The Mexican Year

Westwood Village is a rainy tableau of drowned-looking banners welcoming visitors to UCLA, rivulets pouring off palm leaves and rooflines, stucco turning dark and waterlogged, traffic splashing through quiet streets. The sidewalks are wet and almost deserted in the holiday lull, the students scattered back to wherever they came from. Only a few umbrellas are bobbing along Kinross Avenue.

I’m not beneath one of them. My umbrella is already packed away somewhere in the U-Haul trailer that I’m towing around, taking delivery of hand-me-down furniture from colleagues. The stuff is mostly junk — a battered old filing cabinet, one of those papasan chairs from Pier One, blah blah blah — but the price is right. This is how you furnish your rental property in Tijuana for free. And a year from now, when I’m moving back to America, I’ll just toss it out in the street and watch it magically disappear. That’s the beauty of a Third World country. Everything gets recycled.

Only a couple strides from my Explorer to the entryway of Suji-San and I’m already drenched, the rain streaming off my floppy hatbrim and soaking the shoulders of my corduroy jacket. Then I’m inside the minimalist Japanese restaurant, a long glassy room of natural pine flooring, black lacquer tables and chairs, and accents in striking colors — candyapple reds, mustard yellows, sea greens. A yawning Asian hostess is seated on a tall stool behind a pedestal table. The dinner rush consists of me and five other diners.

Professor Francisco Chavez is waving hello, as if I can’t spot his solitary figure in a quadrant of unoccupied tables. His other hand is worrying a bottle of Kirin, making the label revolve as he spins it by the neck. He looks like he was attacked by Ralph Lauren — powder blue oxford shirt, argyle sweater vest with the little polo horsey, cuffless khaki slacks. A tasseled loafer is jutting into the aisle. Nearby is a big golfing umbrella, overturned and puddling on the shiny pine.

“Frankie!” I say with more enthusiasm than I feel, slapping skin with him.

“How’s it going, chief?” His habit of calling everyone by generic nicknames is one thing I won’t miss about America.

“Christ, this is macabre.” I point to the wallhanging above the table, a vaguely surrealist painting of Tokyo’s Ginza district at night, streaked with neon and ghostly blurring faces. “Doesn’t exactly stoke the appetite, huh?”

Frankie blinks at the disturbing picture. “Didn’t even notice it.”

“Atayo Kurishima,” a waitron announces, almost scaring me out of my skin. The shock-haired Japanese kid seems to have materialized out of thin air, probably because he’s gliding around on straw-bottomed sandals. He points at the picture and says something in horribly mangled English, then tacks on Atayo Kurishima again.

“Did you catch that?” Frankie sighs.

“I think he’s saying we can buy a genuine Atayo Kurishima painting if we want,” I guess, and pantomime-order a Kirin for myself too.

“Order us something to eat while you’re at it. You took Japanese as an undergrad, right? Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. You can’t believe what I went through to get this beer.”

I order a couple platters of sushi and some California rolls, using the menu as a common reference, pointing at each item. When I lean over to see if the waitron is getting it, all I see on his notepad are Japanese characters. Eventually I stop pointing and he hovers attentively, waiting to see if there’s more. There’s not. I watch him glide off, silent on the squeaky floor. God knows if dinner will resemble my order.

Frankie is giving me a look of burning curiosity. “What’s up with you, sport? Hercules says you’re running around with a new girl. The way he tells it, she’s Middle Eastern and tall enough to be a WNBA player and has some kind of fucked-up eye condition. Is all that true?”

“You and Hercules talk about shit like that?”

“Of course we do. Beats arguing about politics.” He grins slyly, enjoying my discomfort with the revelation that he and Hercules — devoted archenemies — still gossip behind my back. “So this chica is your new girlfriend, huh? Hercules says he likes her, if that counts for anything. Which it probably should, considering he can’t stand most people.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, one word. She’s my girl friend, two words.” That sounds too glib even for me. “Seriously, she’s just a friend. The big news is that she’s going to be my research assistant.”

