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and Little Annie Fanny eyes, giggly and small and sexy, with breasts so big that when she jiggled down the street men used to stop and stare with their mouths wide open, a tabletop dancer supreme, a burlesque artiste out of her time, the rage and the love of his life, gone now, of course, like a sad hoarse-throated song by Dr Hook (‘To think I was the kind of guy who could have kept her … would be taking too much credit on myself). Candii had sworn filthy curses at him in the obstetric clinic in Reno, while a red neon light across the street had flashed the word DIVORCE on and off all night, and the doctor had warned vaguely that Susie would probably die. Susie hadn’t died, thank God, but Candii had left them after eight months, taking her tight silk dresses and her seamed stockings and her giant-sized pink vibrator, which he had never seen her use. He missed her badly, even now, six years later, because she was an unassailable sexual fantasy and because she always used to laugh at his jokes and because he loved her. What was more, her name was actually Candii, on her birth certificate.
    He had arrived in Apache Junction by accident. He had been heading towards Santa F6, New Mexico, to show off Susie to Candii’s mother (only 42 herself, by God, and just as busty as her daughter) and to panhandle a few hundred dollars from Candii’s father to pay off some of his arrears in rent. A few miles outside of Phoenix, his old green Mercury had finally collapsed on its worn-out suspension and died by the glaring roadside. When he had looked around, the signs had said Apache Junction.
    They had also said Thriving Diner for Sale. The Navajo mechanic from the nearby Exxon garage had stared Indian-wrinkly-mouthed at the Mercury’s rusty green carcass, his waist girdled with shiny wrenches, and then at last pronounced, ‘No point in fixing that, my friend. Transmission’s shot.’ The moon-faced man who was selling the diner had peered out suspiciously from his darkened porch and said, ‘You’re not wasting my time, are you? I get more time-wasters, I can tell you.’
    There wasn’t much in Apache Junction. A couple of gas stations, a few peeling houses, an Indian jewellery store. But it was as good or as bad as living anyplace else. The weather was warm and dry and helpful to Daniel’s sinus condition. The crime rate was low. The only habitual offender was a halfbreed Navajo called Ronald Reagan Kinishba, and he and Daniel were good friends. They played cards together occasionally, and got themselves drunk on Lowenbrau, and sometimes Ronald took Daniel out on the pillion seat of his Honda 749cc Nighthawk, blaring through the night at 110 mph, oblivious to anything but speed and grit and hot wind, and lights that flashed past them like space missiles out of Star Trek II. Afterwards, they would sit astride the bike at some unmapped desert intersection, trembling and saying, ‘Shit, wow, phew,’ over and over.
    It was a silent life, sometimes; a life in which a man could turn in on himself. At night, in high summer, with the sky as clear as a black lawn sprinkled with silver daisies, with Susie sleeping in her rumpled cot, and the odd aromatic smell of the desert on the breeze, Daniel would sit out on the balcony at the back of the diner listening to the small voice of KSTM inside the kitchen, and wonder if he was real or not. He would cheer himself up by remembering one of Woody Allen’s characters, who hated reality but realized it was the only place to get a good steak. He often felt like a Woody Allen character himself these days: anxious, and just about able to cope. And the longer he lived in Apache Junction, the greater his uncertainty about coping became.
    Cara said, ‘You don’t feel like a vacation, maybe?’
    He looked up from the onions. ‘A vacation? What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, getting away from it all.’
    ‘You don’t think this is getting away from it all? Apache Junction?’
    She kissed him, and then