The Mexican Year

My headlights gut the darkness, tearing open the perfect pitch black of an altiplano night as I scream down the two-lane highway. The needle is buried past an obscene number on my speedometer, a daylight-only number, not that I remember the exact math. Above a certain speed you close on an object faster than you can react to it, a phenomenon known as overdriving your headlights.

I’m living that phenomenon now. Moths and bats flash through my shallow field of illumination, barely registering on my ocular nerves before they’re gone already. I try to react to them, even just by twitching, but it’s completely useless. At this speed there’s no time for thought or reflexes or anything but the vaguest categorization of the visual stimuli flying past you.

This is the core of existence, life as lived by permission of the fates and chance and all the other names we give to the tenuous favor of randomness. I left the rationality of reaction somewhere back at 60 or 70 MPH, and now I’ve shed my animal reflexes too. There’s only right place right time, no matter whether it’s a primordial muck on this third rock from the sun, or being born white in the United States, or screaming down a highway devoid of mule deer.

Then I ease off the gas, and turn down the Mexican death metal pumping out of the speakers, and redouble my concentration on the arc of headlights in front of me.

I had a close call a couple years ago. I was redlining my beater Explorer beneath an August moon, trying to make Chihuahua City before dawn. The drive was jarring but uneventful until I got to the mountains, when I rounded a curve and suddenly found an elderly campesino and his three scrawny cows in my headlights. He was leading them across the road single file — rustling them maybe, I don’t know — and I barely had time to yank my steering wheel toward the gap between the second and third cows, more an act of instinct than deliberation. I thought I made the gap, but suddenly the truck shuddered and the third cow’s head spun away. For a moment it lingered in my peripheral vision, broken-necked and eyes rolling wildly. Then I was past the impact and they vanished into the dark behind me.

Back then I was convinced this was real happiness. Driving anywhere on the fucking map I want to go. Changing vistas like changing clothes. Surviving on $5 a day and a shower a week. Life was beguiling here, beyond the reach of phones and paychecks and commitments, beyond all the shit that chains us to a place, to ourselves. In America I was just another American, but crossing the border transformed me into an expatriate. Something exotic. My own personal cargo cult. Life stopped in the pueblos and rooms I entered, curious faces tracking me, people sucking up in traditional hospitality, muchachitas flirting onto the fast-track to American citizenship. And I was always in control, emotionally distant, rootless and uninvested.

In my peripheral vision — pinpricks of sodium light and the glint of corrugated aluminum. A ranch stranded somewhere in the altiplano. Thousands of acres, hundreds of cattle.

Memories tug at my tear ducts. I know what it’s like, growing up in drivethru country. The empty sky for a best friend. Being part of a family business that’s all business and no family. And the straitjacket of agrarian life, where every day — every goddamn day — is the same ritual. Get up before the buttcrack of dawn to do chores, ride the bus five hundred years to school and back, do more chores. Wash rinse and repeat for 18 years.

No wonder I came out of Worth County like a bullet from a gun. Anybody got in my way, tried to stop me, I would’ve killed them. And bullets don’t look back.

Watching Concepcion crawl into sight on the horizon, a glowing haze of lights, I have to admit to myself that this itinerant bliss can’t last forever. Eventually you finish your Ph.D. or quit trying. Graduate funding runs out, assuming you had any to begin with. The student loans roll into five digits, then six. A stony-faced committee expels you, if it comes to that. Maybe you wind up like your professors, overworked and chasing tenure and publishing-or-perishing and nostalgic about their carefree days in grad school, when all they had to worry about was starving to death. Or maybe you morph into just another suit or skirt, punching a cubicle clock somewhere, trading your soul for a paycheck and health insurance, living for the end of the day and the weekends and those two precious weeks of vacation, forever and ever amen.

All the career advice I hear, it’s always the same. You gotta feel passion. Find what you love and keep doing it. Follow your heart and pursue your dreams and whatever the fuck high school guidance counselors say nowadays. Except I feel zilch passion for jumping through the hoops of flaming bullshit called academia. I don’t even feel passionate about avoiding the real world and its job market anymore. I go through the Ph.D. motions, say the right careerist words on cue, but I can’t back up the sentiments. Reach through the words on my curriculum vitae and you’ll get a handful of nothing.

The only thing I feel passionate about isn’t a thing at all. It’s a person. Nooshin. When I think about the future, I don’t really care if I wind up barricaded in the ivory towers, or running in a corporate hamster wheel, or scratching dirt back in Iowa. Just as long as I wind up somewhere with her.

