Excerpt

The car made its way through the dark, block after decrepit block, a tangle of lights, outdated signs, men on corners, men in entryways, women walking, traffic lights saying caution. It seemed to Knute that they stopped at every block and the people on the corner were only feet away, able to reach through the missing rear window. On one corner, groups of people were waiting for something that would never come. Another corner, young men, black and white, dressed in shine, spinning on their backs, then their heads, a silver square with black round speakers pumping a syncopated boom-tat. The sound bent as they drove by.