There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness.
And there are… aren’t there?

From my ENGL1B notes:
The ones coming in through the Tortilla Curtain down there, those are the ones that are killing us. They’re peasants, my friend. No education, no resources, no skills—all they’ve got to offer is a strong back, and the irony is we need fewer and fewer strong backs every day because we’ve got robotics and computers and farm machinery that can do the labor of a hundred men at a fraction of the cost (101).

“Come on, let’s go, I’m in a hurry here”—and she felt a quick surge of panic. It was time to go, yes? Eight hours and more—of course it was. And yet she couldn’t escape the feeling that he was criticizing her, urging her to work faster, harder, to ply the brush and pour the corrosive and make every Buddha in the room shine as if it had just emerged from the mold. (94)

And when the fat man laid his hand casually across her thigh, even before he cheated her of the extra two hours and pushed her rudely from the car, she wanted to fling it away from her, hack it off with a machete and bury it in some bruja’s yard, but she didn’t. (97)

“… Señor So-and-So says get me a Mercedes or a jag or an Acura Vigor CS, white with tan interior, all the options, and the dude down there calls his buddies in Canoga Park and they cruise the street till they find one. Three hours later it’s in Mexico.” He paused to shift his shoulder, tug at his tie. “Happens all the time.” (147)

He smiled and then she saw that there was something wrong with his teeth, something catastrophic, each visible tooth a maze of fracture lines like an old picture in a church. Denture, he was wearing dentures, that was it, cheap dentures. And then he breathed out and she had to turn away again—there was something rotting inside of him. “Me llamo José”, he said, holding out a hand to shake, “José Navidad. ¿Y tú? ¿Cómo te llamas, pretty?” (82)