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vendors, dodging cyclists.’
    Together we walked to the airport terminal, drunk and giddy. Security gave us wary eyes as we meandered in an exceedingly unsteady line. Hayes had a girlfriend who had been vacationing in America. She was due on the same flight as Miranda, the 3:30 from Hong Kong. I wondered aloud if the two of them might be sitting next to each other, figuring that one coincidence equalled another.
    As it turned out, Miranda was not on the flight. Maybe she missed the plane, arriving at the airport late and running to the gateway screaming, ‘Stop, wait for me!’ Maybe she overdosed on her precious cocaine in the seedy hovel she had been occupying in San Francisco. Or maybe she simply forgot that I was waiting here for her, like I didn’t matter.
    â€˜Looks like your package didn’t arrive,’ Hayes said later.
    Hayes’ girlfriend was a short American bottle-blonde who wore glasses with invisible rims. She immediately asked for a cigarette and Hayes obliged. She sniffed it with a frown. ‘Haven’t you got any Western cigarettes?’
    I offered her one of my own, and Hayes introduced us. Her name was Phoebe.
    â€˜Are you waiting for someone from the flight?’ she asked.
    â€˜I don’t think so anymore,’ I answered, looking past her to the gate. I offered a description of Miranda, and Phoebe said, ‘No, I don’t remember a girl like that on the flight.’
    I nodded and turned away.
    Hayes planted a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re catchinga cab with us into the city. I’m going to pick up three bottles of wine on the way.’ He smiled like I was prey.
    A month ago, Miranda had smuggled five pounds of cocaine out of Colombia, but by that time I had been waiting in Miami for three days to avoid indictment if it all went wrong. She said that the street value would be higher in New York or San Francisco than it would be anywhere in Florida. It would be even higher in Europe, she told me.
    I met her in Mexico, where she was searching for spiritual enlightenment. I had been on the road for close to a year, searching and yearning aimlessly. She told me that she could teach me everything, give me meaning. I was foolish to think she could be an end to my search.
    Miranda found spiritual enlightenment in mescal, among other things.
    She said that enlightenment came when you experienced ‘terror, pain, and roadlessness’. Taking the mescal is how you see your own road, she said. She told me that our roads could wind together and she would guide me. We’d go to Europe and follow our road until we truly knew ourselves . And I was tired of roadlessness, not knowing who I was.
    I thought Miranda might actually be able to teach me something, but for half the time I knew her she was out of her mind. She moved from one place to another and never settled for long. Drugs paid her way, aided her search, rattled her mind.
    Shortly before I met her, Miranda had been swimming off the Mexican coast and had an encounter with a shark. She had been alone, she told me, naked and treading water a mile out from the shore, when she first spottedthe shadow circling at the bottom. She had not been afraid. The water was a brilliant blue that sank to navy toward the floor, where sand sloped like drowned dunes. The shark was nothing but an outline, a shape in the dark. She made a gradual move for the shore. The shadow followed, staying low along the ocean floor. When next she checked, the shadow had disappeared. Her relief had yet to set in when a fin surfaced about fifty feet in front of her, like the periscope of a submarine coming to surface. It was a dull grey, chipped with age along the curve. It sliced effortlessly through the water toward her.
    She didn’t move, treading water and watching as the fin circled her. The water seemed to chill around her with each pass. She wasn’t sure if she should make a break for the shore or remain where she was,