The Mexican Year

Ten minutes early, Nick roars into the parking lot. I’ve been watching for his royal blue Ford Explorer through the McDonald’s window with reflections dancing in it. He looks hiker chic in wraparound shades, a black thermal vest that shows off his muscular arms, bush pants and those well-worn hiking boots I remember from Tijuana. I run outside and into a mutually awkward moment. He’s fumbling with a hat to cover his baldness, I’m tossing my hair to cover my crooked eye.

I think a man tells you a lot with his driving. Saman, he just slouches behind the wheel and meanders toward his destination. My father is a mess of complaining nerves. Nick is a calculated trajectory of steering wheel yanks and stickshift aggressions. Bellicose, yet somehow careful about it. Impatient to get where he’s going. Willing to bend the rules if it gets him there faster.

“Does everyone drive like this in Iowa?” I ask nervously, as San Diego alternatively blurs and freezes in the windshield.

“Iowa?” He glances over at me. “I learned how to drive like this in Mexico. The roads there are a fucking nightmare. Especially if you’ve got American plates.”

I think back to the ride home from Tijuana that he gave me. The way he squeezed through dangerous gaps, tailgated cars until they darted out of the way, ran red lights. “Here it seems kinda…unnecessary, don’t you think?”

Nick grins. To himself, not me. I feel like I’ve failed a test of some kind. But after that he blends into the rest of the sedate traffic on Clairemont Boulevard, mollifying me.

On the wide-open asphalt of I-805 we’re back to rocketing. We fly around the massive towering cloverleaf that transitions into I-8, then settle into the far left lane. “See? Fast lane, faster lane, fastest lane,” Nick says, pointing at the lines of vehicles snaking toward the mountains. There is no slow lane in his worldview. The shell of Qualcomm Stadium moves past his adam’s apple.

“Did you find a place in Tijuana yesterday?” I ask.

“Did I ever! $300 a month, dude. It’s a $350-a-month place, maybe even $400 in the right neighborhood, but there was an airport flight path discount. And a border fence discount. And a no-border-crossing-anywhere-convenient discount.” His enthusiasm ebbs. “God, I’m gonna hate living there.”

“$300 a month doesn’t seem like much.”

“Too much for most Mexicans, that’s how much $300 a month is.” Nick shrugs with his free arm, the one slapping his thigh in time to the radio. “I could’ve found a place in Tijuana for $10 a month. A shack without electricity and running water. Like camping out for a year. But I’m not that desperate.”

The concrete ribbon of I-8 summits and dips into El Cajon, a far-flung suburb shouldered by small craggy mountains. I tell Nick that I ran “El Cajon” through Google’s translation program and it came back with “the drawer”.

“Nah, not in relation to geography. Then it means ‘box’. Usually ‘big box’, otherwise it’d be el cajonito or a similar diminutive.” He waves at the mountains eroding into suburbia. “See? The perfect place to let your cattle wander. Like a big box canyon.”

“Oh,” I say.

I-8 keeps winding higher and higher into the Sierra Nevadas, which look innocuous from the coast but craggy and hostile close up. We’re discussing why I picked Canyon Sin Nombre — literally “Canyon Without A Name” — for our dayhiking destination. I bubble about the horrific genesis of the canyon’s name. Canyon Sin Nombre because people — explorers, cattle rustlers, escapees from the nearby territorial prison — went in but never came out. No one lived to name the canyon.

Then I rehash the other dayhikes that appealed to me, all because of their colorful names:

• Alcoholic Pass
• Flat Cat Canyon
• Fry Creek
• Hellhole Canyon
• Horsethief Canyon
• Jackass Flat
• Secret Canyon

“Secret Canyon,” Nick echoes, tapping his lower lip. “I think I read that Hardy Boys mystery when I was a kid.”

“I was pretty intrigued by Fry Creek. Supposedly it gets so hot in summer that the creek boils. Too bad it’s November.”

“Alcoholic Pass. Gotta be a helluva story there. What is it?”

“Um…” I flip through notes I made from books at the local library. “I don’t know.”

“I’m guessing an unimportant drunk discovered an important pass.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say.

