Gone to Mexico

He vanished over the border. It’s been a hundred years and still no trace. I’m waiting outside the Starbucks in Buzzards Bay. I could be waiting for him to stroll up, a copy of The Devil’s Dictionary under his arm. A woman at one of the tables is talking on her cell about cutting everyone’s hours. She’s twenty-something and almost pretty. I watch the hellish heat rise in waves from the blacktop. “It is what it is,” the woman says. She glances at me and then away – not ashamed, just uninterested. Every day is a heart hooked up to a monitor, another cat shot with an arrow.