The wind bells hanging from the balconies above his head swayed, ringing. A shower of bricks crashed around him and he flinched. For a second he tried to make himself run. But what good would that do? Any building could be the one to collapse, to bury him alive. Finally, the shaking stopped. Brendan was tired, he was hungry, and he felt more alone than he had since the day his father died. He heard shouts and looked up. A heavy-jowled woman stood on a second-story balcony. She was yelling at him, the words razor-sharp and coldly unfamiliar. Without thinking, Brendan ran until her voice faded behind him. Then he stopped again. He shivered. His old bakery route had included two stops at the white groceries on Dupont Street in the middle of Chinatown. Usually, he liked the exotic smells and sounds, the sight of the black-coated men with their long queues and the delicate, flowerlike women. But the alleys and the narrow streets had always scared him. All his life, people had told him there were tunnels beneath the streets, miles of them, where the opium addicts and the lepers lived.
