“I know what you’re thinking,” Trigo said.

“Very funny,” I said.

“Any idea, feeling, experience that moves from thought to utterance and tells you it is true is a lie,” the dog said, all Michael Cainey. “Conversely, any utterance, written or spoken, that professes to be false, is true.”

“And why are we having this conversation?” I asked.

“For the sake of negation.”

“You mean it all means nothing,” I said.

“Nothing.”

The sun pounded down on us and a bunch of dreamlike things danced about, the world asserted its form, its dreaminess. But I expected as much from my dreams. My dreams, like the world, being made up, as it were, of unexpressed facts, unuttered observations, unformalized logical statements, remained pure and true and yet without meaning, until nullified by utterance. Isn’t anything sacred? Nothing. Nothing is scared.

The sun did not grow hotter, but I did, hotter and hotter until I fell awake to find Eigen lying on top of me in the lounge chair on the veranda. She smacked her lips and breathed her awful morning breath in my face. Beside me was a cart that had not been there when I settled in for the night and on it was a full breakfast for two. It had no doubt been stealthily delivered by the ghost, DeMarcus. I remained still, not because I thought Eigen needed rest, not because I enjoyed her body pressed against me, but because when she awoke she would no doubt talk and whether she would expect me to talk as well didn’t matter, as I simply did not want to listen. Trigo was asleep at my side in the chair, snoring, twitching.

I looked out at the bay and saw a Coast Guard cutter cruise south toward the sea on the Miami Beach side of the island. I imagined it was the same vessel that Sill had claimed to toy with the day before.

Eigen opened her eyes and brought me into focus. “Fat face,” she said. I didn’t know if she was talking to me or Trigo. I then saw that her hand was stroking the dog. “Do my shoes match?”

I looked down to see her bare feet again, realizing as I did that all of her was bare. “You’re wearing no shoes,” I said.

“So, yes,” she said.

“They also match what you’re wearing.”

She looked at herself. “So they do.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Is this awkward?”

“Probably only to other people,” I said. She and I were always awkward; it was our usual status or posture in the world, and so acceding to it, recognizing it of course served to neutralize it, if not negate it.

“How did you sleep?”

“Apparently on my side and naked,” she said.

“What do you want to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Go back to Providence and unpack Fermat’s last theorem for some privileged young people or stay here and be bad?”

“I don’t know.” She sat up. “Look at the food.”