I recalled seeing such a dog, thinking he was some downsized caricature of Camus’ scabby canine. The bum extends a grimy tome, a copy of The Old Straight Track.

Give this to him—a filial favor. Feel free to give it a glance yourself, he says. There is a flash of something both hard and ineluctable in his eyes but then it’s gone and he grins.

See you next week, I say, saluting.

The sun boils down on us workers all day and when dusk comes the mosquitoes fan out to spread across our bare backs like a thin layer of black gold. We’re building on the beach and though the sky set red I realize that a storm is blowing in, salt and wind readying to ravish the half-built skeleton of splintering thighs and bending calves. It’s a wonder a house survives, salt groaning in its pores. I nail the last shingle and then slide off the roof, thinking of the eyeless elephant. I’d wanted to name it Dumbo but Elba had said that was mean and so we’d settled on Punkles, which had popped into my head out of nowhere. I grab my backpack and unzip it while I walk to my car, pulling out a towel-wrapped water bottle. Today one of the other guys taught me how to conjugate to eat and to fuck in the present tense of Spanish and I practice as I towel off, the water in my bottle rising to meet the yo jodo of my tongue, slipping, penetrating. I’m so close to being able to quit, to pay for my last semester and help Elba pay for hers, to move on with our lives. Instead of building houses I’ll design them, and bridges and dams and canals. Elba won’t have to work if she doesn’t want to. She’d told me once that she’d be happy staying home, cooking exotic dishes for every meal and sewing charming jewelry mannequins and canvas espadrilles. As long as she still had time to paint. I slide my keys into the ignition of my beat-up Acura, dubbed Gramps, and imagine walking into my own house, one I’d designed, and loosening the Sistine Chapel tie at my throat. The aroma of homemade butternut squash soup rocks into my nostrils as I lounge on my coach and Elba rubs hot water and Epsom salts into my feet. We look back over our scrapbook from our old life, blueprints of former versions of our house curling up at the edges beside cards from well-wishers at our future wedding. We smile at each other. The weight of kava kava presses down on our eyelids until we give into it, making love right there on the couch and then stumbling to bed, where we fell into vibrant sleep.