The first chapter introduces the author, Laura Schroff. At 35, she is a successful ad executive at a major national publication. She takes pride in her work ethic and her forceful personality, two traits she believes has helped her overcome her working-class background to become solidly white collar. Although she is not in a fulfilling romantic relationship, Schroff’s work life makes up for that disappointment.

The author feels that like most New Yorkers, or individuals in any modernized city, she has learned to look away from the homeless. In the year she dramatizes, 1986, homelessness is at an all-time national high, and she’s learned to mostly tune it out. There are haunted, desperate-looking people on the street around her all the time, but she feels that part of what it takes to live in New York is the willingness to get caught up in the bustle of one’s own life and put up blinders.

The author admits she dropped those blinders once before. In the past, she connected with a homeless man named Stan, a man in his mid-forties who carried all his possessions in one see-through plastic bag. Each day the author would bring Stan a cup of coffee with cream and sugar until one day, Stan was no longer there on his usual grate.