2.

SO IT WAS TIME to leave La Paz, and back at my ugly, cheap hotel, which had a beautiful name, La Vida en Rosa, I drunkenly packed up, and when George and I stood in the doorway of our room, ready to leave, I thanked the room for having us, a ritual I maintain at hotels and motels when it’s time to go, though I’m not sure why, but it feels rude and like bad luck if I don’t do it.

We drove over to the garage near the cantina and Vic was ready to leave, but before we took off, the mechanic, seeing my Chevy, came right over to me and spoke to me through my open window. He had a big belly and thick black glasses, unusual on a mechanic, it seemed, and on the spot, he offered me three thousand American dollars for my Caprice. Car junkies really do love the ’80s Caprice, and I thanked him but said no, and I followed Vic out of La Paz.

Vic’s car was a red Toyota pickup, and once we were beyond the city limits, the whole southeast journey to the East Cape, about seventy miles, was on dirt roads, and it was gorgeous, stunning land we drove through. To the east was the Sea of Cortez, aquamarine and glistening like a bed of diamonds, and to the west was a semiarid plain of trees and cacti, with almost no development, just a few small ranches here and there.

After driving for about an hour, Vic led us onto the coastal road, a dangerous and narrow dirt trek on the edge of cliffs, with the ocean and death down below. I cursed the tequila in my system and hoped this wouldn’t be the way George and I would die, though I recognized it might be karma for sending Diablo off a cliff.

Vic had told me that when I saw two large mounds on the plain we would be in his part of the East Cape, and that the mounds, which looked like whales, gave the area its unofficial name: Dos Ballenas. And when I saw the two whalelike formations, about ninety minutes into our journey, the light was beginning to change, dusk was coming on, and the sea, to my left, was now the color of mercury tinged with violet, and to the right, on the far horizon, were rolling mountains, also colored violet by the setting sun.

A few miles past the mounds, Vic turned off the coastal road onto another dirt road, heading west, and all around us, like all of the East Cape, was empty, untouched desert scrubland, with just a few small, isolated dwellings here and there, including a white yurt, which caught my eye.

Then, a quarter mile past the yurt, we turned onto an even more narrow dirt road, which cut through a grove of giant saguaro cacti, and this dirt road, it turned out, was Vic’s driveway, because after about fifty yards it ended in a dusty clearing and we were at his house: a square cinder-block structure, painted blue. It was a very small house, and off to the side, on the right, was a thatched-roof palapa and a hammock.

We were really in the middle of nowhere, and when we got out of the cars, I stretched my legs and looked out at miles of gorgeous, unsullied land, which ended in the violet-hued mountains, and I wondered if this was what the Los Angeles Basin had looked like before it was developed and destroyed.

Then Vic asked, like a good host, “Do you need to take a crap? Because I don’t have a toilet inside. Or should I say number two? That’s what my wife called it. She had better manners.”

“I think I’m all right,” I said.

“Well, let me show you where the outhouse is anyway, in case you need it later.”

He led us around to the back, where there was an old beat-up skiff and a bunch of saguaro cacti, two of which were used to hold up a laundry line. Twenty yards away, up a slight incline, was the outhouse, a narrow wooden shack with a crescent moon cut into the door.

“Good not to have it too close,” Vic said, pointing at the thing, “but there’s a bag of lye in there with a scoop; just don’t get it in your eyes. And you can piss anywhere you like. The outhouse is just for craps and number two, whatever you want to call it.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“I thought of putting in a toilet when I built this place thirty years ago, but even then septic tanks cost a lot, and commodes, you know, waste a lot of water, and you’ve got to be careful out here with water. Very careful.”

Vic then explained to me that there was no running water or electricity in Dos Ballenas, no infrastructure whatsoever in its thirty or so square miles, and so his house had a water tank and solar panels on the roof, with a gas generator as backup.

After that little speech, he pointed out the shower, which was a spigot and valve poking out of the house’s back wall, with a concrete base to stand on. “The shower only has cold water,” he said, “but even then, it’s a luxury. Showers use a lot of water. A lot. Even more than toilets. So once a week, maybe twice if I’m gamey, but that’s it for bathing. Which is also when I do laundry. I walk on my shirts and underwear, like a rinse cycle.”

Done now with the tour, we went back around to the front. Vic unlocked the front door, and I was immediately hit with a blast of pungent old-man sweat, like the house was a gigantic extension and expression of Vic’s armpits, which made sense considering the shower restrictions.

But despite the odor, which was like a combination of urine and vinegar, Vic’s place, just one large, square room, was pleasant to be in: it was neat and sparsely furnished, had good feng shui. There were windows at the front and back, which Vic opened for cross ventilation, and then he turned on a ceiling fan, which moved the sweaty smell around nicely.

That accomplished, he asked if I wanted a Victoria beer, and I said sure, and he went into the kitchen area, which was composed of a small two-burner stove, a sink, a half size fridge, and a wooden table for two.

I followed him to the fridge and gave the rest of the place a closer scan: across from the kitchen area was the “living room”—a couch, two old reclining chairs, a couple of lamps, and a bookshelf of warped paperback novels, mostly bodice rippers, remnants perhaps of Vic’s dead wife.

