Excerpt from Trinity by Louisa Hall, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Frank lit a cigarette and leaned back in his seat. "That fat man looked like a woman," he said.

I didn't answer.

"Unfortunately that's what happens to fat men," Frank said. "At some point they become women."

Oppenheimer was still on the curb. He was peering across the street with that same blinded look. I kept the camera trained on his face. I wanted to note the precise moment when there was a shift in his expression, so it was Frank who first noticed the girl.

"Who's the piece?" he said.

I put the camera down. Frank tilted his chin toward the opposite sidewalk. The girl had stopped in her tracks. The other pedestrians were streaming around her, and she was smiling at Opp. She'd lifted one hand to get his attention. Then she stepped off the curb.

For a moment, before she got ahold of herself, she broke into a run. She was still waving. Then she slowed herself back down to a walk, but anyway her hand was still up in the air. It seemed sort of exposed. Left out in the open.

I turned back to Opp. He'd clearly seen her. In the meantime, he'd started smiling.

Or that's the best way I can describe it: he'd seen her, he'd started smiling. But the smile wasn't entirely natural. It didn't seem to give him any real pleasure. It looked like his vision had been restored too abruptly, and, seeing her, a smile cracked open his face.

The girl walked toward him with her hand up, and he stayed where he was, one hand stuffed in his pocket, the other hand hanging free, that smile cracking his face like an eggshell.

When she reached him, she stood before him. They didn't touch. But they obviously knew each other.

"There she is," Frank said.

The girl was saying something we couldn't hear. She was gesturing with her left hand. Opp looked down at her, and he was still smiling, but he kept his hand in his pocket. I thought I saw it twitch a few times, as though he wanted to pull it out into the open.

"You think she's pretty?" Frank said.

I took a few pictures. Thick dark hair, pale skin, black dress with a looped bow at the collar. Tall, with a solid build, somewhat thick in the ankles. But her face was beautiful.

"She's got a nice figure," Frank said.

She was still standing in front of him. That smile was still wrecking Opp's face. She was saying something and laughing, but after a while, her smile wavered. Then she wasn't smiling. Then Opp tried to stop smiling, too, but it was as though his lip had gotten caught on a hook. It took him a second to get it back down.

And the whole time, she stayed where she was. She was looking up, squinting into the light. Or maybe frowning. Then with a small gesture, almost a shrug, she turned, and they walked off together, across the street and away down the sidewalk.

Excerpted from Trinity by Louisa Hall. Copyright © 2018 by Louisa Hall. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.