I pass the group of Spanish girls. They have a little overnight camp set up about a hundred yards from my bungalow. They’ve slipped shorts or baggy cotton pants on over their bikini bottoms in deference to the marginally cooler evening air. Two of them are walking in from the tree line that stretches the length of the beach, their arms full of deadwood for a fire. The girl with the nice smile is sitting cross-legged on one of the blankets they have spread on the sand, braiding the hair of the girl in front of her. There are five of them, none can be more than twenty-three. I try to remember what I was doing when I was twenty-three. I was still in college, studying something I never used. Christ, why wasn’t I camped out on Mexican beaches with girls like these?

I watch her quick hands weaving hair as I walk past. She looks up at me, smiles again.

– Buenas noches.

In that Spanish Spanish accent.

– Buenas noches.

She tilts her head toward my bungalow.

– Su casa?

– Mi casa.

– Bonito

– Gracias.

Tossing the strands of hair between her fingers the whole time, slipping a rubber band from her wrist when she gets to the end of the braid, cleverly twisting it into place. The girls with the wood arrive and dump it in a pile next to the blanket. She hops up, starts digging a hollow in the sand for the fire and gives me a little nod as I continue on to the bungalow. Behind me I hear Spanish chattered far too quickly for me to follow. There’s a great deal of laughter and I get the distinct feeling I’m being talked about. But it’s nice to be talked about by pretty girls, no matter what they might be saying.

THE BUNGALOW really isn’t much, but she’s right, it’s bonito in its way. Wood walls up to about waist level, topped by screen windows that circle the one-room building, with heavy storm shutters. The whole thing is set on pilings that lift it a foot above the sand, and topped with the same palm thatching as The Bucket.