“Don’t count your money before it’s in the bank. Hercules hasn’t got the funding for that supplemental research grant yet.”

“But he will.”

“Yeah, he probably will.” Frankie shifts jealously in his chair. Someday his reputation will command certainties, if he continues teaching and lecturing and publishing like a 60-watt bulb in a 40-watt socket. Until then he’s just another prof who isn’t named Hercules.

The waitron glides out of the kitchen with two Kirins on his tray, one for me — and another one for Frankie, even though he’s barely halfway through his first. Apparently the kid thought I was pantomime-ordering two beers instead of one. I thank him anyway, provoking a brief impenetrable response in Japanese.

Frankie swigs long and loudly from his beer, apparently racing me to the extra bottle sitting between us. “What will this new girlfriend — oops, girl friend — be doing for you?”

I ignore his jibe. Ticking off the job description on my fingers, I say, “Digitizing the documents in the maquiladora archive. Digitizing any other papers I come across. Keying in data from my field research. Helping me with interviews.”

“Helping you — how?”

“Like, keying in the transcripts. But Nooshin — that’s her name — she isn’t fluent in Spanish. So I may farm out that part to somebody else.”

“Your Girl Friday.” The comment makes me bristle with wariness, but he’s laughing. “Just don’t be a tyrant, alright? She isn’t paid to work as hard as you.”

“I hear you.”

The mirth seeps out of Frankie’s face, leaving an inscrutable expression. Those dark eyes are full of something, but I’m not sure what. Friendship, maybe. Or just math about the game I’m playing with Hercules, leveraging a simple archival digitization into another $16,000 of funding. His fingertips go back to spinning the neck of his Kirin bottle.

“What?” I ask him.

He shrugs, a brief flinch of his rounded shoulders, and looks away to the rain-lashed street. “I’m gonna miss having you around, coach.”

At first it seems like one of those awkward male-bonding moments, when we’re stuck with emotions and no vocabulary to express them, but then I realize Frankie isn’t just feeling my absence from UCLA next year. He’s feeling my future absence from the profession, anticipating another white male Ph.D. who won’t find a tenure-track position. A distinct likelihood. When hundreds of candidates apply for every job opening in Latin American Studies and Latin American History, male genitalia and heterosexuality and lack of melanin just make your odds even worse.

Of course, nobody thought I’d get another dime of funding from Hercules either.

On Sunday morning I wake slowly, surfacing through dreams of Saman sawing between my thighs and Nasrin yelling at me and my parents just staring in abject betrayal, until my eyelids finally flutter open in a brief placeless panic. Overhead is a shell of colorful fabric rippling in the wind. Dawn is streaming in through a mesh door, casting a radiant halo around the boy-shaped silhouette watching me. I take deep breaths and let my eyes adjust and the shadows resolve into Nick, sitting bolt upright.

“How long have you been awake?” I murmur, shielding my horrible morning breath with a hand.

“Did you hear it too?” he asks without preamble, and I feel a jolt that prickles my skin into goosebumps. He rolls out of his sleeping bag, fully dressed in what I’ve come to recognize as his hiking uniform — cargo-style bush pants made from rugged canvas and a skintight black thermal vest. He ties on his hiking boots while glancing outside. “You wait here while I check it out.”

Nick vanishes through the tent door in a hunched-over scramble. I peek after him in rising alarm. He circles past the mesh door in widening loops, a heavy stick clutched in his hand, glancing around, occasionally pausing to listen. After a while he returns empty-handed, relaxed again, grinning. He squats down outside the mesh.

“What do you think it was?” I ask a little breathlessly.

“I was afraid it was a who, not a what. Mojados. Wetbacks. Illegal immigrants. They can do desperate things when they need food and money, like jumping backpackers. But it was probably just a coyote or something.”

“Just a coyote,” I groan. My childhood in East LA was full of stories about urban coyotes lurking at the fringe of parks and playgrounds, waiting to snag cherubic little meals from their baby strollers. Grandfather repeated the stories as if they were fact. That was an America he could understand.

