“When the virus hit the city, it was easy to find each other. There weren’t very many people left standing, after all, and a disproportionate number of them looked like us. Until then we had no idea how many of us there were in New York. Once we found each other — there are eight…

“How do we get back over the border?” Jimmy asked. There were four of us now in Harrigan’s car, and we were feeling anxious and hemmed in despite the roomy interior. “It might not be as difficult as all that,” said Ruth. “They don’t want anyone to leave the U.S. given the quarantine, but they…

It struck her as comical how easily people were willing to assign her the role of office manager. It wasn’t as though female scientists were a rarity — nearly a third of those working in the lab were women, after all. But Gerald Lindstrom looked the part of head scientist. He also had the ambition…

Life moves too fast. That’s what Americans always used to say. They lamented the way their children grew up before their eyes without their being able to spend enough time with them from moment to moment. They decried the fact that the finite number of hours in a given day just wasn’t enough to fit…

“Why are you here?” “You.” “Why me?” “Because you’re you.” “Nonanswers.” “Only ones I’ve got.” We were alone, naked, in the dark. Jimmy was committing my body to memory with his eyes and hands, not wanting to miss any part of me, as though I might disappear. Ironic, all things considered, but that’s how a…

I had braced myself for a sudden jump to warp speed, but Harrigan surprised all of us by slowing down — and opening his window. The motorcyclist now had the perfect opportunity to get his grenade to its target. But that didn’t happen, because in the next instant Harrigan had pulled a handgun from beneath…

It’s pointless to ask why, but we always ask it anyway. Why were people doing this? Why the crazed, senseless destruction? If you couldn’t secure a long life for yourself, why shorten someone else’s? What purpose did playing the spoiler serve? Asian women were getting cosmetic eye surgery so no one would think they might…

After we left Sylvia, Jimmy and I went to meet Harrigan at a dive bar in the Bowery. I’d heard of the place, an old-man bar so narrow that a drunk who tipped backwards in his barstool would hit the back wall at shoulder level instead of falling over completely. No matter what you ordered,…

Sylvia didn’t used to be this way. She had once — most of her life, in fact — been steadfastly positive. She was privileged, she would say humbly, and so she felt it was her mission to try to make the world a better place. She was so privileged she actually believed she would make…

“How’s this for an answer?” I said. The gun. That’s what I was looking for in the backpack. The man in the doorway was not the killer. I could see that right away. He held up his hands to show he was unarmed, but there was a half-amused, half-weary look on his face as he…

She was the only other Lao Baby I’d met, both of us having ended up in New York adopted by do-gooder types, me a middle-aged ethical culturalist on the Upper West Side, Maggie a family of blue-collar Baptists in Queens. As soon as we knew each other, we became friends, different as we were, finding…

The grenade fell in the middle of the floor. At least I assume it did, but at that point Jimmy and I had burst from the building into the parking lot out back. Miracle of miracles, a heavy-duty dumpster stood right in our path. I seized Jimmy’s arm and threw us both inside. Would that…