The kid couldn’t have gone far, because he was back already with a bottle of Cuervo and a white saucer with a mound of salt and some sliced lemons. Closing the register, I followed Lupe down the hall to our room, which fronted on the highway. A pale wood dresser with an aqua ceramic lamp and mirror stood opposite the queen size bed. I lay down and put a pillow carefully behind my head. A panel of white moved across the curtains as a car went by with a whooshing sound. Lupe fluffed the other pillow, folded it in half and plopped down with it behind her head. I smelled the rose perfume as she settled near me. She cracked the seal on the tequila and took a drink before handing it to me.

“What did you think of Tommy Hutchings?” I asked, staring at the ceiling, tequila dribbling down my chin.

She shrugged and kicked off her shoes. “He’s no ladies’ man. Too big, too awkward. Intense. The kind who looks but hangs back.” She licked the back of her hand, put salt on it and sucked a lemon before taking another slug of tequila. “Probably whacks off while reading Marx,” she said, passing the bottle back to me as I stared at her, amazed she knew anything about the Big Man.

It tasted like lighter fluid, but I didn’t care. I fixed the salt and lemon as I’d seen her do. I took another drink and another. It made me stop thinking about my throbbing head. The bottle was nearly a third empty before I remembered to offer it to her again. She waved it away.

Cactus juice flowing in me, feeling hollow to the core, feeling light-headed, I wanted to tell Lupe everything I could remember. I told her about Monica Fullbright’s apartment, I told her about Rudy Sancerre, the agency, the acting coach. I told her about the thousand dollars. The flowers that grew in the backyard of my house in Virginia. The cocker spaniel I had owned. I told her about my father. I kept drinking tequila while she watched me in silence. I think I told her about the girl from the University of Maryland.

The saucer of salt spilled onto the pink chenille bedspread between us.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Lupe?”

I sat up. Sunlight was already streaming through a crack in the curtains. Reflected in the mirror, I saw myself: tan, hair bleached nearly platinum by the sun in a frizzy halo around my head, blue eyes, a badly wrinkled white linen skirt.

“Lupe?”

I swung my feet to the apricot-colored carpeting. My head hurt. I stood up carefully, feeling a sudden wave of nausea and vertigo. Lupe’s clothes were not on the wooden dresser. The door to the bathroom was partially closed. I knocked.

“Lupe?”