All he can remember of his childhood is a dart board, coloured yellow and red, geometric and beer-smelling. He remembers a cigarette burn on the sole of his doughy white infant foot. It was before his feet were even useful for anything other than pacifying his hot gums, his red, infuriated gums. So he remembers his infancy. The crisscrossing and miraculous depth-travel of stripes in the wallpaper, the way his eyes wandered in the pattern. Later he’ll think of how a heat-mirage influences the eyes to think the road has liquefied.