I swatted at the fly that kept taunting my slow reflexes and thought about what Pepper had told me—and I had to admit I was now more curious than ever to see the island.

“Pretty cool, Peps,” I said. “Sounds like you have one hell of a documentary on your hands.”

“I agree, Jack. I think it will be my best one yet. And with the way Solano died recently, it all just comes together.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How did he die?

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“You only told me he died, which is why we’re able to trespass on his island.”

Pepper folded his hands on the table and leaned forward conspiratorially. “He drowned in the same spot where he found the girl’s body, fifty years to the day.”

“Bullshit!” I said.

“It’s true, Jack.”

“What did the police say?”

“They couldn’t determine anything. Solano had been dead for too long. The fish and salamanders got to him long before they did.”

5

I dreamed I was in a gondola with Pita. Not in Xochimimco. Maybe Venice, though I had never been to Venice before. It was dusk, what daylight remained was washed out, otherworldly. A mishmash of old buildings decorated with friezes and columns and broken pediments lined the banks of the wide canal, though they all seemed deserted.

I had the sense we had been in the gondola for a very long time, hours, days even. Pita kept telling me we were almost there, and by “there” she meant heaven. She was excited to see her younger sister, Susana, who’d died when she was five years old. Susana and Pita had been playing hide-and-seek with some other neighborhood kids. Susana climbed into the fountain out front their house and drowned in the shallow water.

Pita never talked to me about Susana. She’d mentioned her when we first began dating, but that was it. Now, however, she seemed more than happy to talk about her sister, and she began listing off all the things they were going to do when they were reunited. When I mentioned that Susana might still be five years old—how do you age if you stop existing?—Pita went quiet, contemplative.

I was grateful for the reprieve. I had enough on my own mind. Specifically, I was worried I wouldn’t be allowed into heaven because I was an atheist. I kept wondering what I would do if Pita got in and I didn’t. She would probably tell me it was my fault for not believing in God. She would do the whole I-told-you-so routine. She would leave me there, outside the gates, on my own. And that’s the last thing I wanted: to be stuck by myself in limbo, if that’s where we were right then.

The daylight continued to fade quickly, as if time was being fast-forwarded. The air cooled, becoming frosty with the prescience of death.