A library should be a place of love

Francis was a swimmer of libraries. He lived alone in an apartment that straddled the North Sydney skyline. From his window he could see the spidery harbour bridge and liked to imagine he was the last of the great martini makers, watching the decline of western civilisation with gin-coloured eyes. As evenings gathered over the city, however, he felt his own decline was coming faster than the snarled up lines of traffic. The brain is a bomb he wrote on a pad above the kitchen sink...