Chapter 6: Xs and Os Summary

This chapter is written from the point of view of Scotty Hausman. Scotty sits on a park bench in Tompkins Square Park reading something he has swiped from the Hudson News. Nearly every woman that walks by reminds him of his ex-wife. Scotty thinks about Bennie Salazar, his old friend. Scotty had read an article about Bennie in Spin magazine and was surprised to learn that Bennie was a record producer. Scotty thinks about his own job as a janitor.

"I felt no shame whatsoever in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in...