1
An Elusive Vocation
It wasn’t hard to believe two children had died here. April Nguyen stopped short at the bottom of the steep stairway, pulling her foot back before it touched the narrow catwalk. Through the grating was an inky blackness with distorted patches reflecting the glow from the emergency lights. Water. She couldn’t see the edges of it in the dim light; it lay under the entire network of catwalks and platforms, each with token handrails at waist height but nothing to save anyone who took a tumble. Or anyone shorter than the rail, like a child. No, it wasn’t hard to believe they had died here; what was hard to believe was that anyone could actually live here. And yet they did. Entire families, the borders of their homes the edges of the blankets or carpets they had spread on
