Lot

Set across the multiethnic neighborhoods of Houston, Texas, this collection of thirteen interconnected short stories follows characters bound by immigration, poverty, family fracture, and the search for belonging. Several stories share a recurring narrator, a young Black and Latino man later revealed as Nicolás, whose family runs a struggling restaurant in Houston's East End.

In "Lockwood," the young narrator introduces his family: Ma, a Black woman; his Latino father, who insists on their superiority over their undocumented Mexican neighbors; and his older brother Javi, who runs with local gang members. The narrator befriends Roberto, a fifteen-year-old next door who spends his days learning English from a broken television. The boys roam the neighborhood and begin a secret sexual relationship. Roberto's family, unable to make ends meet, vanishes overnight. The morning before they left, Roberto showed the narrator how to fold his palms into the shape of a star, and the boys pressed their hands together in a closet, the narrator calling it amazing even though he could not see it.

"Alief" shifts to a collective narrator: residents of a diverse apartment complex populated by immigrants from Thailand, Mexico, Vietnam, Guatemala, and Cuba. The community watches an affair develop between Aja, a Jamaican woman married to Paul, and James, a white man who lives upstairs. When Paul walks in on Aja and James, he kills James by choking him on the curb outside. Paul is arrested. No one claims James's body, so the community pools its money and holds a funeral celebration, dancing and grilling until the police shut it down.

"610 North, 610 West" returns to the narrator's family. The father keeps another woman and leaves most evenings. On weekends, Ma takes the narrator to a market in Alief, where she dances with a child musician in the plaza and laughs openly, making the narrator promise secrecy. One evening, the father brings the narrator to the other woman's home. She is darker than Ma, plain, but radiantly comfortable. The narrator finds a stolen family Polaroid on her shelf and pockets it. Back home, Javi demands details, and the narrator lies, saying the woman was white and beautiful.

"Shepherd" introduces Chris, a Jamaican-American teenager in River Oaks. His cousin Gloria arrives from Kingston. Gloria's parents became addicted to cocaine, and at fifteen she began sex work to support the family. She had a baby, Dylan, who died from infection. Gloria is well-read and charming, surprising the family by identifying paintings on their walls. Chris is privately struggling with his sexuality: He and a friend grope each other under a highway overpass and never speak of it. Consumed by shame, Chris confronts Gloria, saying cruel things about her dead son. Days later, Gloria comes to him in the night. He tells her he is broken. They have sex. About a month later, she returns to Jamaica, leaving Chris a book with an inscription he never reads before the book is lost.

"Wayside" returns to the narrator's household after the father has left. Javi and his friend Rick sell marijuana to keep the restaurant afloat. When Javi is beaten by rivals, the narrator takes over dealing. Rick privately tells the narrator he is better than this. Months later, Rick is shot and killed. At the wake, Javi forces the narrator to touch Rick's dead face and says this is what happens to gay men.

"Bayou" follows TeDarus, a broke young man, and his friend Mix (short for Mixcoatl), who discover a hairless, fanged creature by the bayou that they call a chupacabra. Mix, who is gay and was kicked out by his brother, sees the creature as their ticket to fame. The plan unravels. That night, a group of chupacabras appears in a parking lot. Their creature walks toward the others, and the pack disappears into the bayou.

"Lot," the title story, brings the recurring narrator's arc into focus. With Javi enlisted and their sister Jan married to a white man named Tom, the narrator runs the restaurant alone with Ma. Jan is the only family member who addresses his sexuality openly, telling him it is nobody's business. The narrator discovers Ma has been meeting a realtor as the neighborhood gentrifies; Jan reveals the sale was already finalized. She argues Ma needs the money and that the narrator clings to the restaurant because he cannot accept Javi's death. A flashback reveals that Ma caught the narrator stealing from the register and Javi took the blame, causing Ma to throw him out. Javi joined the Army and died in a car crash on post. During his one visit home on leave, the narrator confessed he had been sleeping with boys. Javi slapped him to the floor. The narrator made a pillow on the carpet, and Javi fell asleep on the bed above him.

"South Congress" follows Raúl, a young Guatemalan immigrant who becomes a driver for Avery, a Black drug dealer. Avery warns Raúl that dealing is no life for someone with potential. One evening, they encounter a young man visibly affected by substance use. Avery beats him savagely: The young man is Avery's estranged son. Avery disappears the next day, and their supplier offers Raúl his own route.

"Navigation" finds the narrator at a taqueria, where he begins a relationship with a white man who works at a refugee shelter. The man earns a promotion in Dallas and asks the narrator to come. The narrator declines and leaves. When a manager later offers him a cooking position, the narrator curses at him and walks out.

"Peggy Park," narrated by the collective voice of a neighborhood baseball team, catalogs each player alongside his adult fate: mechanic, gardener, prisoner. The story centers on a post-Hurricane Harvey game on a flooded field, when the team formed a human chain to free Micah, who went on to play professionally. The narrator insists that whenever Micah appears on television, the whole team is there with him.

"Fannin" gives voice to Jan. One night she spots her father walking on the side of the road, disheveled and reeking. She chases him down before her roommate Yolanda pulls her away. Jan reflects on meeting her husband, a quiet white man who kept showing up. When she tells Ma about the wedding, Ma says at least one of her children is doing it right, then starts to say something more but is interrupted, and the moment is lost.

"Waugh" follows Poke, a young sex worker in Montrose who lives with five other boys managed by Rod, their unofficial leader. Rod's cardinal rule: If you get sick, you are out. He confides in Poke that he has HIV but refuses treatment and keeps working. Poke grows close to Emil, a regular client whose father and uncle were shot by boy soldiers at a checkpoint as his family fled their country. Poke moves in with Emil and searches the city for Rod, eventually finding him outside a soup kitchen. He offers Rod a room. Rod refuses. Poke continues watching Rod from a distance until one day Rod vanishes. Poke searches Houston for weeks but does not find him.

The final story, "Elgin," reveals the narrator's name as Nicolás. Ma has moved to Shreveport after Hurricane Harvey. Nicolás works at an upscale restaurant in Montrose, where his coworker Miguel, a gay undocumented Guatemalan, challenges him about his self-destructive patterns. Miguel's family came to Houston for his sister's medical treatment, but the sister died. After losing his job, Miguel shows up at Nicolás's door. They sleep together in the room Nicolás once shared with Javi. Miguel asks him to stay and try building something together. Nicolás does not answer. The next morning, he drives to Galveston and walks into the ocean. He prays for Javi, for Jan, for Ma, for his father. He begins to pray for Miguel but stops, thinking Miguel should be praying for him. He stands in the water, contemplating whether to go back, wondering if it was ever true that a person could get away from everything.