but i had a hunch that something i needed was there , somewhere , and so i often wandered out there in the nights when carmelita was working her second job ( or said she was ) or off with her study groups ( she said she was studying ) , and i would stroll amidst the old slabs of the ghost town not suspecting that soon enough my father would be dead and my girlfriend would leave me with a mortal wound in my heart never to heal in this world , and that tess would run off with a bass player ( again ) , and janet would light out in disgust at our father and i would be left alone ( well , with a pig ) , out in the high dry sticks the city was going to build to but never did , and i would be left alone , and in being left alone and seemingly without the grace of god , i would be lost , and then tempted , and then trapped by my temptations into doing horrible things .