“Come see this dawn before the sun gets any higher.” Nick straightens up and his legs disappear from view.

I’m mummified in a sleeping bag zipped up tight. Underneath I’m wearing my black track suit with white pinstriping — and feeling horribly self-conscious about it. Did I come here to breakdance or backpack? One of Nick’s stocking caps is pulled low over my forehead. I adjust my bangs so they screen the right side of my face, hiding my crooked eye. Then I put on my Nikes and crawl out the mesh door. The morning cold reaches past my chattering teeth and seizes my lungs.

We camped in a gentle saddle of chaparral, one side rising further into the hazy blue mountains, the other side falling into a steep ravine choked with oak trees and giant boulders. Everything is painted with the delicate highlights of dawn, pinkish tones above the horizon line, purplish ones below it. Behind us the last stars are twinkling on the still-dark western horizon.

Nick is contemplating the panorama with bare arms folded across his chest. The pose is implacable, a man mobilized against something I can’t quite see. His icy blue eyes melt a little when he notices my giddy delight. “You like this camping stuff, huh?”

“Totally! It’s even better than I always imagined it would be. Except…is it normal to be this stiff?” It feels like every vertebrae in my spine was fused overnight.

“Don’t worry, you get used to it. You hungry?”

He can probably hear my stomach making un-dainty noises. “Yeah, I’m hungry.”

“A lot hungry, or a little hungry?”

“A lot,” I admit.

“I’ll get breakfast started.”

I backtrack from the ravine in search of privacy, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the campsite is receding. Past an upland meadow of fuzzy yerba santa bushes I find a wasteland of boulders calving from the mountainside. Behind a rock I hook my thumbs inside my waistband and pull down my pants and underwear, bending over at a comical angle, peeing. It’s a trick I haven’t mastered despite some practice yesterday.

Nick is making vegetarian breakfast tortillas when I return, spreading a homemade black bean mixture across the browning circles. “Looks like you managed not to hit your shoes this time,” he chuckles.

“Ha ha. I bet you couldn’t do any better if you had girl parts.” I settle myself on a rock across from him, tucking a foot underneath me. “Can I help with anything? Anything at all?”

“It really bugs you when I cook, doesn’t it?”

I feel my cheeks heat up in a blush. “Actually, I kind of like it.” The words come out all wrong, like a backhanded compliment. “I mean, um…” Finally I just give up and stare down into my lap, ashamed of my stupid inarticulate voice.

“Hey. Nooshin.” When I look up he’s brandishing two little bottles of salsa, one in each hand. “Hot sauce, or hottest sauce?”

I fixate on the hottest sauce because I know it’s what he wants me to do. “Is that the habanero salsa you were telling me about?”

“Lava in a bottle! You up for it?” He’s grinning like a fiend.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” I sigh. He hands me a paper plate sagging under the weight of its breakfast burrito, which is slathered in runny crimson salsa. The mere aroma makes my eyes water.

Nick leans over and puts a water bottle within easy reach. “Can you believe there’s such great backpacking right here in LA?”

His long-delayed surprise. We’re in a green quadrant of the Los Angeles County map, somewhere up a crooked line into the San Gabriel Mountains, not far from the X that marks Baldy Notch. The weekend surprise — the nights with him, really — stunned me into silence, at first because I thought he was joking, then because I realized he wasn’t. I still haven’t decided if it’s okay for me to be here. But that didn’t stop me from coming. My sister and parents already hate me for it. Just more proof that I’m going to hell, quicker and quicker.

“I can see a big stadium down here,” I say around a timid bite of burrito. The habanero salsa doesn’t seem that hot.

Nick nods in a pleased way. “That’s the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena. Sometimes you can even see downtown.”

“Downtown?” I’m distracted by the burning sensation spreading across my tongue.

“Yeah, downtown. That place with all the skyscrapers. You okay?”

