Always, I pay cash, rather than using the Universal Credit Card which most people carry these days. The bars are generally dives, located in out-of-the-way places.

Sometimes Don Walsh shows up, sits down next to me and orders a beer. We strike up a conversation, then take a walk. Sometimes he doesn't show up. He never misses two in a row, though. And the second time he always brings me some cash.

A couple of months ago, on the day when summer came bustling into the world, I was seated at a table in the back of the Inferno, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It was a cool evening, as they all are in that place, and the air had been clean and the stars very bright as I walked up the flagstone streets of that national monument. After a time, I saw Don enter, wearing a dark, fake-wool suit and yellow sport shirt, opened at the neck. He moved to the bar, ordered something, turned and let his eyes wander about the tables. I nodded when he grinned and waved. He moved toward me with a glass in one hand and a Carta Blanca in the other.

I know you, he said.

Yeah, I think so. Have a seat?

He pulled out a chair and seated himself across from me at the small table. The ashtray was filled to overflowing, but not because of me. The odor of tequila was on the breeze, make that draft , from the opened front of the narrow barroom, and all about us two-dimensional nudes fought with bullfight posters for wall space.

Your name is ... ?

Frank, I said, pulling it out of me air. Wasn't it in New Orleans ... ?

Yeah, at Mardi Gras, a couple years ago.

That's right. And you're ... ?

George.

Right. I remember now. We went drinking together. Played poker all night long. Had a hell of a good time.