I had never shoveled mud before. Snow? Yes. But tropical mud was heavier, stickier, and smelled of rot.

I was shin-deep in sludge at the corner of Calle Sanchez and Padre Billini.

"Heave!"

I lifted a shovel full of wet debris—leaves, plastic bottles, silt—and tossed it into the back of a pickup truck.

Next to me, a guy named Mateo was working. I recognized him from the club. The dancer. He moved with the same efficiency he used on the dance floor—rhythmic, powerful.

"You're slowing down, Architect," Mateo taunted, not looking at me. "Too much air conditioning makes the blood thin."

"I'm pacing myself," I grunted, digging the shovel back in. "It's a marathon, not a sprint."

"It's a mess," Mateo corrected.

We worked in silence for another ten minutes. The sun was blazing now. Sweat was running into my eyes.

The neighborhood was out in force. Old men were sweeping their stoops. Kids were dragging branches. Women were hosing down the sidewalks. It wasn't organized, but it was synchronized. Unión.

"Break!"

I looked up. Sofía was walking toward us, holding a plastic pitcher and a stack of cups. She was wearing shorts and flip-flops, picking her way carefully through the clean patches of sidewalk.

She poured water. She served Mateo first, then an older man named Don Hector.

Then she came to me.

I wiped my muddy hands on my jeans, making them worse.

"Thanks," I said, taking the cup.

Sofía watched me drink. She reached out and brushed a spot of mud off my cheek with her thumb. The gesture was so casual, so intimate, that I saw Mateo stiffen out of the corner of my eye.

"You look like a disaster, Max," she whispered.

"I feel like a bulldozer ran over me," I admitted.

"The wife is calling," she said, her voice dropping. "Yulissa saw the news. The airport is reopening at noon. The VIP flights will be the first ones out."

The mention of Cata was like a cloud passing over the sun.

"I'm not going back to the hotel," I said.

Sofía froze. "Max. You have to. You have a flight."

"I have a shovel," I said, looking at the half-cleared drain. "Job isn't done."

"Max," she warned. "Don't play games. This isn't your neighborhood."

"Hey, Gringo!" Don Hector shouted, banging his shovel on the pavement. "Less flirting, more digging! That tree trunk is heavy!"

I chugged the water and handed the cup back to Sofía.

"Duty calls," I said.

I turned back to the mud. I grabbed the heavy end of a fallen palm trunk. Mateo grabbed the other end.

"On three," Mateo grunted. "Don't drop it on my foot, or I will sue you."

"I have good lawyers," I lied.

We lifted.

As we heaved the tree into the truck, I felt a vibration in my pocket.

I let it ring.