Eventually we finish descending from the Sierra Nevadas to the flat featureless desert that unrolls like carpet toward the Imperial Valley. Nick drives even faster on the treacherous two-lane blacktop of Sunrise Highway than he did on I-8. “This is just like about half of Mexico!” he grins. Both hands on the wheel. Staring forward intently. Hyperalert. I brace myself and hope the seatbelt holds if we hit anything.

Then we arrive at the pulloff framed by clear blue sky and empty desert and not much else. He goes around to the back of the truck and busies himself with his backpack. Stuffing things into it. At first I watch in fascination, then wariness. “That seems like more food than we need for a dayhike.”

“It is. Because if something goes wrong, then it’s not a dayhike anymore. Right?” Nick pauses to scrutinize me. “This time of year it gets down to 45 degrees at night, maybe colder. That’s what the extra food is for. And the blanket.” He holds up a tiny rolled blanket. “And the waterproof matches.” A container dances in front of my face.

I point at a weird telescoping baton. “What’s that?”

“Collapsible splint. In case one of us breaks an arm or a leg.” He notices my alarm and smiles reassuringly. “Relax. In all my years of hiking I’ve never had to use it.”

I dig through more stuff. Duct tape. GPS unit. Topographical maps, except with weird colored swaths across them.

“Those are old aeronautical maps. Topographical maps with navigation beacons and stuff overlaid. Got them at a garage sale,” Nick says. “I wouldn’t use them to fly anywhere, but the geography is still good.”

The landscape is a dazzling tilt into the unbelievably harsh — sand, rock, and whatever flora can survive. The sun is distant and warm on our backs, not the inferno of summer. My Nikes mirror his hiking boots, long strides that eat up the canyon mouth and lead us into the rippled sand. 10,000 years ago this wasn’t a desert, just a plain that flash-flooded regularly.

I want to talk about the ancient history looming around us, but Nick is interrogating me. Gently, but still. I feel like a bug under his microscope. How I cope with my crooked and wandering eye, why I’ve never been back to Iran, what my relationship with Nasrin is like. Questions I can’t answer without revealing vast insights into myself. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about me at all.

After a while his questions trail off into defeat. “Let’s climb up to the canyon lip over there and have lunch.” His outstretched arm is pointing to a distant rocky precipice eroding on both sides and dotted with shadows. We slog across a huge sandy wash and start climbing. I follow his backpack up the steepening grade, then his tight butt, then his hiking boots.

The canyon wall becomes an almost-vertical scramble, then levels off. The shadowy dots I saw from afar became cactus plants close up, mostly two different kinds — flattened pincushions, and thorny branching dolls. “Beavertail and teddybear cacti,” Nick announces, pointing out their angry spines. “They’re both from the opuntia family. There’s even cacti from that family in Iowa.”

We cross a short broad space hammocked between two ledges. From the canyon floor this ribbed cliff was intimidatingly huge. Up close it’s small enough to climb. It’s the reverse of how perspective is supposed to work, that things turn smaller when you draw close to them.

In between outcroppings we find a steep arroyo leading upwards. The eroding rock is a tumble of jagged steps, one after another, higher and higher. In front of me Nick is climbing tirelessly. Every once in a while he twists around to check on my progress. I’m almost dizzy with exertion, but too proud to fall behind.

We reach the top in a bright thick wind. It’s lovely to stand there with the sandy rock dropping in folds beneath us. The canyon floor is far below, a distant waypoint to the endless tableau of desert. Turning around we can’t see the blue glimmer of the Explorer, only the paved road disappearing and reappearing as it threads through the inhospitable landscape.

On Nick’s face is a rapturous expression. One hand is clamped to his Kangol hat. “This is fucking awesome, dude!”

“Yeah!” My face hurts from smiling so much. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. A dusty haze hangs over the desert horizon in a fine misty net. Far-off sandstorms blowing.

“Let’s get out of the wind,” he says. “You’re gonna freeze to death.”

I’m surprised to discover my bare arms are prickling with goosebumps. I untie my hoodie from my waist and shrug into it, following Nick over to a massive boulder that blocks the wind.

He finds a flat rock and sets up the tiny portable stove. I’m regaled with stories about childhood hunting trips — for whitetail deer, wild turkey, grouse — as the water boils. Then he dumps in a ziploc bag of homemade ingredients. “Mushroom and tomato couscous,” he announces, stirring the mixture with a plastic spoon.

