[...]... glasses sat down at the other end of the picnic table and asked us some questions about the neighborhood We both 15 Kang_ 9780307953889_3p_all_r1.indd 15 2/24/12 7:18 AM JAY CASPIAN KANG muttered something about the Phone Booth and got up to leave There is no pretty way to finish off a plate of nachos Our beers were gone Outside, the five kids in the doorway had become nine, the two cigarettes a stubby four... is a Stygian scene,” and then thought about the movie Taxi Driver, and then Meet the Parents Despite my efforts, the steam and the fog rolling down from Noe Valley, the visions of Travis Bickle, and the repetition in my head of the words The Baby Molester is dead, ” all those signifying 23 Kang_ 9780307953889_3p_all_r1.indd 23 2/24/12 7:18 AM JAY CASPIAN KANG things couldn’t convince me that hell lay... 7:18 AM JAY CASPIAN KANG 12 We ended up at Adam’s apartment A menorah, mottled, oxidized green, stood in the only window Cigarette butts had long since replaced the candles There was a futon, I guess A sparkling flat-panel television provided the apartment’s only light—an interring blue that lacquered the scarred bamboo floors, the checkerboard linoleum of the kitchenette, the brass of the menorah, the matte... college?” She said, “This is not the time.” “Sorry.” She grabbed my hand but did not turn to look at me Then, with flourishing modesty, she said, “Williams.” “I went to Bowdoin.” “That’s a great school.” And then we were past the van We walked up and down the block three more times At each pass 27 Kang_ 9780307953889_3p_all_r1.indd 27 2/24/12 7:18 AM JAY CASPIAN KANG of the van, I made sure to ask some... L’Étranger and Howl stashed under their pillows, who try heroin once before realizing they only like the literary strain of the drug, who see a bit of crazy wisdom in the shitstained, misspelled cardboard signs of the homeless, who stand in front of the Hotel St Francis and look in through the smoggy picture window at the backboard, where forty-two actual keys dangle the same way they might have dangled in... a historical preservation placard, but neither of us could quite make out the text I said it was probably something about the Civil War The crowd filled in, the air thickened My father, starving bear, shrank in the grass and disappeared On the drive back, he leaned up against the door with his eyes shut and toggled the power locks in time with the music from the oldies station When we began to drift... those Adirondack chairs But then, invariably, the fluorescent stringers will fl icker or one of the tenants will stand up or a dead smell will gather and my old favorite literary losers will turn back into the crackheads of the Mission who are all defeated in the same way Still I admit it There were times when I stood in front of the window of the Hotel St Francis, stared in at the squalor, thick and silent... sidewalks by plots of pioneer flowers, still pulses grayly up Valencia to 16th, where the anonymous buildings are all hotels like the Sunshine Hotel or the Hotel 16 or the Hotel Mission or the Hotel Ignacio or even the Hotel St Francis, where the sign in the window reads, “we no longer rent rooms by the hour,” a hopeful declaration, somehow When I voted for Obama, I stood in line with a man from the Hotel... Writer It felt good Of course it did The man with the Pancho Villa mustache got out of the car, cursed at me, and collected the Advanced Creative Writer up off the sidewalk As they staggered back to the van, the Advanced Creative Writer yelled, “You’re fucking dead You and your fucking girlfriend.” 29 Kang_ 9780307953889_3p_all_r1.indd 29 2/24/12 7:18 AM JAY CASPIAN KANG I looked over at Performance Fleece... crime to his father, who promptly packed his son in the family van and drove to the scene of the crime to snatch up any evidence that might criminally implicate his son After sweeping through the dirt for bullet casings, footprints, the father had forced his son to stare in at the destroyed window, the slackening police tape that still hung across the front of the building At this point, the Advanced . 2012 by Jay Caspian Kang All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random. twice.” “Why don’t you care?” Kang_ 9780307953889_3p_all_r1.indd 4Kang_ 9780307953889_3p_all_r1.indd 4 2/24/12 7:18 AM2/24/12 7:18 AM THE DEAD DO NOT IMPROVE 5 “Because