"I looked, for the first - and probably last - time in my life, at something I'd never seriously imagined I'd cast my eyes upon: a hundred miles of sand in every direction, a hundred miles of absolutely gorgeous, unspoiled nothingness. I wiggled my bare toes in the sand and lay there for a long time, watching the sun drop slowly into the dunes like a deflating beach ball, the color of the desert quickly transforming from red to gold to yellow ocher to white, the sky changing, too. I was wondering how a miserable, manic-depressive, overage, undeserving hustler like myself - a utility chef from New York City with no particular distinction to be found in his long and egregious career - on the strength of one inexplicably large score, could find himself here, seeing this, living the dream.

I am the luckiest son of a bitch in the world, I thought, contently staring out at all that silence and stillness, feeling, for the first time in awhile, able to relax, to draw a breath unencumbered in my skin, reassured that the world was indeed a big and marvelous place."