I’ve never had a man cook for me before. Except at a restaurant, maybe. I watch Nick’s motions in fascination, knowing them from the inside out, feeling strangely disembodied.

Complementing the meal are two miniature screwtop bottles of chardonnay, one for each of us. “A toast,” he says, clinking his bottle against mine. I watch the pale liquid inside it still again. After a while he asks, “What’s the matter?”

I shrug miserably. “I don’t really, um…you know.”

“You don’t drink? Sorry. My bad. I thought Iranians — Persians — were mostly cool with alcohol.”

“Mostly,” I agree. But my family and in-laws aren’t most Iranian families.

“More for me, then.” Nick begins to reach for my bottle.

“No, it’s okay. I want to try it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” The urge is rebellious, and something deeper at the same time.

“Alright, let’s try this again. A toast,” he says, clinking our bottles again.

“To what?” I ask.

“You tell me.” Nick tips the tiny bottle against his lips. Through it the sun makes a rainbow on his chest. I’m dismayed by the realization that his pecs are bigger than my boobs. “Come on, Nooshin. Gimme a toast.”

“To future happiness.”

That just makes him laugh. “How about this? To all the luckless bastards who died out there, looking at what we’re looking at right now.”

“Canyon Sin Nombre,” I murmur, and swallow a mouthful of wine. A place you go even when you know better. A place you go when there’s nowhere else left.

———————

Hours later Nick is telling me about the summer he drove from Iowa to Chiapas and back. Alone. 4,000 miles roundtrip. High school Spanish when he left, fluent when he got home. He turns his handsome face toward me, talking lazily, making jokes about his misadventures. It’s evening and growing dark with a moon sliver out the window. He leans in, lit in the dashboard glow, looking back and forth between me and the highway. We’re sealed off, traveling through a private world.

His eyes meet mine. His icy blue eyes.

In that instant I realize something has come over me. Something much bigger than running away from Saman for longer than two weeks. I’m in a new and different state, and Nick is proof of it. My life is falling apart, but I don’t have terror in my heart. I just feel serene. Every ending loses its power when you’re finally there.

I keep the revelation to myself, knowing Nick wouldn’t understand. Knowing he would confuse his presence with cause, rather than effect. Knowing it would probably freak him out. But it makes me happy the rest of the way back to San Diego, and after he drops me off at the same McDonald’s the happiness doesn’t go away.

Most Americans don’t budget. You still hear about it from time to time, those studies reporting that 60% or 70% or whatever percentage of households don’t even try to understand their means, let alone live within them. That’s what credit cards are for — and second mortgages, and refinancings, and student loans, and every other debt instrument that supports our lifestyle of privilege. Hardly a luxury limited to American consumers. The federal government is running the biggest budget deficit ever, numbers with so many zeros they don’t even fit on my calculator. Schwarzenegger and the assclowns in Sacramento are solving the budget crisis of the world’s 6th-largest economy in the rhetorical sense only. Corporations break accounting rules with numbing frequency.

I’m lucky, if you can call it that. I grew up on a farm in Iowa. 800 acres of corn and soybeans sprawling flatly across Worth County, the living definition of drivethru country — blink when you’re driving through on I-35 and you’ll miss it. On a farm you can’t separate life from economics. The family is a business, the business is a family. Mom and Dad were my bosses, but they didn’t pay in love. They gave me an allowance for doing chores every morning and every night.

Maria is temporarily relocating to Dallas with $31,000 in her checking account, the flattered recipient of the Hercules Gutierrez Dissertation Research Fellowship — and Javier’s leftover funding. The funding that should’ve gone to me, if there was a bone of fairness in Hercules’ body. Instead he keeps jawing about the cost-of-living difference between Mexico and the United States. How I’m going there, and Maria is staying here. His need to pump enough funding to her.

Except there’s no such thing as enough funding with Maria. She’s a typical American. She’ll just spend whatever she gets, then spend some more. Forget a year of fieldwork — I bet she’s back at UCLA by spring. Might as well just take that money out in the parking lot and burn it.

I’m facing life in Mexico on $12,000 a year. That’s $1,000 a month, with zero in reserve as mad money. If I stick to my swinging bachelor lifestyle and allocate 30% to housing costs, that means I need to find someplace in Tijuana for $300 a month. Someplace cheap but decent. Problem is, most of Tijuana’s 1 million residents are looking for the same exact thing. Worse, about 100,000 of those residents swarm across the border every day, commuting to jobs in San Diego — and earning more money than I do. Competition is cutthroat for someplace cheap but decent.

