I had heard all this before and didn’t take it too seriously. I didn’t want to concede my own death. I wanted to be a hedonist—drink, screw girls, and experience vast earthly pleasures. I didn’t even want to talk about death; it was something that just wasn’t going to happen for a very very long time. I ordered a beer and noticed that Pfieffer was really lit. He was a heavyset guy and heavy on his feet. Not coordinated. The bartender kept setting out shot glasses of tequila for him and he would migrate from the dance floor back to the bar, where he would down another shot and then go back to the dance floor, doing some kind of dipshit hula dance. He looked like a big, stupid, happy fat guy, but if anyone laughed or got into a critique about the finer points of dance, Pfieffer would flash them his goofy grin and then biff them on the nose with the meat of his fist. I watched him lay a few on a mouthy sailor. The man’s head jerked back like he didn’t know what to do. Tears were running down the guy’s face and L.D. stood in front of him with his goofus smile. The sailor got uppity and Pfieffer let him have another one, drawing blood this time. “There he goes again,” Ondine said. Very soon a wild and woolly brawl rolled through the crowded joint in waves. I hadn’t put a single beer in me before a bottle came sailing across the bar and struck me under the eye. The fight spread out into the street while the Mexican police forced their way into the front door.

All of First Recon managed to get out without getting arrested. We packed into the Chevy and spent the next hour trying to locate a whorehouse that Ondine favored. We ended up lost and stopped at a depressing little cantina to fuel up, drinking 150-proof rum. The bartender’s “wife” and “sister” came downstairs and in no time we reconvened to the living quarters in the back of the building. One of the women filled a plastic bread bag with ice cubes for my swollen eye.

Waiting for your buddies to get laid is right up there with hanging out in a dentist’s office. After Pfieffer got laid, I saw one of the prostitutes hanging back in the bedroom as she took a swath at her crotch with a sex towel. Then she dipped her fingers into a large tub of Vaseline containing pubic hairs of various colors and texture. This Vaseline jar brought home the true meaning of the term “sloppy seconds.” But Felix didn’t give a shit and he joined her in the room and soon a lot of bedboard-thumping sex was going on.