Summary

When the collection’s title story opens, the unnamed narrator has left his small-town family for the unnamed country’s capital city, hoping to find a job there as a dockworker. The country’s longtime dictator has recently been violently overthrown, and the country’s government is now a young democracy.

When he was turned down for work at the docks, the narrator rented a room from an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Patrice. The narrator lied to the Patrices, telling them that his parents were dead and that he was an economics student, and the couple lowered his rent and set him up with work as a cashier in a convenience shop near the port. The store sold cigarettes, liquor, and newspapers to local dockworkers and had a copy machine. It also sold postcards with a photo...