The hotel man was baffled. “What is Aspen?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You know goddamn well what I'm talking about, you sleazy bastard!” Bloor shouted. “These dirty concrete hotels you're building all over the beach, these dirty little hot-dog stands and --”

I hurried across the patio and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Never mind Yail,” I said, trying to focus at least one of my eyes on whoever he was talking to. “He's still not adjusted to this altitude.” I tried to smile at them, but I could sense it wasn't working. . . a drugged grimace, wild eyes and very jerky movements. I could hear myself talking, but the words made no sense: “These goddamned iguanas all over the road. . . we did a one-eighty back there at the U turn. . . Yail grabbed the emergency brake when he saw all those lizards, jerked it right out by the root. . . Thank Christ we had those snow tires. We live at five thousand feet, you know, damn little air pressure up there, but down here at sea level you feel it squeezing your brain like a vise. . . No way to escape it, you can't even think straight. . .”

Nobody smiled; I was babbling out of control and Bloor was still yelling about “land rapers.” I left him and went to the bar. “We're leaving,” I said, “but I want some ice for the road.”

The bartender gave me a Pepsi-Cola cup full of melting shavings. “We'll need more than that,” I said -- so he filled up another cup. He spoke no English, but I could grasp what he was trying to tell me: There was no container available for the amount of ice I wanted and they were almost out of ice anyway.

My head was beginning to pulsate violently at this point I could barely keep a focus on his face. Rather than argue, I went out to the parking lot and drove the Safari through a screen of small beach trees and up onto the patio, parking it right in front of the bar and indicating to the stunned bartender that I wanted the back seat filled with ice.

The Striker crowd was appalled. “You crazy son of a bitch!” someone yelled. “You mashed about fifteen trees!” I nodded, but the words didn't register. All I could think about was ice -- throwing one cupload after another into the back seat. The acid, by this time, had fucked up my vision to the point where I was seeing square out of one eye and round out of the other. It was impossible to focus on anything; I seemed to have four hands. . .

The bartender had not been lying: The Punta More–a ice vat was virtually empty. I scraped a few more cuploads out of the bottom -- hearing Bloor's angry cursing somewhere above and behind me -- then I jumped over the counter and into the front seat of the jeep.