That’s why I’m touring this grim neighborhood with one Mr. Sedesco, a stooped figure who reminds me of a defrocked Catholic priest. He’s the kind of leasing agent you wind up with when you keep using words like “cheap” and “no, cheaper” in Tijuana. An American who escaped from a Norman Rockwell portrait. Hornrims and balding brylcreamed hair. An unlit pipe is clutched in one liverspotted hand. He keeps gnawing on the stem with perfect dentures. “I got the patch,” he explains miserably, flashing a wattled bicep.

“There it is,” Sedesco says, pointing at a tiny cinderblock house with heavily-barred windows. “Sorry I didn’t remember right away. Getting old, memory ain’t what it used to be.” He shuffles across the tiny front lawn of patio pavers, producing a huge ring of keys from his pocket. Then he begins trying them in the lock, a slow trembling process, one metallic fumble after another.

I’m looking over my shoulder at his old Crown Victoria, blotchy from years in the Mexican sun. Sedesco paid a dirt-encrusted kid to watch it. Not because that rustbucket on wheels is at risk in this neighborhood, but because he does business here. Got to grease the palms, keep the natives friendly. The kid is sitting on the hood and throwing rocks at feral dogs in the street. He looks our direction and waves.

Inside is about what you’d expect from the residential equivalent of a postage stamp. The walkthrough is brief, a few strides in this direction, a few strides in that direction. Small empty living room, even smaller kitchen and bedroom. Cement floors. Appliances sit there like dead things, light switches may or may not work — all the light bulbs are missing. Then the only thing left is a closed door leading into the bathroom. I try not to go there, just lean in and lean out. Bathrooms in Mexico can be a horror show.

A plane thunders overhead on ascent from the nearby airport, stirring dust and making the walls shake. Sedesco is trying to yell something but has to give up. He gestures skyward and shrugs, as if there’s no explaining God. When the house sinks back into silence, he says brightly, “The airport is only open during the day.”

“But the border does its business all night.” I jerk a thumb in the direction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, a rusting sheaf of corrugated aluminum at the end of the block. “I bet the Border Patrol helicopters and humvees are deafening.”

Sedesco isn’t paid to give up easily. “The illegals are mostly crossing out in the desert now. Even Arizona.” He smiles hopefully. “The noise probably ain’t that bad.”

I’m shaking my head. “Seriously, what American wants to live in this part of Colonia Aviacion? The gringo districts are on the beach side of Tijuana. Right now we’re standing in purgatory.”

“Plenty of Americans want to live here. It’s halfway between the two border crossings.” Sedesco’s trump card — location, location, location. The San Ysidro crossing is a few miles to the west, Otay Mesa is a few miles to the east. Commuting to a job in San Diego wouldn’t be cake, but it would be close. He gnaws on his pipe some more. “Do I gotta rent this to the next feller?”

“That depends on the price.”

“$400 a month.”

I laugh. Just laugh, that’s all.

He raises his mottled hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. $350.”

I stop laughing. “$300.”

“Jeez Louise! That ain’t nothing in my pocket, kid!”

I consider the elderly stooped man for a moment. Trying to gauge whether his desperation is real or feigned. He’s a retiree, obviously. Stretching his Social Security checks south of the border. Not married, but probably shacked up with a mexicana. Working on straight commission. His thick horn-rimmed glasses magnify every blink.

“$300 a month, and I’ll give you $100 as a thank-you.” A bribe, basically. I get a great deal, he still gets paid, and the leasing company puts a tenant in the property.

“$100 ain’t much to me,” Sedesco grumbles, mulling it over. I can hear his dentures clack-clack-clack on the pipestem. “Gimme $200. I won’t even peg it at $300 and make you work down.”

We shake on it warily, both wondering if we got the best of the deal. His hand is papery and brittle in mine. Then the moment passes and it’s too late for regrets. Mr. Sedesco is my new best friend, reaching up to clap my shoulder and congratulate me on my new home. Or something like that. Jet engines screaming overhead are the soundtrack to his lips moving.

