The narrator opens the story, telling us about Dolores “Doty” Lucero. Doty took her vision for granted during the weeks before it was taken from her: “She didn’t pay special attention to her younger sister, Tina, slumped on her side and snoring loudly in her bedroom, one of her breasts sleeping out of her satin nightdress” (47). She didn’t stop to soak in any part of her surroundings on the North side of town where they lived, in a residential neighborhood located on Federal Boulevard.

One morning, a slew of flyers appeared across town. They had the face of a local 19-year-old Filipina woman named Lucia Barrera, who worked at Montgomery Ward and had gone missing. Doty arose that morning to find one of the flyers on the tree in her front yard. Seeing it filled her with sadness. She remembers seeing the beautiful Lucia in church: “Lucia was very beautiful, with strong precise eyes, and Doty felt an urge to know her” (49). Tina, however, is dismissive: “Maybe she’s dead,” Tina offers (49). When Doty chastises her, Tina offers that perhaps Lucia had a boyfriend whom she ran off with. Doty replies that she doesn’t think Lucia was interested in all that, and Tina’s rejoinder is that Doty is the only one who doesn’t care about finding a man.