“Um… I think so. The habaneros are kinda kicking in.” A total understatement. I feel like I’ve got a raging forest fire in my mouth.

“Gotta love the burn!” He shovels a dangerously salsa-drenched piece of burrito into his mouth and chews happily. “So are you going to take that McDonald’s job?”

I’m busy drinking the water bottle dry. I wipe my mouth with my tracksuit sleeve before I can find better manners. “Yeah. I might as well. It only pays minimum wage while I’m a trainee, but after that I get a 25 cent raise. And another 50 cents next year, because of the minimum wage increase. So I’ll be making $8.25 an hour pretty soon. Plus I won’t have to take the bus or anything. I can just walk to work, um…”

Nick’s gaze flickers at my periphery — my legs crossed Indian-style, my hands picking at things in the dirt, my hair blowing like a black flag. His forehead is slightly furrowed. Concentrating on me.

I catch myself in an awkward moment — longing for more time with a man who isn’t my husband, or an in-law, or a male relative. Suddenly every moment with Nick is unbearably precious, and the guilt just as unbearable.

“How would you like to make $9 an hour without even leaving Nasrin’s place?” he asks with a broad grin.

“What are you talking about?”

“I need a research assistant, since nobody at the COLEF wanted the job. You interested in working for me?”

I’m mazed in disbelief. “But… You? Nick, I couldn’t. No way. I’m not smart or a grad student or anything like that. I don’t even know Spanish! You said the archive is all in Spanish, right?”

“If you can run a scanner, you can be my research assistant.” He turns serious, almost grave. “I couldn’t make this offer if you hadn’t impressed the hell out of Hercules. But you did. He already likes you. I’ve been his bitch for four years and the old reptile still doesn’t like me.” Then the broad grin comes back. “So what do you say? Are you gonna be my research assistant or what?”

Suddenly I’m too excited to stand it. All my disbelief is replaced with blubbering. “Omigod! For real? For really real?!?”

“Of course for real.” Nick flattens air with his palms, motioning for me to settle down. “But I won’t let you accept right away. Sleep on it first, okay? I’m serious, Nooshin. Think about what it means. I’d be your boss. Not just your friend, your boss.”

I’m thinking about it, alright. Probably in the wrong terms — more entanglement with him. “I don’t care. I still want to be your research assistant.”

“Fine. But sleep on it first.”

“Okay,” I sigh.

He shovels the rest of his breakfast burrito into his mouth. “We can make Baldy Notch before noon. That still gives us enough time to hike out to the truck and drive back to San Diego.”

“You sure you don’t mind driving me back tonight? It seems like it’s so out of your way.”

“I don’t mind.” Nick says it looking right at me. The handsome angles of his face are back to their usual alignment. A mask of careful indifference. His way of keeping me — him, really — at the emotional distance he prefers. But his eyes are a stormy Arctic sea, and somehow that makes me feel warmer inside than the habanero salsa burning me alive.

I was thinking I had it all figured out, this surprising magnetism with Nooshin. We’d settled into a cool friendship vibe, slaking my need for companionship and the kind of conversations you think about long after you’re done talking. I envisioned crossing the border between my dissertation research in Tijuana and her marital separation in San Diego, museums and hiking trips and just hanging out, even the win-win of supplemental funding for me and a research assistant job for her. Everything was coalescing into perfection, like a zen garden.

Now it’s Saturday morning in Koreatown, and my sardine can of a studio apartment feels half as big with twice the people in it, and this gets burned into my libido:

Nooshin with one hand on the curtain pull, suddenly transformed into my initial vision of a girl who belongs on the wall of a pharoah’s tomb, her sleepshirt rendered gauzy and fantasial by the dawn. She’s a willowy silhouette with narrow hips and the most exquisite legs, slightly flaring into muscle at the calf and upper thigh.

