The Mexican Year

Nick keeps saying this isn’t the real Mexico, whatever that means. Tijuana sure seems real enough to me, and really different from anything I knew in America. But when I try to explain that to him, he just rolls his icy blue eyes and says something pitying, like “We have GOT to get you out of here”.

Whenever he’s in a bad mood he dismisses Tijuana as “the asshole of North America”. I know exactly how he feels. I get tired of the throat-burning haze too, and the overflowing trash heaps, and the stinking piles of feral dogpoop. I wince at the plywood-and-cardboard shacks that shouldn’t even house animals, let alone entire families. I slip money to the same heartbreaking beggars that he stoically ignores — when he isn’t looking, of course.

But still, Tijuana isn’t an unrelieved carpet of misery that unrolls in front of the border fence. To me it’s more like hell leavened with some heaven, a border city that’s messy with details, the kind of place I describe as complicated when I scribble in my secret notebook. Depending on which way you look — or even how you’re feeling — you can always focus on something better, rather than all the somethings worse. You just have to try.

The stained glass ceiling of the central bus station in downtown Tijuana. Nick told me the name of the designing architect, some famous Mexican, but I can’t remember now. Anyway, it took my breath away, how the lazy afternoon light filtered through the multicolored prismatic ceiling. I’ve never seen a roomful of weary travelers toting their lives in suitcases and plastic bags and cardboard boxes look so beautiful.

See what I’m talking about? Look up — beauty. Look down — well, not so much.

La Bola — The Ball — is the local nickname for the Imax theater attached to the Centro Cultural Tijuana. We haven’t actually seen a movie there yet, but I almost don’t care. It’s so fun just to stare at its magnificent shape. It morphs in my imagination, from a humongous Flintstonian boulder, to a crash-landed planet, to a bowling ball of the gods. Who couldn’t love a landmark like that?

This office building is everything that’s right or wrong with Tijuana, I can’t decide which. Sometimes I only see ten stories of yuck, a towering eyesore painted in garishly bright purple and yellow. Then I feel a pang of sympathy for all the people who endure its visual affront every day. Other times I think it’s super-cool that buildings can look like something out of a videogame, boxy and pixilated and two-toned.

Leave it to Nick to discover that he can park in their employee-only lot and never get towed. Not like I’m complaining. It saves my calf muscles the extra 10 minutes of teetering from the Zona Rio parking ramp into downtown on his favorite wedgie heels.

Avenida Revolucion — “La Revo” if you want to be hip — is the most-visited street in the most-visited city in the world. And you know it the second your strappy sandals hit the avenue.

“Cheaper than Wal-Mart!” come the shouts. “Senorita! Hey tall girl! Cheap-o-rama!” Loud nortec music thumps from a record store, clashing with the rock-and-roll from the Hard Rock Cafe, known for the backend of a pink Cadillac hanging out of its facade. Tourists jostle down the sidewalks, hugging their purses tight, crowding past the Jai Alai Palace, farmacias selling without prescriptions, the 100-year-old tables of Tia Juana Tilly’s. Get your Virgin of Guadalupe soap on a rope, joss sticks, Subway sandwich with a pulque on the side, bright Mayan sarapes that are actually made in China instead of Mexico, postcards of the border fence, Havana Room Fine Cigars, squid steaming on an open grill, whatever happens inside Aztec Massage.

And on almost every corner, a donkey painted to look like a zebra.

Heaven? Hell? Flip a 20-peso coin.

This is the entry to the industrial park where the ghost-shell of Korea Textile S.A. is located, the small maquiladora whose archive I just finished digitizing. Each factory parcel in the industrial park has a flagpole for the company flag. Nick says every flagpole was rippling back in the 1980s, when China was still waking up from its revolutionary slumber and India was just a place where you couldn’t get a good steak. Now there are 25 flagpoles and only 3 company flags.

I’m always struck by its sparse beauty, but that’s only when I’m thinking about what I’m seeing, not what I’m not seeing — all the shuttered maquiladoras, the jobs they stole from America now stolen to China, and the hardships suffered by Mexican workers who don’t get unemployment or food stamps or job retraining.