Tonight I’m filling the kitchen with the mouthwatering aromas of my homemade potstickers, the kind where I steep the prawns in sake and add cubed eggplant and shave the ginger instead of dice it, just like I saw on Iron Chef once. Nasrin is setting the table behind me, clinking glasses and plates and silverware. Suddenly there’s a pause that elongates into silence. “Crap,” she eventually mutters. The word is a dull shard of anger.

I glance over my shoulder. She hovers motionless beside the table, staring down at the place settings. All six of them. Her hands were a reflexive blur of habit, setting the table for everyone. Including Saman.

I can see the fight coming. I can always see it coming. With panic strangling my heart I try to head it off, calling her over to the stove, “Can you give me a hand with the — ”

“You’re not trying to fix your marriage,” Nasrin implores the place settings, too angry to look at me. “You have some marital troubles and what do you do? You run away to your sister’s house without even telling your husband!”

I watch potstickers fry.

“If I was you, I never would’ve left my husband’s side. I would’ve gone to the imam at the mosque. Or maybe my mother-in-law, if I thought he was cheating on me. Counseling with an elder and praying for God’s help. That is how you fix your marriage!” I listen to her bootheels click back and forth on the tile, pacing angrily. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t your respect yourself and your marriage anymore? Have you stopped praying to God?”

My silence is infuriating her, but opening my mouth will be even worse.

The bootheels click to a halt. “Beg Saman for his forgiveness. Promise to be a good wife again. Then see your imam and explain what’s wrong. You must work to make your marriage better. You, Nooshin!”

I try to picture myself acting out that scenario. It doesn’t work. A humiliating and one-sided reconciliation won’t solve anything. Saman isn’t the good spouse, and I’m not the bad one. Besides, I don’t want to talk about our marriage. I don’t even want to think about it.

Nasrin pushes me aside with a disgusted shriek. The potstickers are burning into charred shapes and oily smoke. I watch from someplace slightly outside my body — a little off to the side, about shoulder high — as she dumps the pan into the sink and runs cold water over it, sending a gush of steam toward the ceiling.

“I swear, you can’t do anything right!” My sister’s mouth is all wrong. I see her lips move, but I don’t hear the words until a few heartbeats later. After I’ve had a chance to brace myself. She doesn’t mean to hurt me, not really. She’s just angry.

Inside the townhome a cellphone rings, startling me back into the moment. “Aunt Nooshin! It’s your phone!” my nephew announces.

“Your husband is calling to check on you,” Nasrin snaps. “He must be worried sick about you!”

“I don’t think it’s Uncle Saman, ” he says, trotting into the kitchen with hand outstretched. The cellphone display says NICK ROBERTS.

Nasrin tilts up at me in full glower, making me feel every inch of my miserable height. She wants to explode, but not in front of my nephew. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now I need to make something for dinner, since you ruined the potstickers.” Her charm bracelet jangles in violent cooking gestures.

On my way past the table I glance down at the six place settings, perfectly spaced on the embroidered periphery of the tablecloth. The utter anonymity of the scene is discomfiting and reassuring at the same time. I feel like I walked into a strange home, someplace I don’t belong, and leaving must happen soon.

The little thing I hate about this classroom in Young Hall — everywhere you look, it’s a million shades of piss. The yellowing linoleum on the floor. The walls painted that institutional hue called “Bruin gold”. The ceiling tiles stained from water damage. The broken mildewed shades that dangle in front of the windows. It’s a total fucking eyesore. Nothing an 8.0 on the Richter scale wouldn’t fix, but I haven’t felt a tremor from the San Andreas fault in months.

The big thing I hate about this classroom — the students filling it. This is my dumbass section. If you’re a teaching assistant with two or more sections, you always have a dumbass one. The eyes are duller, the answers slower, the grades worse. What you don’t expect is so many students like that. UCLA needed to cap enrollment or add TAs for this popular class. It did neither. Teaching more with less, as Corporate America would sloganize it. So instead of the usual 30 students per section, I’ve got 42 staring at me right now and 47 in my other section. Standing room only. Get your degree from the diploma mill while it’s still hot.

