The B. Dalton’s is a sad excuse for a bookstore, the shelves filled with celebrity bios and true crime. Even the air is second-rate — unrefrigerated, humidity-heavy, the one lone employee standing behind the counter panting like a dog in a wife beater. Dúc runs his finger along a shelf on his way to the magazines. Something in the way his hand lingers among the books’ spines — already you can see he’s taking leave of this day, wanting to remember everything about it — the heaviness of the bags in his arms, the feeling of unfettered control, of walking around a free man among free men.

Unsurprisingly the store is empty, giant fans revving in the aisles. Eventually you find yourself in the tiny photography section, a stack of haute couture fashion books knee-high. When you see it, the thing you were hoping against hope to find, you can’t believe your luck. At the register, you ask the sweating boy to giftwrap it and he does, the paper patterned with a sepia map of ancient lands, the whole known world unsuffering and flat, simple. Something in the way his hand lingers among the books’ spines — already you can see he’s taking leave of this day, wanting to remember everything about it — the heaviness of the bags in his arms, the feeling of unfettered control, of walking around a free man among free men. Later in front of his dorm, as you’re helping Dúc unload, you’ll slip this gift into one of his bags, and in ten days he’ll pack it in his new taxi-yellow suitcase along with everything else. Though you won’t know how it happens, in two weeks, as his friends and family are gathered for dinner at 217 Pho Cua Dong to celebrate his return, after it’s all been handed out — the clothes, the dishes, the lavender body cream, the electronics, everything, he’ll finally see this faded map of the world, notice the small green gift card that says for Dúc, Chúc em tram nam hanh phúc (I wish you one hundred years of happiness). All night long half a world away they’ll sit and study the pictures of a people poor but proud, James Agee’s Depression-era classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, how the photo of the woman and her seven children in their one-room shack will come to haunt Dúc’s ninety-three year old bà, something in the mother’s eyes a look the grandmother has known herself, all night long Dúc translating the text perfectly, retelling the story of an America of have-nots, all night long at 217 Pho Cua Dong, people will see people like themselves beat down but dreaming.

The next day it takes you more than five hours including driving to return it all.