“Never saw that picture... till... the bar the other day. I’ll kill her.” He gagged and turned away, tears and spit running down his face.

So that was his story. He was watching her apartment waiting for her when I wandered into the picture. He decided to follow me to find out what I knew about her. How long had he been trying to find her? Had he been at the loft downtown? I didn’t believe a thing he said.

“When was the last time you saw her?” I wheezed. I felt dizzy.

“Couple weeks... said she was going outta town... been lookin’... thought she had another guy.”

“Did she?”

“Don’t know... don’t know where she goes... what she does... different since she moved to Hollywood.”

“You don’t know who she’s been hanging out with lately?”

Another coughing spasm shook him. “Said I wouldn’t understand... politics or something.”

“Where’d she go?”

He didn’t answer.

“She went to Guatemala,” I prompted.

“¡Mexico!” he insisted. “Said so.”

“What for? Work? A vacation?”

“People like us don’t go on vacations,” he said bitterly. “Maybe she was fucking her way to Ensenada. The bitch.”

I punched him in the groin. Because I felt like it. For lying to me. For dogging me around. Because he had hurt my arm and nearly shattered my jaw, because he had scared me, because I had rolled in a pile of dog shit and my skirt was ruined. Mostly because I felt like it. “Stop lying. She went there for drugs.” I rolled off him and onto the ground.

Moaning, he tried to pull his legs toward his body. It was a moment before he could speak. “No! She don’t do nothin’ with drugs.”

Grabbing him by his shirt collar, I jerked his tear-stained face toward me. “I saw her with a spike in her arm just a few days ago.”

He slumped on the ground when I let go of him. “Didn’t know how to use one... saw me stick myself... went crazy. Never let her see me again.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You can’t just stick a needle in your arm. You’re a bad mechanic, miss the vein, end up with bruises size of lemons all over your arm.”

“She left you, didn’t she?” I pushed myself to my feet and stood wobbly and breathing hard.

“...girl used to love me....”

My eyes were watering, and he was blurry. I looked down at him, and felt half crazy with the desire to kick him in the nuts one more time. But I didn’t. “Then you ended up in jail again.”

He was crying.

Either he was lying to me or there was a lot he didn’t know about his former girlfriend. I felt sick all of a sudden. Dizzy.