(remember me?)”

He had closed up the trailer in two days.

Inside the bungalow the Italian girl was having a bad time. The mescal willies. She turned and threw her arms up in a mescal dream. It made you feel like you were falling through water where there wasn’t any bottom to reach. She called out, “Please don’t get in bed with me, will you please not, please.” He wondered if she was dreaming about him or about the boy with his eye thumbed out or about somebody even worse.

He watched another truck wind down the American Highway, let his eyes widen in the darkness. He’d be happy once Rae came back and they could get out. That was all he cared about now. The fights hadn’t made him feel lucky, but they hadn’t bummed anything either, and that was acceptable. It could be worse. He heard dogs barking down in the Reforma. A bitch was in heat, and all the other dogs were enjoying it.

He walked back inside. The Italian girl was sitting in bed in the dark, smoking a cigarette.

“I don’t know why I came up here with you,” she said. She was angry, and she was getting ready to split. He sat on the wooden chair and wondered how she’d get back down the hill to town. “You meet a lot of people traveling,” she said coldly. “People you wouldn’t think of passing time with somewhere else.” She blew more smoke into the air and watched him in the dark. She seemed sorry about a lot of things all at once. “I sucked you off, right?” she said. “And I don’t even know your name.”

“Harry Quinn,” he said. He tried to think of a funny name, but couldn’t come up with one funny enough. It didn’t make any difference. She was just a bimbo, and she knew it, and she was pissed about it. He couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t had first-rate treatment.

“You could be a policeman, you know,” she said. “I’m smuggling fucking ludes and crossroads and you could bust me, and where would I be?”

“Looking at you, you’d probably still be right here,” Quinn said. He wanted to give her her due, but he didn’t want to be up all night sympathizing. He knew he should’ve gotten her out before she went to sleep.

“That’s the problem for foreigners in a strange country,” she said.

“What’s that?” he said.

“A frame of reference,” she said. “You lack a frame of reference that allows you to take the right mental picture. I’d never know if you were a fucking federate until it was too late. You could be a federate for all I know, and I’d be in the prisión with all the other assholes.” She mashed the cigarette out on the wall behind her.