When he came home, Heather was on the couch in the living room with a face made sour from hours of rage. “My daddy’s coming,” was the first thing she said. “This place is a dump.”

“Kitchen?” he asked.

“Wet. Bucket on the table.”

“I do that.”

“I saw Linda.”

He turned around. “Linda Ricco?” he asked.

“She’s calling somebody she knows at Customs.”

“Customs?”

“Yes. Customs.”

“Rafik home soon,” he said in jackass English, storing Customs for later.

He walked into the kitchen. The blue bucket was overflowing on the table. A sheen of plaster-flecked water covered the floor and was fingering into the hallway. Kus tums, kus tums, played in his mind, set to the last song in the club. The illuminated face of the Djara in the Saudi’s hand flicked into the back of his head, making the pulling of all the sheets from his bed into rote. Kus tum kus tum kus tum. He played the scene in which they were introduced, and the Djara asked, So what do you do? and he said, I am a gas station attendant. Kha sim ta mim. Kha sim ta mim. No, a painter; he could say that, he had been one. A painter is similar to construction. He threw the sheets on the kitchen floor. They were transparent in an instant, their effect on the water invisible.

He redid the meeting in the club, with Yes, I am in construction. He saw her face dull. Construction management, he revised. He went into the bathroom and started gathering towels. He could not possibly get away with management past one conversation. On the floor the towels went, and he stepped on them and skated them around some. That was all he wanted. One conversation with her, and done. If he held himself to one conversation, she would not know how little English he spoke, where he lived, what he did, how he had come, why he had come, and why he stayed. He stopped pushing the towels. They would dance. Nothing was asked for in such a thing as a dance. One conversation and one dance. Kha sim ta mim rocked in him.

He looked up at the ceiling, exalted. A widening brown and gold aurora now reached to the refrigerator. He followed its markings and saw that one wall was wrinkling, like the skin on a child’s fingers during a long bath. On the wall were framed pictures of poetry with waterfalls and bears. He had never looked at these before. Could Heather have just put them up today? He looked closely—one of them was bubbled. He pulled it from the wall and saw its brown paper backing was pocked with wet. He took all of them down and carried them into Heather and Rafik’s room.