At three in the morning, Santo dropped his last customer home from a night of dancing at El Volcàn. Every night since his father‘s arrival, his shifts in the taxi seemed longer. Eight long months.

—You should‘ve been there, man. Ahí estaba Fernandito doing his shit. The walls were sweating, it was so good, his passenger said as he stumbled out of the car and kissed his girlfriend. From the length of their kiss, Santo could tell they had recently met each other. She giggled after each of his sentences. She squealed as he pulled her into the building.

Nights like that, Santo felt an extra pang to return to Los Llanos. To go back to a time when music blared from radios even when the stars were out and it didn‘t cost him a day‘s wage to take his wife out to a club with live music. He stepped out of the car to stretch his legs and smoke a cigarette before he headed home. Esperanza didn‘t know he was smoking again. Santo lit up and looked around the quiet street of Los Desamparados, which was nothing like the loud and busy street of Quepasó. His father was right. What were they doing living in the freezing weather? Santo tossed the cigarette to the stacks of garbage bags on the side street. He heard the ting of a piano. He opened the door of his car and the sound went off again in the desolate streets. When he stayed still, it was silent. When he moved, he heard music.

He looked up at the building windows. Some insomniac was playing a joke on him. There could be no other explanation. There were no lights on except for a lone kitchen window. He laughed out loud and waved his hands to all the dark windows, at the joker who was playing tricks on him.

He opened the car door again and noticed the heavy wooden legs and three thick planks of wood patched up together like a lopsided dining table. Anyone passing by would‘ve assumed it was broken, but Santo had an eye for these things because he had been to many thrift shops looking for one in case he won the Dominican lottery. Any Sunday, he was planning to hit the numbers with Dallas‘s birthday date.

The table was a sealed piano. Inside it he was sure to find keys and strings. He tried to budge it out from under the garbage bags. It had been a slow night. He was hungry, tired, he must‘ve been hearing things. He wiped his eyes. He searched for a witness.

When he pulled it out from under the garbage, and positioned it in the middle of the sidewalk, it looked out of place. The piano was out of its element, like Santo felt out of his element. —Who threw you out? he asked as he slid his fingers on the aging wood and played on the keys that had once been there. The streets were very quiet that night. Not a single car came by. When Santo tapped his fingers against the dark and damp wood, he was serenaded with a selection of random melancholic notes.