Fitz got up then, went to the closet for the sombrero she’d bought him, cocked it back on his head and asked, “How do I look?” He winked at her in the mirror. “Like a red-haired Mexican? Or no: an Irish Mexican?”

“You look fine,” she said, and she was feeling good, not only in anticipation of the party but because she could feel the drug already beginning to work on her, the familiar crepitation in her bloodstream, the ever-so-subtle alteration in the frequency of the light, objects beginning to shift out of the material world and into another world altogether.

“What about you, Corey? You think I look Mexican?”

Corey studied him a moment, as if the question were in any way serious. “You look like my father.”

“Okay, that’s what I want to hear—so you must be Mexican then too. Digame in español, mi hijo.”

Corey said, “What?” and she said, “Just put on a shirt, that’s all I ask.”

The next day, their last day there, when all she wanted to do was lie on the beach and feel sorry for herself, Tim had arranged a softball game—For goodwill, because we’ve got a two-summer lease on this place and we’ll be back before you know it—and they all had to pile into the Jeep and a pair of Volkswagen vans and go out in the heat and through the village and its stew of smells to a grass field adjacent to the airstrip and wade through the afternoon. Of course, with Tim (and Fitz and Ken and Charlie) everything was an occasion for a party, and the beer flowed and vendors were there to sell tacos and the whole town turned out to make it a holiday and say adios to the gringos from Harvard. She was surprised by the number of people there and it wasn’t till later that she learned the reason why: the local newspaper had promoted the game as being between the local semi-pro team, Los águilas, and Los Rojos de Harvard, as if the Crimson baseball squad had flown down from Cambridge for the event. The fact was, the party had gone on till dawn and Tim was lucky to be able to field a team at all, with Tommy Hitchcock on the mound, Fitz at shortstop, Dick at second, a very shaky Martin at third, Tim himself at first, Carlos pressed into service behind the plate, Ken in center field, Charlie in left and nobody in right.