You always know who your best students are. They seem like higher intellectual lifeforms compared to their classmates. Grading their papers and exams you want to give them an A+++ because of the grade inflation giving everyone else a B. In this section it’s Cooper and Hye-sun, who always sit on opposite sides of the room, as if their intelligence is too explosive in proximity. Cooper is the cocky blond fratboy type. He looks like a walking Old Navy advertisement. Cute girls circle him, but none in geosynchronous orbit. He went all quarter without a female study buddy, keeping his options open.

Hye-sun is an earnest Asian girl who’s hot from the neck down, not-so-hot from the neck up. I see her around campus doing impromptu musical numbers with other evangelical Korean-Americans. She always stops performing and runs over to chat. She’s also my only regular visitor during office hours. Right now she’s sitting in the front row. Reeking of perfume. Mooning up at me with big almond eyes, as if I’m dishing the wisdom of the ages instead of just blathering on autopilot.

Most students are like Carrie, a slumping indolent goth who always sits in the back row. She’s a couple years older than the rest of the class — a junior among freshmen — and looks like she came to UCLA for the methadone program, not the education. I startle her with a question about European emigration patterns. “Was that covered in lecture?” she says warily. “Because I wasn’t taking notes.”

A hand is waving desperately. The hand is connected to Hye-sun. I overlook her and scan the room.

Cooper and I make eye contact. Do you want me to answer the question? his eyes ask. Let somebody else take this one my eyes reply.

But nobody else raises a hand. I stare down at blank faces, ponytails, bald spots, stocking caps. The silence is deafening. Take Cooper and Hye-Sun out of the mix and there isn’t enough brainpower to power an electric toothbrush.

“Okay, that’s it. Everybody outta here!” I tell the piss-colored room. About the benediction you’d expect from a teaching assistant on his fourth tour of duty. I don’t remember exhaustion like this during my first stint as a TA. Back then I probably burned with passion instead of cynicism, eager to do shit like teach — actually teach — instead of just rubberstamp transcripts on the way to graduation.

Hye-Sun lingers with her annoying enthusiasm, this time for European emigration. I watch her mouth move and pretend to listen. I prefer it when she sings those Christian recruitment jingles. Then my backpack starts ringing. “Sorry, I better take this call.”

“No problemo. See you during office hours!” She taps my fist in goodbye, a ridiculous gesture coming from her. Evangelical Korean-American students are unhip. Period.

I grope in my backpack, past the laptop and books and papers, until my hand closes around the small metal shape of my cellphone. Reflexively I check the caller ID. FARID AND NASRIN NIZRA–. The last name is truncated in the display, but I already know who’s calling. And it isn’t Farid or Nasrin. “Nick here,” I growl.

There’s a slight pause. “Oh. Hi. This is Nooshin.” Another pause. “Do you remember me? We met in Tijuana and — ”

“Of course I remember you. How you doing?”

“I’m cool. I was just, um… Is this a good time to talk? Or maybe I should call back?”

“This is a good time.” I briefly debate whether to tell her one truth, two truths, or no truths. I decide to risk two truths. “I was just thinking about you, actually. I have to go down to Tijuana again.”

“Really? Are you moving down there already?”

“Nah. I just found out I’m not getting as much research funding as I thought. So I need to look at more places down there. Cheaper places.” I try to be all c’est le vie when I laugh, but instead I just sound bitter.

“It’s my birthday today,” she suddenly blurts.

“Happy birthday then! How old are you? Or don’t you want to say?”

“I’m 24.”

“Are you doing anything special to celebrate? Getting any cool presents?”

“My sister is making halva for me. That’s my favorite dessert in the whole world! It’s one of those recipes that’s really easy to learn and really hard to master. No one makes it like she does, not even me. Not even our mom.” I wait for more, but her excitement dies into silence. So much for birthday joy.

I figure it’s got something to do with her husband. Whatever his name is. “Is your husband flying out? You flying back there?”

“Well…” She elongates it, we-lllllllllll…

“Ah,” I say.

“Yeah.” A million words pass in that three-word exchange. Then she turns the discomfort around on me. “How’s your not-even girlfriend? Phoebe?”

I’m surprised she remembers. I only mentioned Phoebe by name once. I file it away under the heading NOOSHIN — mind like a steel trap. “Phoebe is just fine. If she gets that macrame beach bag. Otherwise she’ll be suicidal or homicidal, I’m not sure which.”

“What’s so special about that beach bag, anyway? Did her grandmother make it for her? Something like that?”

