“All our phone numbers are on the map. Marlin should be here in a few days.” He anchored a piece of paper, a hand-drawn map, with three spools of tape: one duct, one electrical, one masking. “You’ll probably want these for the house, anyway. Put them on my doorstep when you’re done.”

“Which house is yours?” I asked.

“I’m in the black one,” he said gruffly.

“And…where’s the studio?”

“Uhhh…you can use the old barn. It’s…picturesque. I’m sure you’ll figure out how to make it work.”

He took the map and scratched an X on it.

“There,” he said, pointing to the X and lighting another cigarette. “That’s the barn. Fill out the form if you need anything else and put it in the box. We only have one rule here: We never go in each other’s studios. We don’t interfere in each other’s work. We won’t go into your space, and you don’t go into ours. Cool?”

“Cool,” I said, too agreeably, shifting my weight back and forth from foot to foot, an active lie, because all I had fantasized for the past decade was hanging out in Tyler’s studio while he lit things on fire.

“Um, is there wifi?”

Tyler frowned. “Never,” he said. “There’s no cellphone service, there’s no internet and no TV. There’s a VHS connected to a projector in the Mission, if you want to watch something, and a lot of books. Read whatever you want. Put it back when you’re done, and don’t dog-ear.”

“Great,” I said, trying to seem cool, like it wasn’t a problem, like I wasn’t disappointed by how gruff and rude he was, how empty this place was, how unwelcome I felt. I walked back out to my truck, pulled out the studio boombox and a huge paper bag of cassette tapes I picked up at the Goodwill, and brought them inside. A Neil Young tape fell to the floor by accident, and he picked it up and handed it back to me with a smile—not a lot, no teeth or anything, but it was enough.

“The landlines all work. The number is on the phone. There’s packaged food in the restaurant. You’re welcome to it if you haven’t gone to the grocery store,” he said as he reached for his car door. A fat beetle flew past his head, buzzing loudly. He didn’t flinch. “Fix your meals there anytime. I have to get going.”

I tried to keep the desperate panic from my voice. “You’re not staying here tonight?” (I did not succeed.)

“No—” he said, squinting at me with suspicion. “It’s the Biennale?”

“Oh, right,” I said, embarrassed. Venice. “I’m not paying attention to anything right now,” I tried to explain.