"I turned off Sunset Boulevard and drove up Micheltoreno to the site. The day was cloudy and an erratic and nervy wind rattled the leaves of the palmettos that the contractor had planted along the roadside. As I pulled into the curb at number 2265 I saw the old man" (p. 7).

"'Philip looked at me. "I was going to ask you to dinner tonight, but now that I've seen your lunch I guess you won't be hungry.'
'Ha-ha. Call me later, you may get lucky'" (p. 37).

"This is what he told me. (I am summarizing his rambling, wistful account.) His father's name was Archibald—Archibald Muir Carriscant—an engineer, one of that worldwide diaspora of Scots professionals and in his early forties when he first arrived in the Philippines—(then a colony of Spain)—in 1863, sent by his Hong Kong firm of Melhuish & Cobb...