Two bottles of the namesake microbrew of Tijuana. Nick thinks it’s a horrible name for a beer — even though we always order it because it’s local, not Budweiser or Corona. He argues that Tijuana is associated with seedy tourism and illegal immigration and scary drugwar violence and god only knows what else. Why would anyone want to link a beer’s marketing to that? But there’s no explaining civic pride, I guess.

Nick usually limits himself to one beer when we’re out. He doesn’t want anyone mistaking him for a drunken tourist, a victim waiting to be victimized.

I’m limited to two beers. Just enough to get me into bed easy, not so much that I forget what to do when I get there. Ha!

Night is the dangerous time in Tijuana. Well okay, the more dangerous time. Anything can happen after the sun goes down into the Pacific. People turn into gunshot corpses. Cars vanish from parking spots. Cops turn ugly instead of innocuous. That’s why Nick keeps pounding “situational awareness” into my head. It’s okay to stroll Avenida Revolucion after dark, BUT…

But how can you stay paranoid when this is your nighttime destination? The bestest slurpee and popsicle stand ever! They start with ice made from San Diego tap water, so you know it’s safe. Then they mix in fresh-squeezed fruit juices, like lemon and papaya and tamarind. The result is a taste orgasm on your tongue.

This is what the night should always be like, not something you flee to home.

Superstitious Mexicans never look directly at me. They’re afraid of my crooked wandering eye. So this is a picture of what it feels like to be el ojo malo — the evil eye.

But they’re still happy to take my money, like this hawk-faced woman who runs the local panaderia. She makes amazing sweetbread in her little bakery. I love to surprise Nick with their sugary delight when he gets home from his fieldwork. Mmmmm.

Fernando. Rosela. Roselita. Mitsy.

A daddy and mommy, and a daughter named after Mom, and their dog. And they’re proud enough of their little family to pimp themselves in a back window decal. Isn’t that the cutest thing ever?

All of Tijuana is like that. There are so many touching glimpses of family pride and togetherness and affection, everywhere you look. Maybe that’s what holds this city together when it’s trying to fall apart.

Believe it or not, I’ll miss our street in Colonia Aviacion. I’m so used to walking its uneven potholed tilt, north to the border fence, south to the American-style stripmall. I’m even used to the jets scraping overhead as they thunder down to the airport or away from it. And I know almost everyone in the neighborhood by sight, even if my Spanish and my evil eye limit our conversations to the “Buenos dias!” and “Buenas noches!” greetings cast across the gravel.

Hasta luego, Tijuana. I’ll see you whenever Nick and I return from the real Mexico.

The saddest shelf in any university library is the collection of doctoral dissertations written by graduates of their Ph.D. programs. All those man-years of research scholarship, billions in public funding and self-inflicted loan debt, entire forests of felled trees. Just sitting there in bound microfiche printoffs. Collecting dust.

And the only thing even sadder than that sad shelf? The U.S. Department of Education — which funds most doctoral research in the United States — requires universities to keep a hardcopy of all their doctoral dissertations. Otherwise they wouldn’t even waste the shelf space.

Of course, the ugly truth is that most doctoral dissertations suck. Writing a dissertation is like writing a first novel. You don’t know what the hell you’re getting yourself into. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it you realize you actually don’t. It seems like a third-generation Bush will be president before you finally finish the goddamn thing. And in the end you don’t birth it or anything grandiose like that, you just shit it out.

Your dissertation is also an extraordinarily narcissistic project. For the first time in your entire grown-up life you’re doing exactly and only what you want to do. Devotedly following your academic muse. Diving into shit that fascinates you and maybe 10 other people on the planet. Listening to your voice reverb off the bored faces of colleagues, your spouse or fuckbuddy, the drunk on the next barstool.

Are these dissertations really making a contribution to the universal body of knowledge? Advancing their respective fields? All those other cliches invoked to glorify the process? I’d like to think so, but I’ve got eyes and they’re wide open. Mostly I see grad students like me jumping through their last hoop of flaming bullshit, that’s all. You’ve proven you can slap a couple hundred pages of so-called scholarship together. Here’s your Ph.D. Good luck in the academic job market, shitbag.

Maybe that’s why even good dissertations stick out like they’re great. I still remember the way people were gushing about Eduardo Caysemos’ study of Andean mystics — and just so you know, I like Eduardo a lot — but Jesus Christ on a tanning bed, the dissertation itself was only mediocre. Yeah, he got a book contract for it, but Duke University Press made him rewrite it cover-to-cover.

