The narrator’s father has commissioned a modern house in the new part of town. The narrator visits the construction site every day after school and plays on the scaffolding. He compares his memory of the unfinished house to a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti called “The Palace at 4 A.M.” and includes a lengthy quote from the artist about the sculpture’s creation.

The narrator relates a memory of seeing snow falling through the unfinished attic. But he immediately questions the veracity of the memory. He asserts that memory is really a form of storytelling and that in talking about the past we necessarily tell lies.

One day, while playing on the scaffolding, he sees Cletus Smith standing in the unfinished house and invites him to come up and play. They start meeting there every day after school.

The narrator is a thin, bookish boy who doesn’t like sports. Older boys at school pick on him. A friend of his mother invites him over for a weekend to play with her son. The boys are near in age but much different in personality. The slightly older boy is everything the narrator would like to be.