Later I left the bed and Raf—who sat now, still awake; slapping through my copy of Zoom—to drink all the tap water my body would hold.

Sunrise lured me, barefoot and in my bathrobe, out onto the front balcony.

The sky had heat lightning. Quick sequences of it strobed the grape clouds.

A black woman in a pale linen suit came from the next suite and stood watching with me, as though I’d been expecting her.

Over the way, we could see the Southern Cross Nursery with its banner: LINERS SHRUBS GROUND COVER & TREES. We could see a freight truck garage bleached of color by the security lights yet burning. Not much else, though, in view.

The woman spoke with an accent. She asked if I smelled rain. I didn’t.

She said, “I lost a friend a while ah-go.” She stroked her cheeks as if to exercise some change on herself. “So I pace, not sleeping. And ahm enticed into stupid thoughts about destiny. Cynical as we are, we could say something for it, I suppose.”

The sky blinked with a spear of lightning, followed by a boom.

She said, “This man I won’t bore you about, in Trinidad, he lost a testicle in surgery. Nothing could have mattered less to me. But he never came to believe me on that. And what does his affliction mattah now? Not at all.”

The motel door stood ajar and I could see that back in the room the TV—soundless, but showing a film—made everything in there gold, now blue, now circus red.

The woman was silent until she came up with this: “A mile or so that way is a self-serve carwash. They have vacuum hoses. You can clean the seats, do the inside, wash the exterior and dry it. Mine is the white Jetta. I think that ees what I will do, and feel better after.”

Raymond collected me around noon.

He drove across town, along Telephone Road, the Martin Luther King Highway, Navigation Boulevard, and into a dandified neighborhood of southwestern art deco, Miami-ish palms, stucco and glass-block condos, dappled ponds of shade. The storm had well passed and straight overhead the sun was white. Everywhere, I heard the twitch and sputter of lawn sprinklers.

A collie dog ambled across the parkway ahead of the car.

“Yep,” Raymond said, grinning at the dog.

The Mexican Consulate had the ground floor of a six- story amber-glass-and-concrete box.

“This won’t be but ten or fifteen hours,” Raymond said. “Then I’ll take you to some rum ordinary.”

He was in a blousy white shirt and a tie but wore his wash-faded Levi’s.

I drifted around the immaculate lobby. It was spacious, somber, chilled. There were desert saguaros in earthen pots, and some bland abstract wall paintings I spent time on.

I wandered out into the sunny lot, where Mexican flags flapped high overhead—green, red, and white.