Chapter 1 Summary

In the cooling air of a once hot summer day, Bird lingers in a store over an open atlas, it is open to a map of Africa (see "Objects/Places - Africa"). During these contemplations, narration also includes a brief reference to Bird's wife, naked, moaning and sweating as she gives birth to Bird's child. Eventually, Bird asks a salesclerk to bring Bird him some road maps of Africa, a place Bird (according to narration) has always wanted to visit, but with the birth of his child may no longer be able to (see "Quotes", p. 3).

After paying for the maps and leaving the shop, Bird encounters a transvestite who at first thinks that Bird might be interested in an encounter, but soon realizes s/he has made a mistake and hurries off. Bird fantasizes briefly about how comfortably intimate an evening with...