The sun was a blazing arc in a bleached sky, and the only other people braving the hottest stretch of an ungodly hot day were a white couple on chaises in the shade of an overhang. They were drinking beer and watching their kids play in the water. I pulled a chair into another sliver of shade and sat facing the room, so if Jesse checked, there I’d be.

The children, a boy and a girl, took turns dunking each other, the drone of traffic drifted over from the Strip, and a maid’s radio hiccupped a Mexican song. I’d never felt so alone surrounded by so many people. A hot wind ruffled the water and rolled one of the couple’s empty beer cans across the deck. It ended up under my chair.

“Sorry about that,” the man, a freckle-faced redhead with permanent sunburn, called out. He brought over a full can of Coors and said, “Take this. You’re gonna cook in all those clothes.”

I thanked him.

He asked if I was winning big.

“I’m here on business,” I replied.

“We’re just passing through ourselves,” he said. “On our way to California. I start a job in Bakersfield next week.”

I tore the tab off the beer and raised the can. “Good luck to you,” I said.

“I expect it’ll be a big change from Oklahoma,” he said.

“For the better, I’m sure,” I said.

“You from there? California?” he asked.

“San Diego,” I said.

“I hear it’s nice there,” he said.

His wife, as redheaded and sunburned as him, shouted, “Rodney, haul the kids out. We’ve got to go.”

“Yes, hon,” he drawled and winked at me. “I hear divorces come easy in California too,” he said.

He rounded up the kids, his wife draped towels around them, and the family dashed across the parking lot to their room, the little boy crying, “Ouch, ouch, ouch,” with each step on the hot asphalt until his dad scooped him up.

Keep those babies close, I thought. Keep them safe.

I don’t believe any beer I’ve ever had tasted as good as that one. Probably because I thought it might be my last. I was fairly certain Jesse was rushing me to my doom, and I couldn’t see any way out of it that wouldn’t lead to something worse.

This feeling grew stronger when the door to the room flew open and Jesse appeared. Smoke rose off him as he stepped into the sun. He flung Edgar’s cat into the parking lot, where it screeched and turned to ash, then he and Edgar grappled on the threshold before he pulled his brother inside and slammed the door.