Excerpt from Chapter One - VINCENT

  Corporate implored us to refer to customers as guests and Kyle flavored that word with a special tone of its own, a grossly overcooked intimacy that made me want to wash my hands twice.

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  My mind connected the word guest with sepia-toned portraits of elegant patrons summering at an Alpine health spa. Cello-curvy women in fine linen, handsome faces shaded under broad-brimmed straw hats. Unsmiling men with waxed mustaches dining with dignity, speaking softly of kaisers and kings. A fascinating salon of gracious ladies and gentlemen worthy of special attention.

  I did not feel hospitable toward the Groupon-grubbing students, the burned-out office workers eating in dogpacks flagging me down during the lunch rush demanding another salad bowl filled with sour cream for dunking forkfuls of chicken enchilada. I could not find common language with the slack-jawed kindermensch in flowing shorts below their knees, ears pinned under oversized flat-billed ballcaps, shuffling in sport sandals like tranquilized members of Charlie Brown's infield and forever fucking with their phones.

  These people weren't real to me, not in any sense beyond aggregated commercial data. They were only another bottomless source of noise that I wanted to make stop.