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“It’s always an important year.”
    â€œUh-huh,” I said. Whatever. The woman was giving me the creeps.
    Felina walked through the saloon doors without a word. I followed her, hanging back a couple of paces.
    No cockfighting, I noted with relief. The Gallo Rojo was just a working-class restaurant and bar, with oilcloth-covered tables and battered wooden booths. It smelled of lard and cumin. A long bar against one wall was trimmed in tinsel and Christmas lights, with a large plaster madonna standing guard over the tequila bottles. Behind the pass-through window that led to the kitchen, an old woman was patting dough into ovals and turning them onto a griddle. We took the only available booth, right near the two doors that read DAMAS and CABALLEROS .
    Time to butter the lady up. “So tell me about roosters.”
    â€œIt’s a sign of change. Every twelve years, el gallo brings change and cataclysm. The Nazi Party came into existence during the Year of the Rooster. Twelve years later, World War Two ended. Twelve years later, Sputnik was launched and the Space Age began. Twelve years later, people walked on the moon. Twelve years after that, AIDS was discovered.”
    â€œHow interesting.” What a pile of cock-a-doodle-do.
    Up close, Felina looked forty, maybe even forty-five. Her tawny mane was still thick and shiny, but spiderwebs were inlaid around her eyes, her hands were marked with blue veins, and her neck was turning to crepe. Her olive skin was stretched tightly across her cheek implants, which stood out in bas-relief like knife slashes.
    â€œThose homemade tortillas smell great. Are you going to have some?”
    â€œLard,” Felina said ominously. “Lard.”
    So far we had all the rapport of two eighth-graders thrown together by a teacher and told to complete a science project.
    The waiter came over. He and Felina started talking in rapid-fire Spanish. My language skills are at the “¿dónde está la biblioteca?” level. I couldn’t follow a word. When the waiter looked at me, I shrugged and said, “Dos.”
    Felina reached into her purse and brought out a black velvet drawstring bag. From it she removed several small carved stones that looked like onyx, quartz, alabaster. She arranged the stones on the table in a semicircle in front of her. She rearranged, fussed, rearranged again. When she was done, it looked like a tiny Stonehenge.
    â€œYour stones are pretty,” I said.
    â€œNot stones. They’re Zuni fetishes.”
    â€œLike good-luck charms?”
    â€œSort of.”
    â€œCan I look at them?”
    She shrugged. I picked up a white alabaster blob. Up close, a bird revealed itself: sharp beak, carved feathers smooth against its back. I ran my finger over its coolness.
    â€œThe eagle,” she said. “ La águila. A symbol of strength, fierceness, protection.”
    â€œHe protects you?”
    â€œI protect myself. The eagle is a symbol. My familiar.”
    â€œI see,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. Power animals. Familiars. Hollywood New Age types got on my nerves. I wasn’t sure whether it was the crass selfishness couched in spirituality or the Chinese-menu aspect of New Age that bothered me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an open mind; it just didn’t catch every trendy stray breeze.
    â€œI didn’t want another writer on my book,” she said.
    â€œOh.”
    â€œI spent six months working on my story. My agent was the one who said I needed a co-writer.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you take it to another publisher?”
    â€œBecause I listened to la águila, ” she said, touching the eagle. “He told me that I wouldn’t get my story out until I teamed up with someone else. And he told me about you.”
    I was over the New Age mysticism. “And what did he tell you, Felina?”
    â€œYou don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be