The Visitor wore black jeans and plaid shirts with worn elbows and sunglasses, even in the rain. He was hairier than I remembered, and he was even more hirsute by midnight, but I believe he plans to get a hot towel shave from the bald neatly stylish barber from around the corner. Later someone told him that he looked like a monster from Fraggle Rock.

The Visitor brought four boxes of mac and cheese, a packet of dried mango slices, and a North American bird book, from which an illustration of a falcon had been carefully cut out. He brought his accent from Northern California, a slow considerate metallic drawl that reminded me of too many things.

Hummingbirds, donut shops, sour dough bread. Tacos accompanied by small plastic tubs of beets and pickled jalapenos. Illegal races at the port. A ferny extinct volcano. Vultures or hawks suspended above multiple-lane freeways. Beautiful bare-armed Berkeley girls. Abandoned factories. Peaches juicing chins.

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