The old man sat up, sweating, peering into the dark for something familiar. He’d just seen the end.

Like anyone else who moves around the city and pays attention, I had often seen, and pitied, those figures, sunburnt and disheveled, who stand at intersections, outside of gas stations, and in grocery store parking lots begging for help, telling stories of falling on hard times, extending cardboard signs with handwritten messages such as “anything helps” or “God bless.”

While we played dominoes, the parrot sat in his cage on the side of the house near the kitchen.

Standing at the pool’s edge, my feet burning a bit against the concrete, I looked down into the water, clear and chlorinated—a perfect chemical light blue—and watched it gently ripple while I waited for my mother, who was sitting with my aunt under a pavilion close by.

When I was much younger I worked at the Arby’s in my hometown and I can remember closing at night when everything was shutting down, the highway empty, the whole main stretch deserted and quiet—peaceful.