It never occurred to me to ask Phoebe that question. Living in LA, you get used to people fixating on stupid shit. Bands. Celebrity sightings. Crap with a bright future on eBay. And with women, the usual tyrannies of fashion — clothes and shoes and accessories of fleeting hipness, ‘in’ this heartbeat, ‘out’ the next.

“Anyway, you definitely didn’t have it in your truck,” Nooshin is saying. “I looked everywhere.”

I flashback to her bony ass in the rearview mirror, wiggling around in the back of my Explorer. “I believe you. I don’t have it in my apartment either.”

“Hey, that reminds me! You never told me what living in Koreatown is like.”

Koreatown is the wrong district of LA to describe in a conversation, which is why I put her off when she asked me about it in Tijuana. But now I find myself describing the scars of the place. Its origin as a dumping ground for poor Korean War refugees in the 1960s. The riots that engulfed the neighborhood after the Rodney King verdict. The Mexican and Guatemalan and Nicaraguan families who move in whenever a Korean family moves out. The fire damage and blight that still lingers.

“You make it sound worse than Tijuana,” she says.

That’s worth a laugh. “Nothing is worse than Tijuana. It’s the asshole of North America, dude.”

“Really? It seemed okay to me. Dirty, for sure. Probably the dirtiest place I’ve ever been. Garbage just gets dropped anywhere and everywhere, I guess. But otherwise — ”

“You only saw the tourist district and downtown. The best parts. The rest of Tijuana — the real Tijuana — that’s where it goes from bad to worse. Much, much worse.” I can feel my anger boiling. I’ll have to live in the much, much worse Tijuana for a year, thanks to goddamn Hercules.

“Do you…” Nooshin starts to say, then her voice falters. She has to start over. “Do you want some company?”

“No way. Not the places I’m going. I might take a gun with me, but I’m not taking you.”

“Okay,” she says in a tiny voice.

Something is happening in the vicinity of my solar plexus. Great. First the girl gets under my skin, now she’s messing with my guts. I take a deep breath and blow it into the empty classroom. “I’ve got a better idea — what if we do a day hike somewhere in San Diego county? Maybe up in the mountains, maybe out in the desert? What do you think?”

She blooms into a touching and pathetic happiness. “Really? That would be so awesome! That’s, like, the best birthday present ever!” Then she restrains herself. Self-conscious. Embarrassed. “Um, you know what I mean.”

No, I don’t. And thank god. “Okay, you figure out where we’re hiking. I’ll bring the wheels, the water, and the whatever else. Cool?”

“Cool!” Nooshin agrees.

Later when I-10 is a parking lot and I’m just another single-occupancy-vehicle going nowhere fast, it finally hits me — calling me was her birthday present to herself. She’s reaching out to a total stranger. 1,500 miles from her husband, 0 miles from her sister, and reaching out to a total stranger.

The rearview mirror is full of camping equipment and through the back window, lines of hoods and windshields. But I’m seeing her ass. Trying to see the rest of her. The girl who was a jigsaw puzzle put together is back to pieces.

I sleepwalk through the balmy grit of Ocean Beach, barely noticing the Zen Bakery and self-serve dog wash and homeless people urinating on weedy lawns. It’s all I can do to avoid the splotches of gum on the crumbling sidewalk, placing my Nikes carefully, sidestepping when needed. Then an odd reflection catches my eye. It dances between the sidewalk and dying grass, stopping when I do. I shake my right hand to see if my watch is causing the reflection. The intense spot of light doesn’t move. I shake my left hand. The reflection dances again. It’s the diamond on my ring finger, catching the afternoon sunlight.

Suddenly the world is plunged underwater. The Jack-in-the-Box on the corner shimmers and blurs. People school like fish around me. The depths close and darken. I glance upward in a panic, body waterlogged, drowning –

“What’s the matter, dearie?” asks an elderly black man pushing a walker. He stops to crane his neck too. “Them clouds up there giving you a fright?”

That’s when I realize I’m just crying, that’s all. I paw at my wet cheeks as the sun comes out again. “Nothing’s the matter. I’m okay. Really.”

“If you say so.” He resumes his journey down the sidewalk.

I twist my wedding ring around until it’s just a plain band, the diamond concealed in my palm. But even hidden away I can’t stop obsessing about it. Just like I can’t stop obsessing about the mute cellphone in my purse. Or the cash card in my wallet that only has as much money as Saman gives me. He’s everywhere in my life, and nowhere at all.

