He shrugged. “Two years ago, I ran away from my uncle’s house in Bratsk, in Irkutsk. I struck out across country, thinking that I would join the road far from anyplace where I would be known as my uncle’s nephew, and beg a ride west. I did not know where I was going, except that I was going away from Bratsk. I became lost, of course. I was two days in the woods without food, and very cold, when I came out of the trees to find myself on the banks of Lake Baikal. Its closest part is more than four hundred and fifty kilometers east of Bratsk. I could not have walked so far in two days. But there it was, the great lake like oil in the darkness, and on the shore far to my left a city, shining with lights and strange towers like none I had seen in pictures of Moscow or St. Petersburg. I walked toward it, and at last entered it, hungry and tired, and it was Bordertown.

“In these two years, I have not seen Lake Baikal again. But I think that is because I have not wanted to.”

I’d never seen Bordertown’s ocean; but then, I’m an inland kind of guy. “Why Mexican food?” I asked at last.

“I like it best.”

The only sensible reason, now that I thought about it. I thanked him and finished my taco as I walked.

I had no idea what I wanted anymore. For a moment I wondered what Sunny Rico wanted, what she hoped I’d decide. I would almost have gone back to ask her, except for a nagging feeling that it would be embarrassing, and that it would bother me more to be embarrassed in front of Rico than in front of most other people. And what had she meant about her father, anyway? That he’d been an inept cop? That he’d died at it, maybe? Surely that would warn his offspring away more than anything else.

The problem was, my head was too full. I decided to walk back to Tick-Tick’s and see how she was, and run some of this by her.

When I hollered under her window and nothing happened, I didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved. She was inside delirious with fever; she felt so much better that she’d gone out. I hollered again.

This time she stuck her head out. She smiled at me, but it was a tired smile. “What, you again?”

“I think so. Which makes two of us.”

“C’mon up.” She pulled the ring that unlatched the front door.