At the far end of the room, in the left-hand corner, was Vic’s queen-size bed, which sagged in the middle, and across from the bed was a stand-alone wooden closet and a wooden dresser, both painted eggshell blue. The floor was Mexican tile, which made the room cool, and while Vic opened the beers, George was running around the place, sniffing everywhere, which was when Walter, Vic’s cat, rather elegant and completely white as advertised, emerged from beneath Vic’s bed, and George raced over to him, in attack mode, but then skidded to a stop.

Maybe because he was deaf, Walter had an eerie Zen calm about him, which spoke to George on some deep level, and he and the white cat just stared at each other.

Normally, though, George would have tried to kill Walter, which I had forgotten to mention to Vic, having forgotten that he had a cat, and I was about to go grab George, but then Walter, stretching his legs rather languorously, strolled right past George, as if he wasn’t there, and George trailed after him, meekly, while secretly trying to get his nose into Walter’s anus. Which Walter didn’t seem to mind at all, and, in fact, he looked at George over his shoulder, like a woman in an Italian movie from the ’50s, and I could see why George was enamored.

Then Walter, displaying his whimsical cat nature, suddenly raced out the open front door.

George was slow off the mark but after a moment’s hesitation, he was after him, like a young lover, and Vic said, watching this interplay, “For some reason dogs go crazy for Walter.”

“Yeah, I’ve never seen George behave like that with a cat.”

We took our beers outside and sat under the open-air palapa in camp chairs, looking out at the desert plain and the purple mountains. We clinked our bottles and drank up.

Meanwhile, George was following Walter around the dusty yard, getting a tour, and they made a handsome couple: George, with his sleek tan suit and bedroom eyes, and Walter, as white as a bridal gown and sculpted like a totem on a pharaoh’s grave.

Vic said, “You smoke marijuana, Lou?”

“Daily,” I said, and Vic smiled and went back into the house.

He returned with a tobacco pouch filled with weed and tobacco and rolled us a wonderful spliff. So we drank our beers and smoked, and, as the sun set, the Baja air was soft and warm, perfect for being stuck in a human body.

It was all a small taste of heaven, and for a little while, I could let go that I had recently killed a man and had swapped out my face for my father’s. And I could also let go, for a minute, this feeling that something or someone was coming for me. Though I knew, deep down, that it would happen; it had to. You can run but you can’t hide is one of those immutable laws of life, like impermanence or karma or death.

But that night I was safe, and, eventually, Vic broke out the board and we had a delightful evening of beer, weed, and backgammon, punctuated by a dinner of scrambled eggs and fried onions, which was one of the best meals I’d ever had. I guess I was in a good mood.

Around midnight, the party was winding down—Vic, after vomiting, had passed out on his bed—so I took a morphine pill, and George and I went out to the hammock, with three Mexican blankets and a pillow that Vic had laid out earlier.

I placed one of the blankets over the mesh, like a sheet, so George’s paws wouldn’t get stuck. Then we got into the hammock, and with George under the blankets, like a hot-water bottle by my side, I lay on my back and looked up at the sky, which was populated with hundreds if not thousands of stars. There was no light pollution in the East Cape—the whole wheeling galaxy was visible—and I felt like a very lucky man.

Then the morphine did its thing, and the galaxy was snuffed out like a candle.

What followed was mostly a dreamless night, except for one nightmare in which the soles of my feet peeled open, like they’d been slit with a knife, and I watched in horror as white maggot eggs, the size of marbles, rolled out of my feet and became worms.

In the morning, Vic and I were at his little kitchen table, drinking black coffee and nursing our hangovers. We weren’t verbal yet, but the backgammon board was out, and we were already setting up the pieces, which are called pips, and like mirrors to each other, Walter was in Vic’s lap and George was in mine.

Despite being booze sick, we were both eager to play again because we were evenly matched, which isn’t so easy to find in backgammon—most people don’t know what they’re doing—and so we liked playing each other, it was addictive, and once we got the board arranged, I was all set to throw the dice and kick off a new game, but then Vic got a call on his cell phone, which surprised me. But clearly there was cell reception in Dos Ballenas—later I would find out why—and Vic answered his battered Android device and put it on speakerphone, miming to me that it was the only way he could hear whoever was talking.

I made a motion to stand up and give him privacy, but Vic waved at me to sit down, and so I listened in on the call, which maybe I shouldn’t have. The gist of what I heard was that his sister, in a nursing home in Seattle, was very sick and might pass in the next twenty-four hours, and when Vic hung up, he looked stricken.

Then he said, “Could you take me to the airport in del Cabo, Lou? I don’t think I can drive myself there—I’m all shook up—but I gotta go see her and say goodbye. She’s the only family I have left and… and you could stay here. Look after Walter. And the waterman is coming in two days. I have to pay or I won’t have water when I come back. I’ll give you the money.”

I readily agreed to this—I wanted to help Vic—and after he got the call, I took him to the airport in San José del Cabo, a ninety-minute drive to the south, and Vic went straightaway to see his sister, who was older and had half raised him. This was the middle of February 2020, and at first, Vic’s sister hung on, but then two weeks after he got there, she died of COVID, and then he got it and died—the pandemic had begun—and I ended up squatting in Vic’s house for the next three years, and he never even knew my real name.