I detour onto Voltaire Street, following the philosopher’s guidance toward the sandy dunes. A dog beach awaits me, with unleashed canines and owners carrying poop bags. The sight is odd enough to distract me from my unhappiness. I’ve never seen a dog beach before. There’s even a pushcart selling doggie treats and canine sunblock. Grandfather would’ve tipped back his weathered face in laughter, a reaction of disdain and awe. This is the America he found so baffling. Pets elevated to the status of citizens? Not in the Iran he knew, a place where the wind had eyes.

Given the choice of wandering up the beach or down it, I choose down it. The decision is unthinking, a reflex. My subconscious is tugging me south, towards the border. Thinking of the border makes me think of Tijuana, and thinking of Tijuana makes me think of…well, you know who.

I carry the torn-up pieces of Nick’s business card in my backpack. I don’t know why I salvaged them from the wastebasket. Maybe because he cared enough to ask if I was okay. Or maybe I just wanted to annoy Nasrin when she collected the trash. All of that seems unimportant now. Did Nick really mean it when he said call or email if I want?

Probably not. People never mean what they say. Not my husband. Not even my sister. And definitely not some too-attractive guy who strikes up conversations with strange girls in Tijuana.

In every direction are people. Surfers rise and topple in lines, kids cluster on beach towels, pink-skinned tourists crowd the boardwalk. But in their midst I’m alone, a crooked-eye kebab of a girl with sand leaking into her shoes. My solitude becomes acute, then unbearable.

When I was 18, I’d already convinced myself of the best thing about marriage — you’re never alone. The world may separate you on its opposite sides, but whatever you’re feeling — all the expectation and longing, a familiar need, despairing loneliness — your husband is feeling it too. A union of hearts and souls.

Five years later I know better. Saman isn’t feeling what I’m feeling. He never has, and probably never will.

Dr. Phil would say it isn’t Saman’s job to feel what I’m feeling. Saman’s job is to listen and empathize and support. That puts all the pressure right back on me. How can I ask for my husband’s support if I don’t express myself? Whenever we talk, my voice fades away, my eyes gravitate downward, my body becomes tense and retreating. That’s my fault. Mine, not his.

The Relationship Rescue Workbook is in my backpack. I decide to take Dr. Phil’s advice. I’m going to journal my emotions, then share whatever I write with Saman.

I take my notebook and sit crosslegged on the warm sand and close my eyes. I’m supposed to begin with the first emotion that comes to mind. My hand jerks. When I open my eyes again, I’m dismayed by the scribbled English word that confronts me:

ANGRY

Not a complaint Saman wants to hear. I have no right to be angry. Even I know that.

I scratch out the word, trying to scratch out the emotion with it. Let’s try this again, only in Farsi this time. Shut eyes, deep breath, hand jerks…

NAGANRI

I’m angry in both languages, both cultures. Forget it. This was a bad idea. For today, at least. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.

Stuffing the notebook into my backpack, I encounter the shreds of Nick’s business card. His name galvanizes me. What would I tell a stranger that I can’t tell my husband? And just like that, the notebook is splayed across my lap again. I begin scribbling a…poem? No, poem isn’t the right word. It’s just some soul-scrapings, an open vein of me that says everything about my predicament and nothing at all:

teardrops in yellow sand
flirt with sunbeams
shimmering glimmering
on the bare flank of an ocean

running into a wet smear
like the blobby shadow
of a jellyfish that died
and left its carcass behind

ants drown trying to swim across it
dragonflies drink from it
people sunburned and shirtless
trudge in my grief

you can’t plunge into a tear
like you can plunge into the ocean

but these teardrops
carve the soft earth with my emotions
this was me
I was here
heartbroken for a moment

then the languid heat
does a favor to everyone
and dries the pain away

That’s when I give up. Journaling about my emotions is pointless. Even if I could find the right words to express myself, nothing is going to change. Not where my husband is concerned. Saman would read my soul scrapings with apprehension in his eyes. All he wants from me is the same Nooshin he’s always had. The dutiful wife. The keeper of his house. The mother of his future children. And I don’t want to go back to being that Nooshin, back to Kansas City, back to him.