“Because the large lids today,” she says, frowning into a mug and choosing another, “we’re not trusting them.”

“I’m also,” Stanford says, “having a crappy day at work.”

Her associate, setting up the little paper cones they use at this place, nods along. He’s a man with earrings that must be kidding, and he slides the mug under the apparatus with the practiced hand of the guillotiner. “Let’s all run away,” he says, “live on nuts and ferns.”

“I don’t want your nuts, man,” Stanford says, and both coffee people nod like he’s caught a ball. Some suitcaser clears his throat behind them, and Stanford wants to explain what he’s taking refuge from, the crazies scheming and swapping spit in the faltering bar in which he’s placed all hope that he could borrow or had lying around. But the second’s over. He takes his coffee to the only seat he sees, at a square table that should not pass, in Stanford’s opinion, for something you could share.

The woman opposite him is poking a message into her phone, which is flat on the table like it’s prepped for surgery, her other hand gripped completely around her small beverage, her fingers so tight you can see her creepy bones. Her face is poached with worry and her long black hair hangs straight down like a final curtain, and in fact she will be arrested before too long for fraud, in the wake of a sex scandal. Right now she’s trying to get her unreliable boyfriend to goddamn answer. Stanford only kind of notices her—she’s been in the bar, maybe?—even with his eyes open. He is making a list, straight down a legal pad in his brain:

pitch more catering gigs, call Dawn again

talk with the food truck guys again

strike it rich, clear all debts, and purchase boyfriend

no, marry money

attack Padgett with ballpeen hammer

and cannot believe this is his inventory. What could it mean, to have reached this place? He considers his own life the same way he, in his twenties, considered all the naked boys who woke up in his one-bedroom. Who is this? Was I the person doing such a thing? What does it mean, from the first people in Paradise such questions have we asked each other, me naked here?