Summary

According to the narrator, for all Alex’s generosity, drive, and vision, he is also arrogant with a cynical, condescending attitude towards the working-classes shown in unwillingness to tip the servers in the nightspots they frequent, which irritates the conscientious narrator. Alex’s ambition is to be the Dominican version in the great Latin-American documentary photographer and he believes earnest in the photographer’s potential to change everything, which the narrator admires as well. Although the narrator’s writerly ambitions are paltry next to Alex’s grandiosity, the narrator collaborates on projects with Alex, contributing text for photo captions and suggesting the title “The Last Shore” for Alex’s record of the island’s vanishing beaches.

Although the narrator does not share Alex’s artistic ambitions, his dreams of getting together with Mysty are equally sizable. The narrator recalls Mysty’s beauty and...