Harold took the package, thanked the clerk, and, when he turned to go, saw, some ten feet away, behind a rack of T-shirts, a man regarding him with an ironical half-smile. Failure! This was Failure, with his wet vague eyes and a large pink scalp, like a newborn's, pressing up through thinning hair. Harold somehow recognized the man as Failure without their having been introduced, just as one knows the meaning of a cry of pain or exultation without having to look it up. "Hey man," said Failure, as if he might ask Harold for a light. "Hi, how are you?" said Harold, in general a polite person.

Walking away in the pixellated rain, Harold strung half a dozen faces into a unity: it was Failure, then, who had given Harold directions one night and whom Harold had also seen standing in a subway car, and seated at a table at El Famous Burrito; Failure who'd peered slyly at him from the steps of the public library, and who just two days ago had looked at him with ugly frankness from the other side of a bagel cart.

--Benjamin Kunkel, "Failure"