favors for you, Fitz.  I have so much free time here."
     "Y'know, I would go for you if you weren't so freakin' sarcastic . . ."
    "Hmpph," she said, and she vanished into the hallway.
     " . . . and if I wasn't queer."  Lopez put the chicken down, wiped his hands, and went to his desk across the room.  He opened the drawer and withdrew a video cassette, grabbed his Pepsi and left the studio.  Across the hall he entered a tiny, windowless room with a table, two mismatched chairs, a phone, a VCR and a monitor.
     He shut the door, turned on the equipment, inserted the tape and sat down.  He sipped his drink, then took out a Camel Filter and lit it.  "Now let's see who's crazy," he said.  He advanced the tape a bit, then hit the "slow forward" button.