It's a big, beautiful city, but as we stumble through it I can't help but feel like a prisoner within these walls. Like I can never escape, can never breathe, can never feel liberty's sweet kiss on my cheeks. Yet this is where Dexter wanted to go. And I think about all the lost souls who wander to large cosmopolitans, who thrive to find themselves in the endless streets and clawing buildings and swarming people and racing cars. Everyone is trying to move so fast, life captured in fleeting glances, and this city is nothing but green paper and broken dreams.

    "Dexter," I say.

     "Yes?"

     "Can we leave now?" I ask.

     "You don't like the city?"

     "I know you wanted to come, but . . . this place is killing me," I insist.

    And he grins. "Darling, that is what this place is for."

     I don't say anything, allowing the puzzlement to set in.

     "From the ground up, they build these giant skyscrapers as if searching for the heavens. As if, through innovation, that we can conquer anything we face, that we can defeat death." And Dexter smiled a grim sort of smirk. "But look at us, six feet under in our own industrialized graves."

     And then we left.