El Nido, at the far end of the main drag, was a concrete motel painted shocking pink and set back slightly from the highway. It was nearly two in the morning when Lupe pulled off the road and into the motel’s gravel parking lot edged by a few weepy-looking palms. Stretching, I started to open the car door.

“Wait here,” Lupe ordered. “I know what I’m doing.” She shimmied off with the hip-swinging walk. The girl was beautiful.

Through a plate-glass window I saw her talking with a bleary-eyed desk clerk. He was young, with carefully oiled hair and an old black suit. The clerk looked out the window at me, shrugged, then turned to get a key from the rack behind him. He dropped the key on the counter.

I got out of the car. I felt sicker than a dog when I was vertical but I didn’t want Lupe to see that. Fixing my hair, pulling in my stomach, I threw my head back and walked grandly into the office.

“We can pay in dollars,” Lupe announced as the door closed behind me.

I only had fifteen bucks with me, but before I could worry more about that, Lupe extracted her wallet from her navy Chanel style purse. The desk clerk, draped intently over a black and white Mexican photo magazine, pushed a registration card toward Lupe without bothering to look up.

“This is a nice place,” I said. On the countertop was a terracotta pot with pink plastic carnations stuck in it. Behind the desk hung a glossy calendar with the traditional Aztec prince and princess humping each other and pretending to be mountains. “A friend of ours stayed here a couple of weeks ago. She said it was nice.”

He glanced at me without much interest. Behind him a television set was tuned to “Dynasty” in English, the volume very low.

“Cathy Vega,” Lupe said.

“Carmen Luzano,” I corrected.

“Sign here.” He took the money from Lupe.

“She’s about this tall.” I held my hand parallel to the ground, level with my nose.

Lupe shoved her hand between me and the desk clerk. “This tall,” she said, her hand vertical. “Don’t do it like that,” she hissed at me. “That’s the way they measure animals in Mexico.”

The desk clerk didn’t seem to notice. “You have any suitcases?”

“No.”

He leered. First at me, then with real lip-smacking zeal at Lupe while he gave her the once-over again. “I don’t remember your friend. We get a lot of people. We have here very much privacy.”

“She’s very pretty,” Lupe cooed in the Marilyn voice. “She’s an actress. Famous. I’m surprised you don’t remember her. She’s on television all the time.”

Cocking his head to one side, the desk clerk wrinkled his forehead for a moment as he searched his memory.