Then she pulls the curtain closed again and snaps into opacity, her pink sleepshirt as old and washed-out as her marriage, a flat drape of fabric punctuated by the twin bumps of her breasts. She covers the distance from the window to my futon in a single stride and crawls in from the foot of the bed, flashing pantylines — not the narrow dents of a thong, or even the asshugging outline of tangas or boyshorts or whatever Victoria’s Secret is calling them now, but just plain old hiphuggers, which somehow makes it even more erotic.

She sits crosslegged, bunching the covers around her waist, running fingers through her long inky hair since I’m too bald to own a comb. It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to study her face since we met on Avenida Revolucion and she stared impassively at me across the DMZ of a concrete bench. Nooshin is beautiful, there’s just no other word for it. Even with that crooked wandering eye. Especially with that crooked wandering eye.

I’m still wound in my sleeping bag on the floor. I screw my eyes shut. I try to think about how much I hate the Lakers, now that they’re comprised of Kobe and his ego and not much else. I try to worry about the next president, the next Middle East crisis. I try to zone out into nothingness.

But my libido keeps replaying that scene in the movie theater of my mind, and every blood cell in my body is trying to cram itself into my dick, and I know I’ll be miserable until I can beat off in the shower.

Men never like to admit their nervousness, burying it beneath grins and brave words and exaggerated self-confidence, propping themselves up on the inside, hoping no one will notice. But I can always tell. I can figure them out. My grandfather was a simple-minded farmer who washed up on the complicated shores of America. He always got cow eyes when he was nervous. Dad’s English thickens and falters, compelling him to switch to Farsi. Saman overcompensates by becoming even more heavy-lidded and sullen than usual.

LA is streaking past in a highway frieze of vehicles and lane dividers and overarching reflective signs. But I’m only pretending to watch the highway. I’m actually studying Nick out of the corner of my eye. Nervousness makes him vaguely hyper, talking a little too fast, glancing around too intently. Channeling himself into the circumstances, because life is something he wants to turn out a certain way. He always has a plan, always thinks about 7 or 8 steps ahead, which just makes the first step even more important.

All I know is that we’re making a detour to his advisor’s house. A thick manila envelope is lying in his lap. Inside is a copy of his supplemental research grant application. Occasionally he drops a hand from the steering wheel, checking to make sure it’s still there.

Curiosity finally overwhelms me. “Why are you going out of your way to give Hercules a copy? The application says you’re supposed to submit it to the department.”

“That’s if you’re a professor. I’m not, obviously. So Hercules has to submit it for me.”

“If he submits the application, won’t the funding go to him instead of you?”

Nick swivels away from our terrifying velocity up I-405. “Yeah. That’s the shitty thing. I’ll be working for him, basically.”

“You’re that sure you’ll get the extra funding? That Hercules will?”

“Have some faith in the two baddest motherfuckers at UCLA.” He slams the turn signal so hard it almost breaks off, yanking the steering wheel at an exit ramp. “Brace yourself to meet Hercules!’

My stomach turns a cartwheel. “Can you, like, not remind me of that?”

We decelerate into a gated subdivision of Spanish Revival homes, old enough to develop character through renovations and landscaping. Some of the overhanging tile roofs are spectacular, but others have been cut back and replaced with roofing shingles — or in one case a copper roof, the burnished planes of metal climbing toward the sun. Most lawns are fastidiously-mown bermuda grass, but some are creeping yarrow. Beds of flowers and ornamental grasses ripple in the breeze, alongside cacti that don’t.

Nick screeches the Explorer into a wide driveway that abuts a two-and-a-half car garage. I hesitate with my seatbelt off, not sure whether I should bring my purse or not, until he hisses “Just leave it!” and slams his door in irritation. I follow his shadow across pavers that bob like circular islands in a sea of manzanita. The porch is massive and tangled in honeysuckle vines that buzz with hummingbirds. After smoothing back the hair he has left, he stabs the doorbell hard enough to kill it.

Nick warned me that Hercules robbed the cradle with his third marriage, but I’m still astonished by the Hispanic woman who answers the door. She can’t be much older than me, a youthfulness exaggerated by her hairstyle — a messy bob — and a couple angry dots of acne.

