It was a big mistake. I ordered the Sailor’s Platter at Red Lobster. Fried shrimp, scampi, baked fish and potatoes. Sounds great, but frozen seafood is a roulette wheel and I didn’t take home any prizes. By mid-afternoon, I have a mild headache, though that didn’t stop me and my group of friends from making a trip to the ice cream store. You know, to wash down the fish. By dark it is snowing. My mild headache has turned blinding, my belly feels like a live animal is chasing its tail around and around, and the accompanying hallucinatory state has led me to believe that the metaphor might actually be true. I lay down to sleep though I am quickly jolted from bed by the sound of wheels squealing and the deep clunk of a transmission whacking in and out of gear. Last week was the third time someone had broken into my truck in the five years that I’ve been here. They smashed out the window and turned the whole interior over, leaving my stereo, speakers, and tools right where I left them. The window repair guy said it’s meth. He’s seen it a hundred times, addicts passing over valuables looking only for spare change. He tells me that there’s no pawn shops open in the middle of the night and my tools wouldn’t have done them any good.

But that was last week. Who knows, I think as I get out of bed convinced that the badger in my gut is still after his tail. Maybe this week they’ve decided to take the whole truck. I amble towards the front door, pull the blinds and discover that my pickup is right where I left it. The sound is coming from some fool convinced that he’s going to get his conversion van up the snow packed hill. I watch as he tries again and again, each time dropping the van into gear as though the additional machismo punch will somehow overcome the physics behind the problem. Each time he fails, sliding the van sideways along the row of parked cars on the street. He hasn’t hit one yet, but with each passing try, those odds increase.

I tell myself that I’m going to go out for a drive because I’m worried that the man in the van is going to wreck the side of my truck. That’s the reasonable cause for my midnight getaway, but the truth of the matter is that I love driving in the quiet snow when there’s nobody out spare the infrequent plow truck and the feral cats that have collected themselves against the warmth of my front door. Driving in the middle of the night is time to think and, in this case, time to let the cold, quiet night soothe my pounding head and burning stomach. I pull on my boots and a jacket. The cats scatter into the falling snow as I open the front door. The man in the van is still at it when I pull away from the curb. No need for four-wheel drive, just easy on the clutch, easier on the brake, and remember that the steering wheel does no good on ice. These are lessons that the van man needs, but he seems like he’s in no shape to hear them as he spins sideways back down the block for the twentieth time.

Denver checks in at roughly 30 percent Latino. My neighborhood is closer to 70. It’s a majority mix of new immigrants and old families that have been here for generations. The resulting strip of businesses reflects this demographic. Spanish-only restaurants that owe their roots to Mexico’s Pacific coast. Western wear stores filled with exotic Norteño fashions, ostrich and alligator skin boots, flashy pressed shirts and those narrow brimmed cowboy hats with the sides pulled tight against the hatband. The stores are colorful, covered in murals, keeping with a tradition that prefers that a sign be painted onto a building rather than affixed to it with bolts. In some senses, it is little Mexico.

Except for the snow and the ice and the cold.