In the stairwell of the airport parking garage, I run into a family of four who I don't recognize. Then, with a shock, I see them for who they are: the one who looks like my grandfather as a young man is my uncle, the one who looks like my mother is my aunt, the one who looks like my cousin as a boy is my cousin as a man, and the one who looks like my other cousin's newborn baby is in fact my cousin. I pass them silently.

In another stairwell, I happen to see my obese uncle dragging my grandmother by the hand as he berates her. I wait until he has gone before stealing her.When I bring my grandmother to work, she is frail and supple and wrapped in a brown wax paper shroud. In order to introduce her to three female bosses, I am forced to improvise a ventriloquist act. But after I let her fall to the ground and I am alone, she is reborn as a middle-aged woman.

Later, I find myself leading my brother and his friends on a journey uptown in search of something. They share many words and gestures whose meanings I can't guess, but they tell me in no uncertain terms that they don't trust my sense of direction. By the time we reach the towering and barren overpass at 42nd Street and Sixth avenue, I give up and put them on the subway back downtown to try again without me.