It’s like a waking dream.  Loaded into the disc tray like the last ammo clip in a desperate firefight for your life, the game is now afoot and no one is going to lend you a hand.

A man makes choices everyday. Hard choices that can haunt him. Easy choices that keep challenge at bay like a frightened monkey caged at the zoo.

I’m Max Payne and you’re me. A mirror of shadows at the foyer of an abandoned ballroom. And tonight we dance. We dance not with feet but with words and guns. One cuts and the other tears. One will put you down and the other can finish you off. The city is our jealous lover. It watches us on the streets and follows us home, to work, to sleep and into our dreams and nightmares.

For a city full of New York minutes the drive to the crime scene seems to stretch into eternity. Things are about to get personal. Personal like when you mistake an inheritance letter from your dead uncle for an American Express application. The radio crackles with familiar names but you refuse to make sense of them. Too dark. Too unthinkable. You can convince yourself you’re hearing lies but seeing is believe — they’ll tell you that in Tennessee too. There she was. I left her this morning after two eggs and bacon but now she’s lying motionless on her back, sunny side up — her body has more holes than a flute-and-sweater convention invaded by hungry moths.

My head swims. My stomach echoes with despair. She’s dead and I can’t bring her back. Like purchases from Saks 5th Avenue it’s something I’m going to have to live with.