Of all the parking lots at UCLA, this one is my favorite. A narrow strip of asphalt hidden behind a screen of lilac bushes. Six parking spots total, all squeezed against what used to be some kind of loading dock but is now just an elevated sidewalk running past the bricked-up bays. An alley overlooked by the UCLA campus map, undocumented, secret. Sometimes I encounter other furtive parkers here. We swear each other to silence with wary nods.

I emerge from a haze of lilac pollen and zigzag between giant cement planters placed to keep anybody from driving a truck bomb into North Campus. Then I’m cutting through the world-renowned Murphy Sculpture Garden, five acres of manicured lawn dotted with works in metal. Appreciative types are always gawking at the sculptures, their plaques rich with surnames like Arp and Moore and Rodin. I know I’m a philistine by comparison. To me it looks like a scrapyard strewn across a golf course.

My destination is the Research Library, a throwback to the bad old days when UCLA wasn’t swimming in alumni donations and corporate sponsorships. The four-story building doesn’t make any kind of architectural statement other than “we built this fucker cheap”. From a distance it resembles a giant slatted Lego with an inverse portico carved out. Up close it’s poured concrete and right angles. The utilitarian vibe continues inside — lots of plain wooden tables and chairs, metal shelving stuffed with books, fluorescent lights that glare off the tile. Welcome to the native habitat of the rare and endangered graduate student. I take the stairs two at a time, bounding up to the second floor and the East Asian collection.

It’s amazing how much time I can waste on the books full of ukiyo-e, the 17th-century Japanese woodblock prints of the “Floating World”, that ancient Tokyo of theaters and teahouses and brothels. I linger over the stylized depictions of then-famous actors and beautiful courtesans, the cityscapes made of pagodas and spined bridges and rain sleeting down. Those flat colorful prints are so alluring I want to step right into them. Art at its best, romanticizing a world that was mostly dire and open-sewered.

But soon it’s sayonara to the Tokugawa period and konnichiwa to the Meiji period, since I’m doing a comparative research paper on Meiji Japan and Porfirian Mexico. By any developmental metric imaginable — GDP, miles of railroad, steel output, infant mortality, you name it — both countries were equivalent at the dawn of the 20th century. But in the 21st century Japan is an economic power and Mexico is a basket case. The question we’re always asking in Latin America — what went wrong on the way to the future?

Somewhere against my spine a cellphone starts vibrating. I unlimber my backpack and grope through its guts until I find the familiar clamshell. “Yeah?”

“Hi. It’s Nooshin.” Sometimes an email in my inbox, rarely a voice in my ear. “Why are you whispering?”

“Because I’m in the library. The East Asian section. Let me get over by, uh…” I weave back and forth through the massive rows of books, trying to get a good signal.

“Is this a bad time? I can call back.”

“Christ. Hang on.” I finally get decent reception by a slit window. Its bar of sunlight is hot on my chest, making the rest of me feel cold. “Okay, that’s better. So how you doing?”

“I’m doing alright. Why are you in the East Asian section of the library if you study Mexico?”

My reflection smiles bitterly in the narrow glass. “Actually, I wanted to do my Ph.D. in East Asian history. But I can’t hack the language requirement. I took 2 years of Japanese as an undergrad. Never learned a damn thing. Meanwhile I drove down to Mexico that one summer and came home fluent in Spanish, no problemo.”

“Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.” The words seem directed at herself, not me.

“How’s Saman?”

“Oh, you know…” I can picture her glancing away, hands writhing in her lap, fretting with that gaudy diamond ring. “Do you think it’s weird that I’m married?” she suddenly asks.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, um…” Nooshin sighs. “I guess I don’t know what I mean.”

“You’re my friend.” I say it just to say it, a reflex to lessen her guilt, but the words come with matching emotions. I’m a little surprised, a little dismayed. I thought I knew how to guard against an attachment.

“Yeah.” Then stronger. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

I turn around to warm my back in the window’s sunlight. “Did you get that Blue Oyster Cult song I sent to your Gmail account?”

“The Godzilla mp3? I love that song!” She breaks into the refrain. “Oh no, they say he’s got to go — Go go Godzilla — Oh no, there goes Tokyo — Go go Godzilla!” A warble of laughter fills my ear. “I even played it for my nephew and niece. They were pretending to be Godzilla, stomping around the living room. Cutest thing ever.”

“So when are we getting together again?”

Her voice turns shy. “Well, that’s kinda why I’m calling. I have to see my parents in East LA. My sister is driving me up. Will you be around? Maybe we could just, um….I don’t know. Hang out for a while?”

I consider saying yes and I consider saying no, contemplating my last best chance to bail. Her voice is stoking a vulnerable queasiness in my chest, right behind my solar plexus. What I’m feeling right now is why I hooked up with Phoebe for four years, why I have acquaintances instead of friends, why I’m even more distant from my family than geography implies. And all I need to do is make that choice again.

But there’s just something about Nooshin. Something that got under my skin, into my head, through my ribcage. Cautiously, as if I’m entering a swimming pool for the first time in years, I ease myself into caring and say, “Yeah. I’ll be around.”