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—American time, si?

—Yeah.

—OK.

I help him dump the water from the ice tub and offer him a ride in the Willys. He declines and pedals off on the tricycle. I drive over to my bungalow. I take my groceries, the tape gun, and the cardboard box inside. Bud is restless and darts around the room when I come in. I can see a little pile of cat poop in the middle of the room. He never does that.

—Not getting enough attention these days, guy?

He looks at me like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, which I suppose is literally true, but he knows, he always fucking knows. I clean up the crap, open a can of cat food, and sit on the floor next to him while he eats.

—Better?

He makes a little rumble in his throat that I interpret as a yes, so I flip on the boom box and put in Wish You Were Here. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” starts playing and I get to work.

Out to the back porch. I open the footlocker and grab the shovel. It’s developed a thin sheen of rust, like many of my tools. I should really keep them oiled, but I like the rust. It reminds me of old farm equipment piled in the yards of houses on the outskirts of my hometown.

Home.

I push that thought back down. Soon, but not yet, I can think about home.

I go back in, drop the shutters, and drag the bed into the middle of the room. I put a candle on the floor and feel around for the crack between the tiles.

WE HAD a great time building The Bucket and my bungalow, me and Pedro and Leo and a couple of their cousins. We hung out on the beach, working hard in the morning, taking a nice long siesta, then more work, then kicking a soccer ball around for an hour or two while the sun went down. Then everyone else would head home and I’d camp out to keep an eye on the tools and materials.

The Bucket was a breeze. We dug the holes for the pilings by hand, sank them, buried them, and built the roof frame. Then we built a box frame for the squared horseshoe of the bar, faced it, and anchored it to some four-by-fours we also sank in the sand. And that’s about all you want to do for a beach bar because the whole thing is gonna blow away every few years when a hurricane blasts through. The bungalow was a bit more involved. We hired a guy with a Cat to come down and drill our piling holes extra deep, framed the roof and floor, nailed plywood over the floor, and planked the walls. Then the pros came in.

The pros were three brothers, their father and grandfather, and about ten of their little kids. These are the guys who do the palm thatching. They came in, took one look at the roofs we’d framed, tore them apart, and put them back together. Then they spent two days walking around up there, bundling and tying palm fronds together in such a way that a trapeze artist could drop on them from five stories and wouldn’t break through. It was cool. The plumbing and sewage guys came during the next week and put in the water tank, toilet, sink, shower, and septic tank. And all that was left was the tiling, which I did myself.

I FIND the crack.

I keep a flat, stainless steel bottle opener on my keychain, but I don’t use it for opening bottles. It’s there for one purpose only, and this is its first time doing the job. I slip it into the crack, flex it, and pull slowly upward. The edge of a square of tile and plywood lifts away. I wedge my toe against it before it can fall back. I drop the bottle opener, get a fingertip grip on the panel, lift it up, and set it off to the side. Now comes the fun part: standing in a space not quite a yard square and shoveling sand in the dark.

I first dug this hole on one of the nights I spent alone on the beach. We’d staked out the frame for the bungalow, but hadn’t started building it yet. I picked the spot where I planned to put the bed, dug a hole, and got a big box from the bed of the Willys. Then I lowered it into the hole and filled it in. After the bungalow was done, I built the secret panel into the floor. Of course, I didn’t realize then that when the time came to dig out the box I’d be doubled over with my back in knots, rapping my knuckles