“Nick! It’s so good to see you again!” she exclaims, standing on tippy-toes and kissing him on each cheek. Then she fixes her radiant face on me. “And who’s this?”

“This is Nooshin.” He waves a hand breezily. “Nooshin, meet Eugenia. Hercules’ wife.”

I shake her hand and compliment her Christmas sweater, which features a snowman grotesquely distended over her bustline. It’s already apparent why Hercules made Eugenia his third wife — the same kind of hourglass body I envy on Nasrin.

“Where’s your hubby?” Nick is asking, all business beneath his jocularity.

Her face clouds over as she ushers us into the house. “Hiding out in the garage. He’s in one of those moods.”

“The professional kind? Or the kind that happens when your parents are in town?”

Eugenia hovers in a sad bubble. “I don’t know why he hates my parents so much. What have they ever done to him? Really, he makes me wonder sometimes.” Shrieks of laughter echo from deeper inside the house. She looks away brightly, restored by the thought of her children. “You want to see the kids? They’re in the playroom entertaining their nanna and poppa.”

Nick shakes his head slowly enough to imply regret. “We should really check in with Hercules first. Maybe we can hang out with you and the family afterwards.”

“Can I get you something to drink? Mineral water? Diet Coke? Nooshin, you want anything?” She says it still looking in the direction of the happy echoes.

I’m about to ask for a Diet Coke when Nick silences me with a look, packing expression into his icy blue eyes. “We’re fine, Eugenia. Thanks.”

“What was that all about?” I ask as I hurry after him, following through a sun room hung with antique metal mirrors. “I just wanted a Diet Coke.”

“Yeah, and then we’d be out in the garage talking to Hercules, and she’d bring it to you on a tray with a glass of ice and a slice of lemon on the side, and just seeing her could make his bad mood even worse, and I’m not taking that chance.”

“Oh,” I say.

The garage is an unused kind of immaculate. Bright fluorescent lights hum over a sleek black BMW, the same kind Saman’s uncles drive, and a big boxy Land Rover with two carseats in the back. Rakes and gardening tools hang on a wall like museum pieces. Wooden shelving is sparsely decorated with bottles of motor oil and windshield wiper fluid.

Running in front of the car bumpers is a long workbench with a man bent over it, weathered and dark like wet driftwood. His stiff denim shirt is sweat-stained in the back, where it puffs out from his corduroy work pants. At the bottom the cuffs are rolled up, revealing a pair of delicate ankles in moccasins. Nearby a radio is playing Latin music.

Hearing the door, he straightens up with an apocalyptic growl. “Goddamnit — ” Then he sees it’s us, not his wife or in-laws. He puts away his fierce scowl and smiles, but only using his mouth. His eyes stay hard and burning.

“Professor,” Nick greets him. The two shake hands in some kind of alpha male ritual, making a clapping sound and putting their shoulders into it. Then Nick steps back a little to include me. “Nooshin, this is Professor Emeritus Hercules Gutierrez, my dissertation advisor.”

“Hi,” I manage to stammer. “Pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Nooshin.” He makes our handshake linger, giving himself extra time to scrutinize me. I can tell I’m a surprise to him, not what he expected. But I’m not sure if he’s taken aback by the usual things — my crazily-jerking eye, my ungainly height, my name — or something deeper. “So you’re Nick’s…friend?”

“Um, yeah. That’s me.” Omigod I sound like SUCH an idiot.

“I haven’t seen you around campus. Are you a grad student from another program?”

“Grad student!” I laugh too loudly. “No, no, no. I haven’t even been to college. I only have a high school diploma.”

Hercules slides his burning gaze sideways and raises a craggy eyebrow at Nick. The command is plain — explain what the hell you’re doing with this girl.

Nick cheerfully ignores him. “Here’s my supplemental research grant application. Just so you know, I fucking killed myself to make it stellar.”

