The first sound was a metallic cough, like a distant bell announcing the arrival of something too ordinary to be noticed until it blocks your view of the sky. The second was the smell — hot tar, diesel, and the faint sweetness of citrus from a neighbor’s tree — all braided together under the late-morning haze of Los Angeles. I stood on the cracked sidewalk of my bungalow in Highland Park, watching a roll-off dumpster lower itself onto the street like an iron whale coming to rest.
Hook
“You got room for one more?
