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But I hide from such matters. I am a coward by nature and I do not like cities, loud sounds, guns, violence, or open sewage systems.

Twice I was at a fresh kill, and the freshness does matter, and flies buzzed up into my face from the blood. I cannot remember the names of the dead, hardly anything about them, but the flies buzz in my face all the time, follow me into good restaurants, trail me to fine venues where people read poems or play serious music in the calm air of the fortresses of culture.

Perhaps you think I am mad? I can see that look in your eyes, and yes, I understand why you have your reservations. But then you do not have to listen to those two women talking into the night. I cannot decide what is worse: when they are crying or when they are laughing.

And something has changed inside, something in a deep part, near that place we can never locate but often claim is the core of our being. In the past, I have covered kidnappings, murders, financial debacles, the mayhem that my species is capable of committing. I spent three years mired in reporting sex crimes. There is little within me that has not been battered or wrenched or poisoned. But the path I followed with Miss Sinaloa proved all my background to be so much nothing. I have not entered the country of death, but rather the country of killing. And I have learned in this country that killing is good.

For years, I toyed with a history of my earth, and I found that the way I could understand my earth was through its elemental fury.

Freeman Dyson, a major physicist, once tried to express the allure of power and killing. “I have felt it myself,” he warned. “The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles—this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

I think Dyson erred in one detail: This attraction to slaughter and power is not simply a temptation of the mind.

I found this glitter in a room with flies buzzing off the fresh blood on the floor and walls. A candle glittered in the corner by a crucifix. The bodies had been taken out, the machine gun fire had died. There was nothing left but the flies and the flame.

Imagine living in a place where you can kill anyone you wish and nothing happens except that they fall dead. You will not be arrested. Your name will not be in the newspapers. You can continue on with your life. And your killing. You can take a woman and rape her for days and nothing will happen. If you choose, if in some way that woman displeases you, well, you can kill her after raping her. Rest assured, nothing will happen to you because of your actions.

Enough. I can barely speak of this change within me. I can hardly expect others to understand.

How did this change come to pass?

It began with a woman.

In the beginning, I was not looking for Miss Sinaloa. In fact, I had never heard of her and had no reason, no reason at all, to think she even existed. I remember clearly, it was a bright winter day, the sun poured down on me, and the desert seemed so kind and generous after spending time in the colonias and bad bars of the border city.

Suddenly, she appeared in my life.

Miss Sinaloa is . . . waiting.

Relax.

This is a nice car, no?

We’re gonna have us a time.

I have been to the far country with her and now I am back.

The air of morning tastes fresh, the sunrise murdered the night,

and now the light caresses my face. I chew on ash and bone, this has become

my customary breakfast. I drink the glass of blood for my health.

She does not speak. I no longer listen.

The far country lingers on my clothes and