Hercules takes the bulging manila folder warily, as if it might pop. He slips out the stapled paperwork and flips through the pages, forward and backward and forward again. “It’s been so long since I’ve submitted one of these that I don’t even remember what the application looks like.”

“Like we discussed, the single biggest funding item is hiring a research assistant. Thanks for the introduction to Professor Ensayo at the COLEF, by the way. He sends his regards.”

“I’m sure he does. That bastard only published his last book thanks to me.” Hercules grins lopsidedly. “Did Ensayo introduce you to some good candidates? You find your research assistant?”

“Yes and no. He’s got some brainy students, but they weren’t particularly interested. Too many hours, not enough money.” Nick shrugs in a what-can-you-do? gesture. “I was offering 30 hours a week at $8 an hour. About $1,000 a month.”

Hercules raises his eyes from the application. “So that’s $12K for the year. What about the remaining $4K?”

“Gotta buy a scanner and the software, and a CD burner with lots of blanks. Cover any long-distance calls for the project, any overnight shipping of materials. And mileage, if my assistant needs to drive someplace. It’s all there in the budget, pages 37 and 38.” He glances at me and prods, “Isn’t it great to finally meet Hercules?”

I startle and gulp. “Oh! Right. I’ve heard so much about you…”

“Knowing Mr. Roberts here, half of it was bullshit and the other half was lies.” Hercules turns his attention back to me, making my nerves fizzle with anxiety. “Se habla espanol?”

“Solamente un poquito. Mi espanol esta el pesimo ahorita, pero yo estoy practicando.” It’s a response I often use, meaning Only a little. My Spanish is the worst right now, but I’m practicing. Then I go on to explain that I need something to do when I’m standing around at bus stops, so why not practice my Spanish? I’m probably mangling grammar like crazy and sometimes I have to switch to English because I don’t know the right Spanish words, but I do my best.

And maybe my best was okay. My blurted Spanish leaves Nick gaping in shock, since I’ve always been too shy to practice with him. Then he clamps his mouth into a tight smile, nodding almost imperceptibly. A you-go-girl moment.

“English and Spanish. That’s what I like to hear,” Hercules is saying in approval. Then a canny look washes over his rugged features, and he jerks a thumb at Nick. “So how’d you hook up with this hijo de puta?”

“We met in Tijuana,” I blush, the memory bubbling up inside me. “On Avenida Revolucion. I was there by myself, and he gave me a ride back to my sister’s townhome in San Diego.”

“Tijuana, eh?” Hercules’ attention is burning a little hotter. “How did the Mexicans react to your eye?”

“Same as you, mostly.”

For an agonizing moment he just blinks at me — then suddenly he guffaws and reaches out and claps Nick on the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince. “I like this one! I like this one a lot!” He jams the supplemental research grant application back into its manila folder with a pleased flourish.

Afterward Nick manages to extract us with only a goodbye to Hercules, bypassing Eugenia and the unseen cacophony filtering through the house. He’s an oddly stoic presence returning to the Explorer and sliding behind the wheel, calm and silent, and in the passenger seat I’m fracturing into doubts, a million compounding doubts –

“You were in-fucking-credible back there!” he explodes, checking the rearview mirror one last time. “I’ve never seen Hercules warm up to anybody like that before! And I didn’t know you could actually speak Spanish! Why didn’t you tell me before? You can practice with me, you know. And that line about reacting to your eye — ’same as you, mostly’ — that was goddamn perfect!” He’s driving with one hand on the wheel, the other fluttering around in excitement. “I’m so happy I could just, just…kiss you right now!”

And I almost say “Well, why don’t you then?” but I guess I used up all my bravery, because instead I just sit there and bask in the warmth of Nick’s attentions.

