Stacey turned into the paved four-lane entrance, noting as I had its deteriorating state. We drove the mile and a half, the desert stretching out on every side of us. When we reached the complex, he parked and we got out. It was still afternoon, and the sun overhead was like a pitiless spotlight, revealing every crack and flaw in the abandoned site.

Somehow in my memory, I'd tidied it up a bit, forgetting the garbage and blowing sand, the gaping windows and ruts in the surrounding dirt parking area. I sensed movement and shifted my gaze. I reached out and put a hand on Stacey's arm and both of us stood stock still. Two coyotes had appeared at a trot. Both were pale gray and scrawny, bony-legged, taller than the average German shepherd, but with the same prominent ears. The first coyote stopped and regarded us with a certain leisurely arrogance. These were desert coyotes, smaller than the ones we saw in Santa Teresa. There, when the drought years eliminated small rodents and ground game, coyote packs were forced down out of the foothills into urban neighborhoods. I'd heard them calling to one another, chilling, high-pitched yelps, when they'd cornered their quarry and were closing in on the kill. I'd seen countless handmade signs stapled to telephone poles, usually displaying photographs and phone numbers, offering plaintive appeals for the return of "lost" cats and small dogs. I knew where they were. In dawn light, in my travels around town, I'd spotted the occasional lone coyote crossing the road with a bundle in its jaws. Out here in the desert, where the heat was extreme and even less rain fell, coyotes ate anything: lizards, insects, carrion, snakes.

The second coyote had trotted on, but now circled back to the first. This must have been the female of the pair, her sides rounded by a litter of pups. The two animals stared up at us with an eerie intelligence. I was aware of their cold yellow eyes and the fathomless round, black pupils. I had no sense that they feared us. This was their territory, sparse and untamed, and their survival rates would always be better than ours out here. Stacey clapped his hands and the two continued on to the road at the same unhurried pace. He turned and watched them, as I did, until they disappeared from view.

The wind picked up. Despite the sun and even in my bomber jacket, I found myself huddled against the cold. "Let's go inside before I freeze to death."