 What is the meaning of the title?
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] No doubt whatever about it, I had the Indian sign on me ... What do they do, I asked myself, that I have left undone? I didn't notice the impending rain storm and had no umbrella when I reached the sidewalk, to find myself confronted with an almost tropical downpour. There was the usual crowd of buffs watching the digging machines and, in particular, a man with a pneumatic drill who was breaking up some hard-packed clay. At the moment of the explosion—if so feeble a thing can be called one—I felt something sting my face and, on touching it, found blood on my hand. During the day, by actual count, I heard the phrase "I'm just spitballing" eight times, and another Madison Avenue favorite, "The whole ball of wax," twelve times. However, my story had been accepted without change because nobody had noticed my absence from the conference room. There you have what is known as the Advertising World, the Advertising game or the advertising racket, depending upon which rung of the ladder you have achieved. Psychiatry tells us that some people are accident-prone; I, on the other hand, seemed recently to be coincidence-prone, fluke-happy, and except for the alarm clock, I'd had no control over what had been going on. How to make coffee, how to open a can, whom to call if I took sick and such. Intimidated, I took my drink into the living room and sat down in front of the typewriter. I went back and read the whole chapter to try to get a forward momentum, but came to a dead stop at the last sentence. The Sun was out again and a man with a stick was exercising his flock of pigeons. They wheeled in a circle, hoping to be allowed to perch, but were not allowed to. I was thinking about this decorative fact when I saw that as they were making a turn, they seemed to bunch up together. By some curious chance, they all wanted the same place in the sky to turn in, and several collided and fell. Since our building is usually very well behaved, I was astonished to hear what sounded like an incipient free-for-all, and among the angry voices I recognized that of my neighbor, Nat, a very quiet guy who works on a newspaper and has never, to my knowledge, given wild parties, particularly in the late afternoon.
 Alec is at the center of all the coincidental behavior
 When Mr. and Mrs. Graham are apart, a major imbalance persists  McGill is manipulating Alec as part of a social experiment  Alec is at the center of all the coincidental behavior  Alec possesses supernatural abilities that will eventually destroy  him