“Once in school, going down to lunch from our third-floor classroom, Valentino Vail had leaned over the banister without warning and loosed a cataract of orange vomit. The stairway was the usual open stack and Valentino’s breakfast just dropped forever, three stories down, touching a good number of lives as it rocketed past and hitting the basement tile with a sound zookeepers must hear sometimes, around the elephants.”
