Across the street, whole families squeezed under an awning at a place advertising “Passport Photos, Immigration, Fingerprints—FOTOS de MEXICO.”

Too near me, a bird landed on its own shadow. This was an eerie bird, white-eyed. I moved away from it to a glen of shade.

There was a glitzy house opposite where I stood. Before the house were willows and a hand-painted sign for twenty- four-hour palm readings with “Sister Andros.”

I walked over. Inside the bright living room a tiny woman wearing pink sneakers sat in an armchair and frowned at a tumbler of fizzing yellow seltzer she held.

“You again,” she said.

“Me? I’ve never been here before.”

“Then your twin has,” the woman said.

“I don’t have a twin. I was an only child. Are you Sister Andros?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I just came over here to kill time.”

“What I meant is we’re closed,” Sister Andros said.

“On your sign it says open twenty-four hours.”

The woman gently fingered her head. “It’s not you,” she said, “it’s this headache. Some other time?”

Back in the cool lobby of the Consul General’s offices, I got cross-legged on the marble floor and stared at a great cactus posted in a clay drum.

Raymond was the only blond in line; easy to spot. He stood at the head now, chatting with a chic woman on the business side of the desk.

I liked watching Raymond and realized as he sauntered over to me that I felt contented in the cool and wished he’d taken longer.

“Is that it? Everything’s settled already?” I asked.

“Mostly, if you can trust ’em. They wanted specifics and I kept it all hypothetical, but just filing costs you.”

I said, “Raymond, you’re friends with Luisa’s brother? You want him living with you?”

He looked confused. “More the merrier, ain’t it?”

Back at the motel suite, Raf, covered only by a waist-knotted towel, was pacing at a mean tempo, incensed, distressed, fearful; maybe all those. He seemed sober, but I could seldom be sure. He had plenty of talent for camouflaging drunkenness.

“Maids want fucking in here,” he said.

“They want fucking in here? So where’s your problem?” said Raymond.

“Hi, Raymond,” Raf said, dropping onto a chair.

“Oh, are we gonna be friendly?” Raymond asked.

I rang the desk and canceled housekeeping services for the day.

Raf said, “I need support before I do what I gotta do.”

“Get dressed?” Raymond asked him.

“No, a shower.”

“Oh, the heavy work,” Raymond said.

“I’m a hero in my book,” said Raf. “If you two hear dying noises . . .”

A bourbon scent mixed with the hot cloud from Raf’s bath.

Outside, rush hour. The motel was filling up. There were traffic noises, and the sounds of car doors and trunks being slammed, the voices of guests unloading luggage, bringing luggage up the stairs.