I would say to myself that Raf kept me strung so tight I sometimes believed I felt the earth turning under my shoe soles. This is no gift that he brings, I would say, and remember how he came at me in bed—with such heat—as if each chance were our last on the very last night of the world. Every time with Raf, I would think—before he chased the thought away—“This is so scary!”

He had begun to disappear that spring just as the landscape was softening after the violence of Boston winter; just as green and gold and a little warmth were coming through the window screens. He’d be gone a week, ten days. Then he’d be back, and he’d have new scars, new stories, no excuses.

As Raymond got his car together, the Cielito’s glimmering side wall kept me upright. I was dropping, though. I felt brain-cooked.

My thoughts landed on: “This is just a place.”

The year before I had spent summer break in Cameroon. My dad, Mario, took me. He was a sculptor and he wanted to see Bamileke and Zambeze art and what architecture remained. Cameroon was hotter than Houston, and wetter, but I came to regard it as just a place. Houston was just a place.

Raymond pulled up now in his convertible, a broad old top down, the clear-green color of a frog pond. All over the sides were furry spray-painted scribbles and scrawls: “JURA!” and “LOS NINOS,” and twice in script, “LUISA.”

“It’s a beaner-mobile,” Raymond said. “I use it to drive to work. Nobody’s gonna steal it. I work construction. Doors are broke so when I say ‘Hop in . . .’ ”

Riding along, head lolling back, my eyes caught the rim of the sun there, visibly beaming red hydrogen light.

We drove up Bienvenida Boulevard. There were pudgy short palm trees with fronds bowing from their tops.

We passed a baked-clay building marked EL ESTUDIO ESCUELOS CANTOS; next a fence of three hundred hubcaps; now Southwest Texas College’s Beam Particles Laboratory, all buff and square.

Ahead, huge cloud forms were piled up and the sky shone the same bluejay blue as the Houston squad car riding with us, driver’s side.

“I really appreciate this!” I shouted at Raymond.

He glanced at me, jimmied the gear stick to neutral. We idled at a railroad crossing while a Union Pacific switcher shunted some fifty tanker cars past.

“It’s fun, riding in a convertible,” I said.

“This day should be over, though,” Raymond said.

My head bobbed yes, but I was a little hurt he thought that.