- Marcelo and Aurora get home, and Arturo's outside grilling steaks. Marcelo hopes to avoid him, but no dice. Arturo wants to talk.
- Here's the gist of Arturo's proposal: give up the job at the stable, go to work in the mail room of Arturo's law firm for the summer, and if Marcelo succeeds in "the real world," he can choose whether to go to Paterson or Oak Ridge in the fall.
- Marcelo's question is obvious: what does it take to succeed, and who determines whether or not he's done so?
- Arturo, of course. Duh.
- Marcelo wishes people could just understand how he thinks instead of always trying to get him to think like them, but Arturo's the king of not understanding.
- He's all about the rules.
- Marcelo takes his dog Namu and heads for the tree house where he sleeps. We're thinking it's pretty cool to sleep in a tree house, but guess who disagrees? Arturo.
- Marcelo is, he says, getting too old to sleep in a tree house—as if there is such a thing.