This is a novel resplendent with dignity. Sheets of steam from the underground pipes. Treefrog moves through the metropolis of cloud. The face of the woman in the subway station follows him. The pipes are thick and gray and hot to the touch.
Sodium lights on the wall emit blueness, giving the steam the color of a new bruise.
He pushes his hands through the air, and even the air is hot. He has only been down here once before, in this weedlot of steel, four floors beneath Grand Central, the heart of the heart of the city. The ceilings are low, the corridors narrow, the floor dripworn from the steam pipes. He is a pinchbeck arrival among them, a man who still lives in some modicum of light. He has seen them, the truly damned.