No matter how my dissertation turns out, it’ll be remembered for its role in preserving the Korea Textile maquiladora archive and making its documents available to future generations of scholars — or just people googling across it on the World Wide Whatever. And my name will tag along. Nick Roberts, the dude who discovered that maquiladora archive and released it to the public. Because it’s not every decade that a new source of primary research material is brought online, especially one having to do with the private sector. Who knows what kind of dissertation-worthy dirt lurks in the archives of corporations?

Problem is, I’m realizing this half of the Korea Textile archive doesn’t have any dissertation-worthy dirt. There’s Human Resources stuff about labor unrest and lockouts and punitive firings, and the Finance department was bribing every governmental agency under the Baja California sun, but that’s dog-bites-man shit in Mexico. I want to find the man-bites-dog angle, the revelation that transforms a sucky dissertation into an immortal one.

The Mexican family that owned the Korea Textile maquiladora hung onto the other half of the archive, comprised of tax records — now embargoed by a messy and protracted lawsuit, and stored in the municipal jail of Chirbampo. That sounds like the juicy half of the archive. And I’m being paid to digitize it. But there’s still a risk — probably a big roulette-wheel risk — that I’ll never even glimpse that half of the archive, let alone gain working access to it. It’s in a Mexican jail, duh. Even if I do gain access, Nooshin and I could waste months in a flyspeck town, trying to strike gold in a cardboard fruit box of moldy papers — and still come up empty-handed.

Compare that to focusing on this half of the archive and fieldwork here in the maquiladora zones of Tijuana. I could pile up months of research interviews, interrogating ex-Korea Textile workers like a CIA waterboarder. The requisite for a sociocultural study of hardship (a.k.a. “capitalist oppression”) and working conditions (”NAFTA-based labor exploitation regimes”) and blah blah blah. Too bleeding heart for most people, but guaranteed to make ivory tower Marxists like Hercules flip their wigs. And meanwhile Nooshin and I could keep enjoying the bright lights big city of Tijuana, so close to America, so far from God.

Truth is, I already made up my mind a week ago and put all the arrangements in place. We’re going south. I’ll take the digitized half of the archive with me, along with the taped interviews I’ve done. That way I can stay productive — even write a couple chapters of my dissertation — while trying to gain access to the tax records in Chirbampo’s municipal jail. Nooshin will get to experience the real Mexico, which starts where Tijuana stop. And maybe we’ll even be safer, if you believe the U.S. State Department and their safety advisory for American citizens to avoid the borderlands.

“Do an ollie next!” Nick yells around a mouthful of burrito. “Para el proximo, hacer un ollie!”

His words echo across the morning-streaked plaza. Several Mexican kids are milling around on skateboards, slowly commuting to their elementary school. A mop-headed nino bursts into motion. He isn’t much bigger than his backpack, festooned with pins and bumper stickers and a dyed rabbit’s foot. I close my eyes, focusing on the sound his skateboard makes. Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick — swoosh — CRACK! Clickclickclickclick…

We’re sitting hip-to-hip on the tiered concrete steps of a tinted-glass office building. Covering the steps are the remains of our breakfast — empty Diet Coke bottles, salsa packets torn open, newspapers used as burrito wrappers. I’m trying to read yesterday’s La Frontera coverage of the American presidential primaries through spilled salsa and grease stains. Nick is calling out tricks — ollie, heelflip, slide, grind, nosestall — and applauding when the kids don’t kill themselves. He claims to remember all the tricks from something called Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, one of his favorite videogames growing up.

“I think it’s the Florida primary today,” I say, reading around an oily smear that seeps into a pixilated Hillary Clinton. “And Super Tuesday is coming up next week. That’s when California votes, you know. We could vote too, if we wanted. Although I don’t know how that works for us. We’d probably need absentee ballots or something like that.”

“Who would you vote for?” Nick asks idly.

“Barack Obama. What about you?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Seriously? Or don’t you want to be pinned down?”

He kicks at a pebble, sheepish and annoyed. “I haven’t given it much thought.”

