  “It’s a night for strange butterflies,” she said, tripping over her jaw in giggles. “Better wear a slicker!” He tipped the ash that had backed up an inch on his square, slapped the waitress on the ass, and turned on a black boot heel to leave. “I’m not kidding about the butterflies,” she sing-sang after him from behind the counter. “We had some Sicilian lepidopterists breeze through here just yesterday, said to watch for an opalescent haze forming over that mesa there to the southeast, and then, blammo!
Hope you got some good wipers on that rig, ‘cause you’re gonna need ‘em once the sun’s gone.” He stared at her only long enough to adjust the tilt of his outback and take a long pull on his rollie, pondering how on earth this woman had ended up in Ojo Caliente after beating a Pulitzer-winning chemist for most-sought-after mensa recruit (a purely social construct, of course) in Seattle last year. “Goodnight, Kate.” The tiny bell tinkled and the ancient screen slammed as he left the café. She always did claim to love waiting tables. He understood this (or anything else about her for that matter) no better or more deeply now than he had in four years of living with her.
Ah, fer fook’s sake , he thought to himself in a cheap Scottish brogue. Why do I think thoughts in badly executed ethnic accents anyway? Throwing Kate the Waitress and Former Lover a crooked grin, he loped into the gloaming, all orange and hot, torpid from the day’s heat and no wind. His truck smelled like gasoline, sun baked vinyl, rust, tobacco, and the desert. Once it had been white, but was now caked with an impenetrable stratum of fine dirt and pocked with gravel scars, stump wounds, and hail dents. Getting the old girl to start required patience, perseverance, and a good deal of magic. Once going, dogs, who normally adore trucks, fled in terror. Abdul had once said of the beast that even the normal encrustation of smashed insects in the grille and around the headlights was less than average — “Because they can hear you coming and ride those thermals higher, man!” he would say. Between Ojo and Abiquiu, the truck was fêted, even if Ganz had only lived there just under a year. It was rumored that the brothers at Christ In the Desert said special Masses just to ensure the safe passage of innocent travelers on the 84 in case Ganz might be out on some errand. Even the dark Penitentes recounted legends of the truck in their gatherings late into the night.
Given the way New Mexico itself seems to sculpt the lives and souls of all its children unlike any other place on earth, it would not be long before the truck became a part of the local collective unconscious, to be remembered in hushed tones for years to come, even after its erstwhile driver was long moldering or scattered to the four winds. Hauling himself into the cab, Ganz noticed some paper slipped under the left wiper. He reached around to pluck it out.
The outer envelope, of very fine apparently handmade paper, was inscribed with the following: Ganz Anderson, to whom belongs the Flame of Barbelo and the Secret Scourge of Abraxas, and whose Fate is unmatched among all living. Not the sort of thing you expect to find on your filthy truck’s windshield outside a greasy diner in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico at twilight on the 3rd of July.
Not, in fact, the sort of thing you expect to find anywhere, ever really. Ganz pondered this for a moment, stubbed out what remained of his rollie in an already full ashtray, and tossed the still-sealed missive on the seat beside him. Nonplussed but casual, he coaxed the truck into life and pulled out of the parking lot, heading southeast toward the mesa Kate had mentioned, over which a sort of milky smog did in fact seem to hang.
Somethin’ in those peppers maybe. He recalled the first time he’d taken this road, years ago with two buddies on a road trip, brain full of LSD and Diamanda Galas on the tape deck. The sky looked almost identical to that long past night right now as he eased the accelerator down and the earth’s movement faithfully offered up the illusion of a gorgeous desert sunset, resplendent with cenocephallic cloud forms and faint pinpricks of starlight behind beginning to struggle through the remains of the day.
Whereas moments ago, he’d enjoyed a simple repast of huevos rancheros and fresh tortillas, had the characteristically random conversation with Kate, said wassup to the local psychic/palmist, Mr. Jorge Lacuna, and weakly considered his waning sexual prime and lack of a suitable partner, Ganz now found his mind engulfed in a strange orchestra of discordant themes, like Stravinsky being played by a children’s ensemble. There are moments in life when one feels the subtle shift in pressure just before the Fates deal a heavy blow. It’s like the slow climb up of a rollercoaster, and then that teensy little pause at the very top before plunging into extended chaos and potential death. Danger de Mort read the signs on French electric poles. In that sense, too, it’s like that quiet wrenching ecstasy just before orgasm, or the way the sky smells before a lightening strike. For Ganz Anderson, this was one of those moments. He’d had enough of them in his 33 years to know what they felt like, and having recognized this as one, his heart rate increased and he felt a chill in spite of the vinyl of the truck seat still retaining the day’s heat. Pull over, stop the truck, get out, and breathe. 
