These paintings have had a better time of it than I have, here in this air-conditioned gallery, admired and taken care of, Argenis thought as they went back up the stairs to the first floor, where the exhibit space was located. Pieces of skateboards, used tires, broken trucks, and bits of boards rested on little white shelves, the ready-mades of a Puerto Rican artist’s first solo exhibition in the DR. On the back wall a video was being projected: a skateboarder was stitching up a wound in his own knee. The curved needle looked like a fishhook and the skin appeared dark-green from the blow. The guy pushed the needle in without a fuss.

Behind an opaque glass wall was the office. They sat in there and Giorgio pulled a bottle of Albariño out of a mini-fridge. Argenis made a mental inventory of the furniture, the Swedish desks, the Philippe Starck lamps, the shelves full of Phaidon and Taschen volumes, art magazines and critical theory organized by the color of their spines. Not a speck of dust sullied the white walls. He imagined a performance art piece with the woman who cleaned the gallery, the one who was really responsible for that immaculate space.

“That seems fine,” Argenis told Linda, regarding the price, “but I’ll need an advance.” She looked surprised and shot a glance at her husband so quick it just about broke her neck.

“How much do you need?” asked Giorgio.

Argenis made a rough calculation. There were six pieces and they would keep 50 percent. Thirty thousand and thirty thousand. “I need eight thousand dollars,” he asked, worrying that he’d gone too far. Linda breathed a sigh of relief and opened the desk drawer to remove a checkbook. Argenis regretted having asked for so little, although he’d never before seen such a sum next to his name.

He saw himself breaking down Rambo’s door, convincing him to get him a thousand dollars of H. He’d take that heroin wisely, over a few months. He’d rent an apartment in front of the Mirador where he could shoot up, and he’d buy a stereo. Maybe he’d paint. Maybe he’d buy a TV and a DVD player. A computer. He imagined himself putting the needle in while lying on the sofa he’d buy too, beatified by the light of the sunset, his father’s lobsters thermidor crawling toward him from all over.

When Susana and he had been dreaming about the life the 500 dollars Bengoa got from José Alfredo was going to buy them, she told him they’d eat lobster every day. He was allergic, Argenis reminded her, and she kissed him on the mouth as if her kisses were antihistamine. He concentrated on looking at Linda’s ass to avoid thinking of Susana and Bengoa fucking on the sofa. Giorgio poured three glasses of the Albariño and toasted the beginning of a new stage in Argenis’s life. Argenis drank it in one gulp, pulled the check from his pocket, and kissed both Linda and Giorgio. He pushed open the door of the gallery with his back, looking at the check he held in both hands, and before leaving, he lied to them: “Papi’s on it already.” He hadn’t spoken to his father, nor was he going to. He wasn’t going to Rambo’s, either.