Maybe Nick hasn’t given it much thought, but I have — usually while the scanner was digesting another sheet feeder of documents. I made lists of the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, culling information from American web sites and San Diego TV news. There isn’t much local media coverage in Tijuana. “It’s kinda weird, experiencing the presidential race from a foreign country. It makes everything seem so, so…”

“Far away?”

“Yeah! That’s it. Far away, even though it’s right across the border.”

Nick snatches the newspaper away from me, gathering our trash. In a burst of energy he leaps down the steps, runs over to a garbage can, and races back up to me. His shadow stretches in parallel with mine, but panting slightly and topped with the outline of a Kangol hat. He bounces his weight from one hiking boot to the other and back again, communicating his sudden impatience. Time to hurry up and go.

I trail after him, carefully navigating the descent to the plaza. These wedgie sandals magnify every concrete step into an ankle-threatening cliff. Worse, I have a rapt audience. You’d think these Mexican kids have never seen a freakishly tall gringa with a crooked eye before. One nino even forgets about his skateboard, which drifts across the plaza and clatters into the street. “Everyone can just stop looking now!” I say crossly, when my unpainted toenails finally reach the plaza pavers.

“That was pretty goddamn breathtaking,” Nick grins, slipping an arm around my waist. “You looked like Miss Universe coming down those steps.”

“Oh stop. You’re just saying that because you know I hate to be the center of attention.”

“Beats admitting that we were waiting for you to trip and fall.”

“You are such a meanie! Did you hear me? Meanie.” I elbow him without much force. He’s hugging me close as we walk, falling into our usual rhythm. I’m probably the only girl in Tijuana with legs long enough to match his stride. Just knowing it makes my height more bearable.

We stroll down the glassy arroyo of office buildings that is Avenida Ocampo, a border odd couple turning heads. Whole buses of people watch our progress. Street vendors wave us toward their carts, brandishing food and beverages and merchandise. The occasional panhandler rushes us with outstretched palms and a desperate begging face. Nick is going hard beneath the shadows of his hatbrim. The contours of his face are knit together angrily, a look he brandishes like a battering ram.

“Where are we going?” I ask after a while.

“Humberto’s. I feel like getting drunk.”

Say what — ? Astonished, I turn to look at him…and forget to pay attention to the treacherous footing. My wedgie sandals hit an uneven spot, don’t trip Nooshin don’t trip, but it’s too late. Hands thrown out I sprawl across the sidewalk, skinning my palms.

A strong grip lifts me to my feet. “Are you okay?” Nick asks, all the anger in his face suddenly replaced with concern.

“Yeah. I think so.” I’m trying to be tough, even though my palms are bleeding a little. I wipe them on the thighs of my jeans, glancing down malevolently at my high-heeled footwear. “I’ll never get used to walking in these stupid sandals.”

“You didn’t have to wear them, you know. You could’ve worn your Nikes instead.”

“I don’t wear them because I like them. I wear them because you like them! At least Saman — ” The words catch in my throat. I can’t believe what I was about to say.

Nick’s arms fall away. “At least Saman…what?”

“No. It’s nothing.”

“Tell me. I said tell me.”

“He never cared what I wore. I never had to dress up for him.”

“And you think that’s a good thing?” Nick is starting to laugh, a sad and disbelieving noise. His hat swallows up his face as he gazes down my body — flat chest, boy hips and butt, stick-person legs. “Maybe I’m just a sexist pig, but I think you look fucking hot in those high heels.”

“Even if I break my neck wearing them?”

“Now I really feel like getting drunk.” He marches away.

I stride with exaggerated caution, trying to keep up with him. It’s not easy. The sidewalk is a typical Tijuana obstacle course of potholes and concrete heaves and spilled garbage. “Why do you want to get drunk, anyway?”

No response from Nick. His profile is glacial.

I manage to check my runner’s watch, the oversized digits slanting at me. “It’s…8:32. In the morning, I might add. A little early to get drunk, don’t you think?”

Still no response. He grabs my elbow, jaywalking through a gap in traffic. Tailpipe haze boils up like fog. A horn begins honking. He bangs on the hood jutting toward us. The honking stops — and more importantly, so does the car it belongs to. We make it to the other side of the avenue.

“What’s the matter, Nick?”

Finally a sideways glance. My plaintive tone has reached him. But his icy blue eyes give away nothing.

