On the first day, Jax spread towels on the hard love seat, making a barrier between his body and the shiny striped fabric he knew wasn’t really clean. He’d learned from YouTube that hotel rooms were literally covered in semen. A black light panned around the room would reveal livid green spots on the bedspreads, upholstery, walls—even on the ceiling. (“How?” he hadn’t dared to Google. “Why?”)
To avoid eating breakfast, Hwei-ling often slips out of the house without so much as a good morning or good-bye. Her dieting and her twelve-hour workdays worry me. She places undue importance on her job.
Some say the story begins in Europe, and your mother would no doubt interrupt and say it begins in New York, but that’s just because she can’t imagine the world before she entered it.