"Why so cold?"
Ethan slouched in a lawn chair with his bare feet propped up on a beer cooler and with a cigarette dangling from the fingers of his right hand. Beyond the playa, the sun had slipped behind a mountain, and all around it the sky was a deep magenta. He took a draw from the cigarette and blew smoke out through his nostrils. The smoke from the cigarette circled above him and was blown away by the desert wind. He glanced at the cellphone that lay in his lap, at the message he had received from Mona.
“You don’t text anymore. Why so cold? Have I made you angry? We used to be such good friends. Come see me. Come see Roman. He’s grown so much these past few years. I’ll be at the big scorpion tonight after sunset. Come. xoxo”
Ethan pulled his wallet out of his jeans and took an old photograph from it. In the photograph, a young woman in a white dress stood on a hilltop before a vast blue sky. She was twenty, or, perhaps, twenty-one at the oldest, with a slight figure, cascading caramel hair, and cold blue eyes.
Ethan returned the photograph to his wallet. As he got to his feet, he pocketed the cellphone. He walked from the lawn chair to a blue and green van parked nearby. The van’s side door was open, and inside a man with long blond hair was lying on the floor with a half-empty bottle of vodka at his side. “Duncan,” said Ethan. “I’m going out.”
Duncan rolled over on the floor. “Whatever, man,” he said.
