Email From America, Five: Skating on Thin Ice.

St Patrick's Cathedral offers a haven of peace amid the tension, but I'm soon out on the street again, edging my way through the throng towards Wall Street. Most New Yorkers are just going about their business at this early evening hour, though crowds are swelling in Time Square. As darkness falls, the Rockerfeller Centre is illuminated in flourescent red, white and blue.  People of every nationality, not to mention multitudinous Americans, are making it a carnival atmosphere. Skaters swerve to the sounds of Prince and Janet Jackson. The festive spirit is in marked contrast to what is happening a few blocks down. The anti-Israel march is swallowing up all in its path. Some of the posters and slogans are deeply antisemitic. Hard to say how far it relates to the election, as of course they hate both candidates equally. A man in a Captain America costume hogs the crossing, standing in the middle of the road and declaring through his microphone that "Donald J Trump" is about to deliver world peace.  Drums are banged. Tempers flare. Were it not for the legions of police, I fear Time Square would be on fire tonight. 

The city is a gallery of screens - in squares, on the huge digital billboards looming over the streets, along the walls of every bar, cafe and pizza place.  And on every one, the same message is tantalizingly proclaimed: too close to call.

Down Fifth Avenue, there are in places more security than members of the public, though as I approach Trump Tower, that garish garrison of bulging gold, pockets of people mill about the entrance. A middle aged man ambles past me, t-shirt festooned in MAGA badges, and bearing the slogan "Gays for Trump." A sign at it's shimmering entrance informs me that the tower is open to the public. I walk on.

I am aware of a deep, heavily repetitive breathing as I pass the foyer, as if Darth Vader were behind me. The figure blunders towards me from the road side, and as I feel him colliding into my path I look up to see the familiar red tie, the shock of yellow hair, swept aloft like some cone of thick ice cream, and of course the orange face. I suddenly realize that I am about to be bear-hugged by none other than Donald J Trump himself.

It is only after he has gone lumbering towards the building, now at a safe distance, that I see for certain that the face is a plastic mask.

I cross the road, heart in mouth. Police line the sidewalk. Outside St Thomas', the homeless huddle under blankets. I notice one man, ashen and bedgraggled, is hunched on the top step directly opposite the florally bedecked entrance of Trump Tower, reading a book. I lean in slightly, and catch its title. It is called Techniques for Financial Animals.