Of course, there was never any mention of the fact that The Well-Known Desert Diner and Walt himself lived on 117. He was the King of 117 and the Emperor of Solitude, a man apart in ways even I couldn’t understand—and maybe in a desert of losers, depending on what was lost, he was the undisputed champion.

Once I got Belle’s car seat belted back into place I motioned for Juan and the dog to climb inside the cab. The dog complied. Juan pointed to his crotch. Clear enough. He had to pee. The way the morning had gone so far had cut down on my usual coffee consumption but I still needed to water the desert myself. I walked across the empty highway and motioned to Juan and the dog to follow.

The dog sniffed at a scrub juniper and then got down to business. Juan looked up at me and then at the dog and pulled down his jeans while I made a note to myself to find him a coat or a sweater somewhere. Though I was standing several feet from Juan I respectfully turned away and began to unbuckle while I enjoyed the southern vista.

It was the first time I had heard the dog make any sound and the two sharp barks echoed across the desert floor. Juan was squatting and my first thought was that I had misunderstood what he had meant. The dog barked again and the pee began to cascade to the frozen ground in a cloud of steam. What was happening still took a moment to register. When it did I instinctively averted my eyes—Juan was a little girl. Juan was a little girl? I didn’t know much about women and even less about little girls, but I knew enough to run across the road to the truck to grab some toilet tissue. I handed it to her with my head turned. Not much had changed, and I felt as if everything had changed.

I didn’t know how long she had been holding it. Judging from the steady stream I heard it had to have been quite a while. Babysitting a little boy was one thing and somehow babysitting a little girl, the daughter of a stranger, was something else entirely. Maybe women felt the same way. I didn’t know.

She brought me the roll of toilet paper and held out the damp piece between her thumb and forefinger in an almost ladylike gesture. I scuffed up a little hole in the gravel and after she dropped in the used tissue, I covered it over while she watched.

Lowering myself on one knee, I softly asked her name. The dog was sitting next to her, his head almost even with hers. Maybe this was all news to him as well, though I couldn’t imagine why. She didn’t answer and simply turned her large dark eyes out toward the desert.

She began walking at a fast pace down the rutted trail, a shortcut that led to the graves and the model home. The dog did not follow her. She was sure-footed and quick and gathered speed until it was almost a run, each step taken with purpose as if she had made the hike all her life and knew exactly where she was headed, which of course she couldn’t have. There was nothing down that way but a dead dream and forty years of memories that had nothing to do with her.

In a few strides I caught up to her and gently lifted her into my arms and carried her back up the trail and across 117 to the truck.

I knew damn well I hadn’t misread Pedro’s note—it had said “son.” Juan—a boy’s name. And now I was well down a road in the middle of nowhere on my way to no place with a little girl. Pedro had said “bad trouble” and I couldn’t begin to imagine the level of shitstorm it would take to leave your little daughter alone in the hands of a stranger—a male stranger at that.