Humberto’s is tucked into an executive hotel. We arrive at the portico, a pale stucco arch flanked by fan palms. Rising behind is a four-story structure of matching pale stucco. Columns of picture windows are divided by exterior sconce lighting. A reflecting pool and garden curve around one side of the hotel. The other side is dominated by a parking garage.

“I don’t know why you like this place,” I complain as we approach the bellhop. “No one ever comes here.”

“That’s why I like it. Because nobody ever comes here.” Nick pushes his Kangol hat back on his head and dials up his smile to 10. The bellhop melts into a toadying figure, ushering us into the hotel. We’re Americans, after all. An unkind word to the hotel manager and the bellhop would be selling chiclets in the street.

I’ve only been to Humberto’s a couple times. It always seems less like a bar/restaurant and more like an afterthought. The entrance is at the back of the lobby, hidden behind pillars, almost invisible from the front desk and elevators. Inside is a crampy L-shaped space. The inside of the L is a right-angle bar, with barstools tucked under the marble countertop. The outside of the L is four-person booths with votive candles flickering on their tables. Things hang on the wall, but the lighting is so dark you can’t tell what they are.

As usual there are more waitstaff than patrons. Nick pauses to order mimosas — in raw form. The bartender puts a dusty bottle and plastic container on the bar. Nick hands over colorful Mexican money, then grabs the champagne and orange juice and two glassware flutes. I follow him toward the stairs, a tiled ascent to an oaken door with wrought iron hinges. It opens, painting him in stark light, then closes again.

And opens again, as he holds the door for me. Glaring sunlight floods the stairwell. I’m momentarily blinded and disoriented. I feel my way up the rest of the stairs.

Humberto’s balcony is a rectangle of pebbled concrete. Patio furniture is arranged into seating areas and shaded by potted palms. A metal railing guards the steep drop-off to the reflecting pool and garden below. Our only company is a businessman chatting on a cellphone in Spanish. Nick chooses the table farthest away, folding himself into a patio chair and kicking up his boots on the railing.

I beat him to the champagne and orange juice, pouring myself a non-alcoholic drink. But I mix a mimosa for him.

He sighs in the general direction of the Pacific. “It’s supposed to be 3:2.”

“What?”

“You made it 1:1. Equal amounts of champagne and orange juice. A mimosa is supposed to be mostly champagne. 3:2 ratio.”

I can feel my brow scrunching up. “And I would know this…how?”

“You know it now.” Nick drains his entire flute in a single gulp, then extends it to me. “Try making it 3:2 this time.”

I reach over to pour the ingredients in right proportion. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Getting drunk.”

“That’s my fucking business. Not yours.” He pours the mimosa down his throat, flashing three days of stubble. “You’re the one who doesn’t get drunk. You never even dressed up for your husband.”

“Are you already going to use that against me?”

Nick’s face is glazed into a mask. His champagne flute is empty and dangling from his right hand. “Just mix me another, alright?”

“Mix it yourself.” I lean back, folding my arms across the Gap logo of my hoodie. “Does this have anything to do with you meeting, um…what’s his name? That creepy old guy who leased you the house? Mr. Sed-something?”

“Sedesco.” He grabs the bottle of champagne, tilting it against his lips. “Sedesco is going to watch our house while we’re gone. Well, watch — and use. That’s the trade-off.”

“What do you mean? What’s he going to do with it?”

“He’s fucking around behind his girlfriend’s back. Using our house will save him the cost of renting a hotel room.”

“You mean…Sedesco and some woman…in our bed? Ewwww!” I’m so repulsed that I almost vomit up my orange juice and the breakfast before it. “How could you?”

“Because somebody needs to keep an eye on the house while we’re gone. Otherwise it’ll get robbed, guaranteed. This way our house gets watched, and we don’t have to pay a peso for it.”

“I hate Mexico.” I say it with such violence that my hands ball into tiny ineffectual fists.

Nick drains the champagne bottle and clangs it onto the table. “You don’t hate Mexico. You hate the way Mexico makes you feel.”

And he’s right. I hate my relief that it isn’t me slaving away in a maquiladora, piecing together a home of scraps, subsisting on $7 a day. I hate my guilt every time I ignore a begging man or woman or child. But most of all, I hate my powerlessness. This is a place that renders you powerless to even feel better, because there’s no better here. There’s only worse.

