Arnold, a construction worker, slips from his scaffold and safety harness and freefalls five hundred feet into a cement mixer below him. As he falls, he thinks of his lover, Darline, and her son, Paris, whom he loves as his own. Arnold and Darline met on the beach on the morning that Arnold swam to shore as a refugee. They made eye contact as sirens wailed in the distance, and she abruptly took his arm and walked him away from the others to her car. Then she took him to a church shelter housing other refugees. A few days later, she visited him at the shelter and told him about her husband, who died while they were attempting a similar swim; only she and Paris had survived. Darline continued to visit the beach to grieve for her husband and to aid other refugees—of whom Arnold is the eighteenth. They kissed, and Arnold made a paper airplane to give to Paris. His thoughts are disrupted when he hits the cement mixer. He tries to swim in it, as he did in the ocean, but his attempts are futile and his body begins to be torn apart. He realizes gradually that he is dying, and wishes he could see Darline and Paris again. He “visits” Darline at the Haitian restaurant where she works, then “visits” Paris at school. Paris is folding dozens of small paper boats. Neither Darline nor Paris seems to sense Arnold. Meanwhile, the construction site shuts down and the company issues a statement about Arnold’s accident. Arnold dies and moves into what comes after death, fluttering around Darline and Paris.