In the back, under a mosquito lamp, a drunk American was singing karaoke. He looked about fifty, with a close-cropped military haircut and wide, unblinking eyes. Probably a former Marine stationed down here in the eighties who transferred to the mercenary racket or just stayed on after his tour was up. Not that uncommon. Ethan knew the type from his previous trips to Copal. A shabby gringo pervert fleeing to Spanish-speaking countries without speaking a word of Spanish.

A few Indians and two off-duty border guards sat at the tables between them. They kept their backs to the American and stared out through the door and didn’t speak. For a moment after the song ended the sounds of night swept into the bar: tree frogs and an owl screech, a distant radio, everything thickening into a warm tropical hush.

Ethan pressed his beer to his face. If his luck held, the Marine wouldn’t come talk to him. He’d make it through the night here and catch the first bus in the morning. Maybe he’d find the girl before the others did. He couldn’t imagine his luck stretching any further than that.

“Hey, partner,” said the Marine, sitting opposite him suddenly. “You look like a friend of mine.”

“I’m friendly,” Ethan said. “But that’s not quite the same thing.”

The Marine ran his hand back and forth over his scalp with increasing urgency. He shook his head from side to side as he did it.

“I don’t know about that attitude, brother. Down here, that is not a way to be.”

“I’m just passing through,” Ethan said.

“That’s how it is. No one stays. It can get lonely if you’re a civilized man.”

“And are you?” Ethan asked.

“Let me tell you this,” the Marine said. “I am the fucking foundation of the civilized world. Do you know why? I am a man in his natural habitat and I live accordingly.”

His weepy, twitching eyes appeared bright and gelatinous. Like something you’d find at the bottom of the sea. Ethan raised and drank from his beer. He knew this kind of lucidity trembled on the other side of fever. The mind spiraling down into weird particulars.

Again he said, “I’m just passing through.”

“Well this is as good a crossroads as any. Where you headed?”

“Copal.”

“Shit,” the Marine said. “Best wait until morning. And even then, vaya con Dios, brother.”

About this the Marine was right: in every way the situation surpassed Ethan’s capabilities, and he cherished it for that—a simple, terrifying truth against which the past, his whole life till now, lost dimension, warped away like an image reflected in a passing car window.