“You get used to it after a while,” he’s saying. “You have to.”

“I’ve only been living here for a month. I’m not used to it yet. I’ll probably never get used to it.”

We’re lost in an awkward pause that lingers into discomfort. Beneath us the reflecting pool and garden is noisy with a maintenance crew. Passenger jets rumble into the cobalt sky from our neighborhood. A salty breeze is stirring my bangs. I’m miserable looking at Nick’s stoic profile, and past him the 6th-largest city in Mexico. Tijuana is a liquid cityscape of tears, deeper underwater with every pang of my heart.

Lunchtime and I’m parked on a runty hill in this forgotten industrial park, staring across a vista of lifeless smokestacks and rusting chemical barrels and crumbling concrete loading docks. A paper bag of steamy corn tortillas is warming my lap, the kind of meal that will last all day — and needs to, for poor Mexicans. Sunlight is filtering through the truck’s dusty windshield in tiny sparkling reflections. I’ve got the radio on. Some local Tijuana station, playing one narcocorrido after another, until they blur into an endless folksong remix about cocaine and broken hearts and tragic bullet-riddled death.

I don’t bother checking the caller ID when my cellphone rings. The habit seems antiquated, so last year. My TAship and annoying students vanished with the calendar flip, and ditto for Phoebe and my colleagues back at UCLA. Now there’s only one number that calls — and it belongs to this cellphone’s twin.

“Heya,” I say warmly, expecting an update from Nooshin. By yesterday she’d finished digitizing our half of the Korea Textile maquiladora archive. She just loaded up the sheet-feed tray and let the scanner do its thing. Worked like advertised. Amazing.

But the craggy voice leaking into my head isn’t Nooshin. Not even close. “Hello, Mr. Roberts.”

“Hello, Professor.” I clear my throat, deepening my tone. “I have an update on the digitization for — ”

But Professor Emeritus Hercules Gutierrez is all business today. A different kind of business than the archive or screwing over Frankie. “We’re joined on this call by Jean Schneckt, who is general counsel for the dean’s office. Ms. Schneckt, are you there?”

The lawyer sounds like she’s made out of saccharine and caffeine. “It’s good to speak with you, Nick! Professor Gutierrez has told me so much about you. Sounds like you’re doing super work down there. Really advancing the field.”

“Uh, right…” Whatever the hell this is about, I’m not in the mood. “Professor, why are we on a conference call with a lawyer? This isn’t about something I said on TV at the Border Symposium, is it?”

His laugh is like boulders jarring loose — a sudden rumble, and just-as-sudden silence. “We’re calling because of UCLA’s concerns about the safety of students, staff, and employees in northern Mexico. As your dissertation advisor and manager, I have a responsibility to discuss your personal security situation with you and make sure you understand the risks. Jean?”

“Nick, as you may be aware, there have been a rash of kidnappings and even killings of Americans in northern Mexico. The U.S. Department of State recently issued a — ”

“Hang on a sec.” I hold the phone away from my ear for a while. “Did you guys hear that?”

“Hear what?” asks Hercules.

“I didn’t hear anything either,” chimes in the lawyer.

“Exactly. No bullets whizzing around, no explosions, no nothing. So consider me warned, alright?”

I can hear an irritated sigh. “Just cut to the chase, Jean.”

“Nick, I’m going to email you two documents in pdf format — you can get email down there, can’t you?”

“Yeah. There’s internet access in Mexico. Broadband, even. This isn’t Papua New Guinea, for chrissake.”

A growly sigh blots out the static. “Jean, I can give you Nick’s email address if you need it.”

“Thanks, Professor. I already have it on file. So Nick, I’m going to email you two documents. The first document is an acknowledgment that UCLA has discussed the security situation with you, and you understand the risks you’re taking in northern Mexico at this time. Please print it off, sign it, make a copy for your files, and — ”

“Are you guys afraid something will happen to me in Mexico and then I’ll sue the university?”

