LITMIR.BIZ

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in front where people ordered drinks from a counter, as from a Yankee Dairy Queen, and then the idea was to stand around in the green shade of the corrugated fiberglass roof’s overhang.

      This was Raf’s type of territory—of the spirit and mind—and I was heartened on first view. But the heat ticked like a windup clock; dangerous heat. The patio section emptied.

      I moved inside and sat in the attached lounge. It was a wine-smelling cinderblock box with plywood boards banged over its windows. My glasses kept fogging and the frames slid down my wet nose.

      I was sinking from the six-hour plane ride, the heat, my second Chihuahua beer.

      I thought about the Gauguin show—240 pieces on exhibit at the National in Washington. I could’ve flown there instead, could’ve been standing in a cool quiet gallery wing right now, studying “Yellow Christ.”

      I was afraid Raymond Hollander was like Raf; that he would mean to show, but . . .

      Mexican music blew from a radio: fast roiling music so that when I closed my eyes I saw dizzying orange skirts swirling off brown legs. When I opened my eyes I saw boxing posters and tangled strings of Christmas bulbs. I saw I was the only woman left in the dark bar and that there were ten or twelve men. None was talking. All were pounding away at drink.

      The door made its noise and shapes of light crossed the near wall. Somebody said, “Ray.”

      He was early-forties, tanned, dressed in rough clothes, their colors worked and washed out by salt, soap, sun bleach. He looked like a desert item, part mirage through my fogged lenses. He looked exactly the sort who might run with Raf.

      He came straight over and climbed into the booth seat opposite. He planted a hand on the table deck for a hello.

      “Thanks for coming,” I said. “He’s not out in your car is he?”

      Raymond said no, four times, four ways. He called me Mrs. Deveaux.

      “I’m just Paige.”

      “Well, you’re not just anything,” he said and smiled. His smile was good—white, genuine, a smile you had to repay with one of your own.

      I did, but switched instantly to staring at the tabletop. Its wood looked oily and warm and handled: oily from a century’s worth of touch in this cantina.

      Raymond said, “It’s going to be a leetle trickier than what you mighta thought.”

      Nodding, I must’ve appeared so heartsick and tired that Raymond did another smile.

      I took off the glasses. I said, “You’re either the guy who worked with Raf in Baltimore, or you were on the tramp steamer, or you could be the one with the smart dog. . . . I’m sorry, I get his friends confused.”

      “So does he,” Raymond said. “I’m smart dog—that one.”

      He shook a pack of Camels. “He was with me for almost three weeks.”

      “Prevailing on your good will,” I said, and Raymond pointed a cigarette in my direction. “No thank you. I meant Raf.”

      “Now that boy rilly prevailed,” Raymond said.

      I asked, “Could you quit smiling so much?”

      Looking me over, he said, “Umm,” as if he’d got my height, weight, and bra size.

      “You’re as tall as I thought you’d be. I never saw Raf with a woman wasn’t one of your stretch jobs.”

      “Stretch jobs,” I said, and there was a cry, as if on my behalf, from the street. I couldn’t tell if the shriek was made by a kid or a drunk or from joy or terror.

      “I’m not saying like rubber band,” Raymond said. Above him on the white plaster wall, hand-painted purple roses cavorted. They seemed friends, these flowers, as in a cartoon.

      “How many women have you seen Raf with?” I asked.

      “Umm. However many there are. You’re the only one I know of he’s married. How long’s that been?”

      “Five and something years,” I said. “So. He crashed your car, drank your liquor, ate your food.” Raymond was nodding yes, yes. “Jumped your wife? Borrowed money? Cooked your parakeet?”

      “Some of those. Yep. Yes, ma’am.”

      The Cielito Lindo’s matchpack was soggy from the tabletop or from just the day, but Raymond got his cigarette lighted and sighed smoke and appeared to relax. He ordered another Chihuahua for me, an iced tea for himself. He ordered by yelling at the boy behind the bar.

      “I’m sorry for all he did, Raymond. I wish you had him tied up out in your car, or someplace under guard. I need to find him, fast like.”

      Raymond winced and drove a hand through his hair, which was actually golden, thatchy and thick.

      “There are several likely places to look for Raf, though if he’s not in them, any of ’em, you’re fucked.”

      “Because that means he’s left town?”

      “Yeah, and ’cause, you know, he’s not too good on forwarding addresses.”

      I would say to myself that Raf kept me strung so tight I sometimes believed I felt the earth turning under my shoe soles. This is no gift that he brings, I would say, and remember how he came at me in bed—with such heat—as if each chance were our last on the very last night of the world. Every time with Raf, I would think—before he chased the thought away—“This is so scary!”

      He had begun to disappear that spring just as the landscape was softening after the violence of Boston winter; just as green and gold and a little warmth were coming through the window screens. He’d be gone a week, ten days. Then he’d be back, and he’d have new scars, new stories, no excuses.

      As Raymond got his car together, the Cielito’s glimmering side wall kept me upright. I was dropping, though. I felt brain-cooked.

      My thoughts landed on: “This is just a place.”

      The year before I had spent summer break in Cameroon. My dad, Mario, took me. He was a sculptor and he wanted to see Bamileke and Zambeze art and what architecture remained. Cameroon was hotter than Houston, and wetter, but I came to regard it as just a place. Houston was just a place.

      Raymond pulled up now in his convertible, a broad old top down, the clear-green color of a frog pond. All over the sides were furry spray-painted scribbles and scrawls: “JURA!” and “LOS NINOS,” and twice in script, “LUISA.”

      “It’s a beaner-mobile,” Raymond said. “I use it to drive to work. Nobody’s gonna steal it. I work construction. Doors are broke so when I say ‘Hop in . . .’ ”

      Riding along, head lolling back, my eyes caught the rim of the sun there, visibly beaming red hydrogen light.

      We drove up Bienvenida Boulevard. There were pudgy short palm trees with fronds bowing from their tops.

      We passed a baked-clay building marked EL ESTUDIO ESCUELOS CANTOS; next a fence of three hundred hubcaps; now Southwest Texas College’s Beam Particles Laboratory, all buff and square.

      Ahead, huge cloud forms were piled up and the sky shone the same bluejay blue as the Houston squad car riding with us, driver’s side.

      “I really appreciate this!” I shouted at Raymond.

      He glanced at me, jimmied the gear stick to neutral. We idled at a railroad crossing while a Union Pacific switcher shunted some fifty tanker cars past.

      “It’s fun, riding in a convertible,” I said.

      “This day should be over, though,” Raymond said.

      My head bobbed yes, but I was a little hurt he thought that.

      Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward,

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