"I knew mortuary students would get good jobs because my cousin had died recently and my father and two uncles were dead, all of them now with arms of praying mantises, crooked and thin as whispers. My best friend from high school was also dead, his head having caught like bulk laundry in the giant rollers of the steel foundry. It was his first good job, and his last." Chapter 1, page 1

"The sun was climbing over the trees of City College and soon the black asphalt would shimmer with vapors. I had a theory about those vapors, which were not released by the sun's heat but by a huge onion buried under the city. This onion made us cry. Tears leapt from our eyelashes and stained our faces. Babies in strollers pinched up their faces and wailed for no reason. Perhaps as practice for the coming years. I...