All that stands between me and Mexico are these final exams from “Introduction to European History” that need grading. Usually I prolong my final grading through the weekend, so I can settle down with a 12-pack of beer and make — and break — students at my leisure. But today I’m running around like my ass is on fire. I need to grade all my exams ASA-fucking-P. Not tomorrow, because I drive down to Tijuana to interview potential research assistants at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. And not this weekend, because I’m spending it with Nooshin. I haven’t laid eyes on her in — god, has it really been a month? Not since she returned to Saman and boomeranged back again. She makes everything seem brighter, more vivid, mysterious with adventure. Too bad we met when our lives are unraveling, hers into a poisonous divorce, mine into a year of Mexican fieldwork and a dissertation that won’t write itself.

I begin my day of powergrading by trying to stamp out distractions. Enough food and caffeine in the apartment to sustain me? Check. Door locked and blinds drawn? Check. Cellphone turned off? Check.

Then I settle myself on my futon, still unfolded into a bed, and begin to sift the final exams into two piles — students taking the class for a grade, and students taking the class pass/fail. UCLA’s grade inflation makes it pathetically easy to sail through classes with a passing grade, so the pass/fail students only need a cursory review of their final exams. If they wrote their name on the cover and filled several pages with idiotic scribbling, they pass.

Unfortunately, only a few students are taking the class pass/fail. The pile of final exams that don’t need grading is dwarfed by the pile of final exams that do. Damn.

Next I subdivide the final exams of students taking the class for a grade, making piles based on their current standing after the midterm and research paper. After all, the best indicator of future performance is past performance. That leaves me with four piles — A students, B students, C students, and the bottomfeeders at risk of failing the class.

Well, actually five piles, but that’s my little secret.

As I’m subdividing the final exams, I’m setting aside the students who deserve special attention for whatever reason. Some are my best students, who I’m trying to nurture with detailed comments. I know they scrutinize every page of their exams and papers, scanning for the red ink of feedback, eager to actually learn. I was the same way when I was an undergrad. I can still bitterly recall every TA who mailed in the grading when I gave the classwork my all.

Other students are singled out for special attention because they’re on my shitlist, usually for their classroom behavior — or lack of it, if they’ve been skipping section, always a personal affront to the TA. Some also make the shitlist because of their moronic comments, like the fucking dork who used his research paper to praise Stalin for bringing law and order to Russia…through iron-fisted means like the NKVD, secret trials and executions, and that vast killing system known as the gulag. UCLA defends every student’s right to free speech, and technically I’m supposed to grade each argument on its own merits, but there’s nothing to stop me from getting all forensic on their asses. I soak their exams and papers in red ink, marking up everything — even misspellings and punctuation errors — and trying to make their pain downright Elizabethean. It’s the least I can do, I figure.

The last category of special attention students are the hapless earnest types, struggling with language barriers or just dumb as ketchup. They’re the ones who bomb the midterm and paper, but attend section religiously and always haunt my office hours, asking tons of questions in broken English and taking reams of notes, trying so hard it hurts — literally hurts — to grade them down. So I don’t. Instead I look for every flimsy excuse to grade them up, trying to help them crack into the 70s and bag that C. In my world there is such a thing as points for trying.

In order to speed my grading, I use a modified version of chess notation. Rather than critique something longhand, I just circle a sentence or paragraph and scrawl the appropriate notation next to it:

! - good
!! - great
!!! - outstanding

? - bad
?? - terrible
??? - atrocious

I mix and match for any unorthodox arguments that my kids make:

!? - risky, but I like it
?! - risky and I don’t like it
!?! - way out there, but I like it
?!? - way out there and I don’t like it

Then I tally up the exclamation and question marks. The more exclamation marks, the better the grade. The inverse is also true — rack up the question marks and you’re in for a grading smackdown.

Finally I jot some comments on the back inside cover in a heartfelt TA-to-student vibe, like this:

Tonisha, thanks for your hard work and dedication this quarter. I especially appreciate all the contributions you made to class discussion. Happy holidays and have a great new year! — Nick

In reality Tonisha is an opinionated airhead who acts like ignorance is her own personal birthright, but I just can’t bring myself to say something cutting. My mood is nothing but air and light. How fucking weird is that?

We’ll see if it lasts. One final exam down, 54 to go…