“Exactly,” confirms Hercules in a pleased way. I’m connecting the manipulative dots, just like him. “Did you know that Stanford is being sued by the family of an undergrad who was abducted and raped in Nuevo Laredo? It was her choice to be in Mexico, but she still sued Stanford for not warning her of the safety risks. A settlement will cost Stanford millions. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”

“I already signed an independent contractor agreement with more boilerplate than a mortgage! Doesn’t that have enough disclaimer language to protect UCLA?”

“California labor law gives you a lot of outs,” interrupts Jean. “Independent contractors sue all the time in this state. Especially when the University of California is involved.”

Hercules wades in, trying to sound soothing. “The document we’re asking you to sign is just a paper trail, that’s all. Proof that we’ve had this discussion.”

“What about the other document?” I snap, not feeling very soothed. “Is that a CYA thing too?”

“The other document is for your research assistant. She’s also an independent contractor hired to preserve the archive. Like you, she needs to sign and return a copy to UCLA,” the lawyer explains. “My understanding is that she’s an American citizen at your same address?”

Skin is tightening across my shoulder blades. This topic is Russian roulette. Say the wrong thing and Hercules — and UCLA’s legal counsel — will realize Nooshin is my live-in girlfriend, and then I’ll be the one who needs the lawyer.

I measure out my words carefully. “Yeah, she’s at this address. She lives in the spare bedroom. She’s my roommate.”

Wherever Jean is, she’s shaking her head in saccharine-and-caffeine disapproval. “We’re concerned about that, Nick. At best, there’s an appearance of impropriety. At worst, well…” She shuffles papers loudly. “The UCLA Academic Code of Conduct explicitly prohibits romantic or sexual relationships with anyone — and I quote — for whom a university member has, or should reasonably expect to have in the future, academic responsibility (instructional, evaluative, or supervisory). That includes your research assistant.”

It feels like all the air is being sucked out of the truck’s cab. Hercules. Goddamn Hercules. He’s inoculating himself from any risk that I’m involved with Nooshin. Putting me on the spot with UCLA’s legal counsel? Pure motherfucking genius. Either I tell the truth, or lie, or something in between — all on the record. No matter what happens, the old reptile is golden.

Not knowing what to say, I say nothing at all. The pause drags on, filled only by the hiss of cellphone connections and the lamenting accordions of the next narcocorrido. I open the window and dusty coolness spills in.

“Nick?” asks Hercules, dropping the formalities. About damn time, considering that I screwed over Frankie for him last week. “I need you to do the right thing down there. Can I count on your cooperation?” That craggy voice makes it impossible to tell if Hercules is ordering me to kick Nooshin out, or just suggesting it. I wish I was sprawled across the leather couch in his expansive office, studying the visage that launched a thousand Brown Panther protests back in the Sixties. Then I’d know.

And that’s how the conference call ends, with a too-cheerful goodbye from Jean the lawyer and Hercules’ order/suggestion hanging over my head like a guillotine. I toss my cellphone aside in frustrated disgust and reach into the paper bag for the rest of my lunch — and grab a handful of cold tortillas. The only thing worse than warm tortillas are cold tortillas. On the radio Los Tigres del Norte are crooning about stealing across the border to the promised land of America and never coming back, and at this moment all I want to do is grab Nooshin and pack up our shit and take their advice.

The sandy footpaths winding through Guadalupe Valley are deserted in the morning cloudbursts. Above us baja oaks are blotting out the pearly sky. Only a few raindrops leak through the pin-leafed canopy and drip onto our ponchos. We follow the trail through clumps of poison sumac and around an old rockslide. Puddles have formed in flat depressions in the rock. Then the trail begins to climb again, rising past treetrunks that tilt toward the valley floor, pulled by gravity and erosion. Somewhere in the mountains ahead a coyote is howling.

Nick turns into a statue with one arm raised. “Look!” he hisses.

Overhead is a tall rectangle of dark feathers perched on a dead tree limb. Huge yellow eyes blink at us. Slowly, then faster.

“A great horned owl,” I whisper, and peel back my poncho’s hood so I can watch it flicker across the treetops and out of sight. “That was so cool! I’ve only seen them in zoos, never in the wild before. How’d you manage to spot it, anyway?”

Nick starts walking again. “Beats me. I just looked up and there it was.”

“Did you feel it watching you? Like, the weight of its gaze?”

“Nah. Well, maybe. On a subconscious level.”

