He doesn't know where his aunt's classroom is or even which building it's in. What was he thinking, coming here? He shouldn't even have been standing on the concourse, doing nothing, shouldn't have put himself in a situation where someone could harm his fingers. His rehearsal schedule will be thrown off, and then what's to become of them? Will his mother have to do laundry forever? She works so hard. He's the man of the house. What kind of man is he who comes to a place looking for his aunt and doesn't even know where to start and ends up in a wet chair watching the rain?

In the apartment blocks across the road women are whipping clothes off washing lines strung over balconies. They pluck pegs off their lines, holding them in their teeth, then turning to call indoors for help, identical bursts of movement that happen on different levels of the building, independent of each other. Across the city, his mother is probably doing the same.

Below them, at ground level, a woman walks past, sheltering under a navy-blue umbrella. Yevgeni's eye is drawn downward from the intermittent chaos that unfolds above her. She wears a gray coat and black shoes. Yevgeni recognizes the swivel of the body, the pace of her stride. It has to be her. Finally some luck. He stands up and shouts over to her, "Auntie!" She doesn't hear and keeps moving. He shouts again, "Auntie Maria!" Still nothing. Yevgeni doesn't think he has the strength to run after her. He needs rescuing from his little island of gloom. He waves his good hand in the air with broad strokes. Still nothing. She's moving past now, the moment quickly becoming lost. The pavement becomes washed in a yellow glaze. Carnival music blares from the overhead speakers.

Yevgeni, momentarily disorientated, looks up to see the perimeter of the concrete canopy lit up with hundreds of individual bulbs. The steel tables around him glisten, stagnant puddles turn into blobs of molten gold. Across the street, his aunt Maria stops and looks over at the circus building, charmed by the electric surge that radiates out into the damp evening air, and pays particular attention to a sodden boy sweeping an arm above his head, as though waving out to sea.

Excerpted from All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon. Copyright © 2014 by Darragh McKeon. Excerpted by permission of Harper Perennial. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.