I turned away and wandered outside to the parking lot again. No Janis, no Dee. No Ray. Lynne must have left for her hotel. The screen that showed Brenae Brasil’s video was still there, but it was now unlit and looked more like a wall with no building behind it, one of those facades on western film sets. The desert sky seemed bigger and darker, chaotic with stars.

Unsure what I was waiting for, and still unwilling to leave, I stood in line for the steamy, disgusting bathroom, hurried through my time in the stall, and washed my hands. The mirror was too spotted and warped to show my face. I bought another gin and tonic, but I had lost the thirst for booze and boldly took up my roost near the pool table and sucked on the ice. I ignored the victor’s lewd glance. I could stand where I wanted.

An hour had passed now, and the crowd was thick and loud. Everyone who was going to make the drive from L.A. had made it, and their numbers overwhelmed the locals, scattering them to small atolls of denim and middle age at the bar. In the packed booths, where the students and hipsters reigned, chatter replaced argument, and young bodies slurred to single glossy, laughing creatures. I heard the name Brenae Brasil more than any other, although dozens of up-and-coming artists were showing at sites nearby. I envisioned her among them. The dark-haired, muscular twenty-two-year-old on the video looked the part, but somehow I couldn’t see her happily squashed in with the others. She seemed too serious, too impatient for success to participate in this rowdy field trip from the metropolis.

Something flew past my head and hit the wall beside me. A thud, then shattering. It took me a second to understand that the projectile was a bottle of beer from the hand of the blond pool player, who’d thrown it toward his opponent, who’d ducked. I froze as they began to fight, fists on ribs, then slapping and grappling as the younger, larger man tried to pick up his opponent by the shirt and shove him down. Shrieks filled the air and a mob pushed backward, out of the way of the fight. The bartender charged out, elbowing the bystanders, yelling, “Break it up, break it up!” Glass fell from my hair and tumbled to the ground, and I smelled the sour odor of beer.

The older man tripped his opponent and flung him back on the pool table, his lean face carved by a smile, as if all along this fight was what he’d been playing for. He took a yellow-striped pool ball, raised it in his fist, and smashed it down on the other man’s nose, then abruptly dropped him, hands soaked in blood, and strode toward The Oasis door, which was just beyond me and the broken glass.