I trail after him, stepping in his bootprints. “My grandfather hated owls, even the ones at the zoo. He grew up in Iran believing owls were ghosts that had taken animal form. Emissaries from the spirit world.” Just saying it brings all the old stories flooding back, memorized while Nasrin and I sat at the foot of his rocking chair. “According to Grandfather, owls usually appear to warn people of bad tidings. Especially their own death. That way people have time to get their affairs in order and prepare to join the spirit world.”

“Hopefully we’ll be an exception to that superstition.” Nick glances over his shoulder, measuring something. Maybe me. “What about the rest of your family? What do they believe?”

“Same thing as us,” I smile. “An owl is just an owl.”

We fall into comfortable silence again. Above us the oak canopy is thinning out. We tug our poncho hoods back into place. The plastic sluices with drizzle as we follow the trail into a thicket of bush poppies. My nostrils tickle in the wet wind as I keep trying to smell any blooms. But their fragrance is mostly nascent, just branches dotted with flower buds, with only a few even half-open to enjoy.

I peel open a flower bud and sniff the cloying aroma, then offer it to Nick. Instead of taking it from me, he grabs my wrist, steadying the destroyed bud in front of his face. Then he closes his eyes and relaxes into a deep inhalation, “Mmmmm…” I pang with the need to do something naughty to him.

Soon the trail widens and flattens into grassy barrenness, an eroded saddle between two runty hilltops. Atop the ridgeline we pause to enjoy the view. Behind us the valley widens into a verdant panorama of arroyos filled with oak and pine, and vineyards that produce almost all of Mexico’s wine, and low squalls pebbling the Pacific. Ahead is another valley and more ridgelines, each one taller than the one before, receding like teethy steps into the rainy distance.

“Living in Tijuana, I forget the world can be like this, you know?” I say, my voice almost lost in the wind. “We have to drive a long ways before we stop seeing the city. I wish this view was closer.”

“You grew up in East LA dreaming of getting away from it all. I grew up in bumfuck nowhere Iowa dreaming of anyplace with stoplights, the more the better.” Nick’s expression is mostly hidden by the dripping hood of his poncho. “Behold the best microclimate in Mexico for grape growing. The perfect combination of soil, elevation, temperature, and seasonality. Only the Mediterranean itself can rival the Valle de Guadalupe.”

“You got that from a guidebook.” I’m catching onto his tricks.

Another trick of his — deflection. “Are you cold?”

“Nah, I’m fine. I can still do the winery tour.” But when he reaches over to hold my hand, it feels like an ice cube compared to his. “My hands are a little cold, that’s all.”

Nick’s warm grasp drops to my thigh. Where the poncho ends my jeans are rain-plastered, and beneath them I’m shivering. “We can do the winery tour another time. Let’s go home and take a hot shower, alright?”

“Can’t we just dry off in the truck? Then we could still — ”

He interrupts me by stepping on my Nike. Gently, but still.

“Hey!” I exclaim, trying to pull my foot away.

“See?” Nick says, pointing down in accusation. “Your shoes are waterlogged too.”

Sure enough, my Nike gushes out of the eyelets when he leans into me. “But I have my flip-flops back in the truck. I can just change into those…”

He’s already returning to the trail, his plastic-draped shoulders moving with determined energy. “Come on! This just wasn’t the right day to come out here!”

His irritation washes over me like another cloudburst, and I sag into a miserable paralysis. Way to go, Nooshin. You just ruined the whole day because you’re not tough like him. Impervious to the elements. Iron-willed. Because that’s what Nick wants. A girl who’s rugged and reliable, like some piece of farm machinery that never fails.

From the thicket of bush poppies he yells “Nooshin!” The word is rapidly descending into the valley.

Chasing after his bootprints in the wet sand, I remind myself that any number of things could be bothering him. The way Hercules forced him to screw over Frankie at the U.S.-Mexico Border Symposium. Our arguments about whether I should spend a couple hundred dollars on a quickie divorce from Saman, or save up for a real divorce with alimony and everything. Those frustrating dives into the Korea Textile maquiladora archive that leave him muttering about the difference between “dog bites man” and “man bites dog” dissertations. Maybe, just maybe, I’m not the ruin of his day — or only the smallest part of it.