He thinks about his Russians, his agents of efficiency and order, who are currently working on a project for another developer. He misses them. They just wrapped the flour mill project a week ago, and already he misses them. He misses their sharp staccato conversations, their sublingual grunts, their smell of oniony sweat. They are remaking an old generic family chain restaurant (orange and brown) into a new generic family chain restaurant (brown and orange.) He contemplates going out to the job site the next day and visiting them. But the idea depresses him. The building they are working on has no life, no spark. He longs for the thrill of performing surgery on a kicking patient, not slogging through the dissection of a corpse.

Depressed, he leaves the restaurant, its zinc bar and gerbera daisies, and rides the elevator down to the street. The valet brings him the green Lexus and he turns on the adult contemporary rock. Loud.

It doesn’t help.

Later, lying on a dirty mattress and drinking vodka from a bottle, Ryan will dream of this night. He will dream of the wind rushing through his hair like warm fingers, of the ceaseless rhythm of crickets blowing past, of the smell of leather seats covered with dew. For this is the night that he finds her.

You will remake me, he whispers into her lap.

But that is later.

This night, he drives through the town, tapping a finger against his steering wheel, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He drives past many of his buildings, hoping that one will call out to him, invite him back, but none of them do. So he drives into an ugly part of town, a dangerous part of town, a part of town that wasn’t safe or savory even during its best years.

He drives until pink and gold dawn fingers the hills, until he begins to think that he should go somewhere, to an actual destination. To his fiancée’s home. She has bleached-oak floors in her entryway. She will serve him herbal tea with a shortbread cookie.