We glided into the lot of a fuel station–convenience store called the T-EX.

In its tiny yard, in the morning sun, stood a lovely girl. She was maybe fourteen, heavily pregnant. She wore a maternity frock of lime-colored cotton.

Raymond let the engine idle and kept on the air conditioner. Turning to me, he said, “Can I ask you something real personal, Paige?”

I nodded.

He pushed his dark dictator glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, am I rilly weird? Because I can have sex with strangers just fine. I acquit myself just fine. But if I get to know her, even a squinch . . .”

“You’re not weird,” I said.

“Well, that’s all about what?”

“I think only a stranger can have magic. Maybe that’s why your spouse can’t hypnotize you. Or anyone in your family, or any good friend. . . . And probably another reason’s fidelity. As if you aren’t really being unfaithful with a stranger—she’s just a body, just a female.”

“That’s a sweet view, darlin’. I bring all this up ’cause of Raf, actually.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s same as me. Now and then, he just reaches and takes whatever’s there,” Raymond said. “But it doesn’t mean a thing to him. ’Course you know that, or you wouldn’t stick by. I’d sure hate to see it if you weren’t sticking. The guy’d go straight down in flames. You think he’s fucked up now, well, I seen him plenty more fucked, in the old days, before you.”

I told Raymond there was no chance of my saving Raf, but that I wouldn’t want to do without him, despite reaching and taking.

A sedan slid up next to us. Its driver wore a sleeveless black T-shirt and had a sprayed and set haircut with a wave cresting off his forehead. Around his rearview mirror he’d strung a pair of red nylon panties.

“What did you and Raf fight about?” I asked. “He didn’t—not Luisa.”

Raymond said, “I try to convince myself it wasn’t Raf. Didn’t do anything but he was brimming over with suggestions.”

“I am awfully sorry to hear that.”

“It’s O.K. Other night at the motel room with you . . . and I don’t have the excuse of bein’ drunk and despondent.”

“But what?” I said. “I’m not a complete stranger, so you didn’t try anything?”

“I didn’t,” Raymond said, unwhapping his seat belt and moving on the seat to face me, “only because you were so strung out about Raf. You should know that, and maybe he should, in case he ever sobers up and starts thinking too poorly of himself.”

Climbing out, the young man with the fancy haircut binged our car door with his own.

“Hey, Pablo, watch it there,” Raymond said.