Pulling off the highway, my headlights swoosh over Concepcion. The pueblo is a glorified truckstop that decorates the altiplano like a hairy mole. I mix with still-rumbling traffic on the main drag. The only lodging is this shitty falling-apart flophouse of a hotel — really a trucker’s motel, since the empty lot out back is crammed with semi-trailers. Moths flitter beneath the sickly light of massive overhanging eaves. An old sandbag of a hooker is motionless at a picnic table, watching me pull a U-turn in the street and ease the Explorer against the curb.

Inside the first thing I notice is the hotel’s decor — or what’s beneath it, more like. The cheap plywood paneling and generations of paint can’t obscure the sleek lines of Art Deco architecture. Coved moldings still curve around the ceiling, and the boarded-up fireplace is shouldered with round stone. This place was probably something else back in the 1930s, when some star-crossed local figured Concepcion was going to be the Next Big Thing.

Behind the front desk is a sleeved-out Mexican in a Los Angeles Lakers jersey. The cheap tattoos running from his wrists to his shoulders could mean anything. Maybe he’s an ex-con. Maybe he’s an ex-truck driver. When I get closer it smells like he bathes in tequila and tobacco. A hand rises in a stop sign. “Hey. You there. Hey!” But I keep going past him to the stairwell. His footsteps don’t follow me.

Friday night in this shithole is quieter than you’d think. Some drunken laughter drifts through the closed doors, and I can hear the solitary bang-bang-banging of a headboard against a concrete wall, but otherwise it’s funereal. Most of the clientele is still blowing their weekly paychecks in the trucker bars that line this blighted strip of Concepcion.

Halfway down the hallway I make a fist and rap insistently on a door. #9. The metallic numeral has been painted over so many times it’s sinking out of sight. “Nooshin, it’s me. I’m back.”

Behind the door, silence. Then the creak of tired bedsprings and a sudden rush of sockfeet. Locks unlock, chains unchain. A sliver of her face appears — a slash of unplucked eyebrow, the dark orb of her right eye, a steep carmel-colored cheekbone. “Nick!” The door flings open and she’s standing there, willowy and disheveled and most of all beautiful, those plush lips smiling in welcome, a wild halo of inky tresses spilling down her shoulders and obscuring the GAP logo on her pink hoodie, jeans hanging from her bony hips, white-and-pink-and-red striped socks on her feet.

We hurl together like magnets, a lingering hug. She feels unbearably poignant in my arms, all ribs and scrawn, heartbeats flickering against my chest. I’m filled with tenderness. The post-Aldama fight that separated us this morning is fading fast, a bad memory dimming into a forgotten one.

Somewhere down the hall a door creaks open. Nooshin immediately breaks away and peeks around me. “Finally! Omigod, I need to pee SO BAD,” she giggles in relief, skipping down the hallway toward the communal bathroom. “Be right back!”

“I’ll get your stuff packed up,” I call after her, and turn to confront a hotel room like a jail cell. The ceiling and walls are bare cracking plaster, stained and streaked with dirt and occasionally defaced with graffiti. The floor is gray linoleum tile, synonymous with elementary schools and mental wards. The only furniture is a double bed. Its mattress visibly sags, worn into oatmeal by age and poundings.

Even here Nooshin is impeccably neat. Her Nikes wait beneath the bed like slippers. The laptop and its big PROPERTY OF UCLA sticker are recharging in a corner, with the carrying case aligned next to it. A plastic bag of dirty clothes hangs from the doorknob.

The only thing out of place is her backpack, unzipped and leaking things onto the bedspread. I immediately notice her favorite purple swirly pen…but not the secret notebook she hides from me. I grope madly to the bottom of her backpack, searching for it, dreadfully curious what she wrote about me after our fight. Is she still rhapsodizing about my icy blue eyes and drawing our initials in girlish cupid hearts? Or am I an asshole now, like Saman only worse?

I find the notebook and flip from the back cover forward, looking for her most recent outpouring of furtive emotion — and stare in bafflement at two columns of words. Names, actually:

Finn Afshar Sebastian Simon Teymour Carsten Namdar Will Sepehr Iraj

Yasmin Danika Laleh Noelle Fila Mina Chloe Cai-

The last three letters tail off in mid-scribble, interrupted by my arrival. She meant to write “Caitlin”, maybe.

The hallway echoes with the dull whoosh of a toilet flushing.

Hurriedly I close the notebook and try to recreate its positioning in the backpack. Jammed next to some hiphuggers. A few items strewn on top, like her bottle of shampoo. And that hairbinder. No wait, not that hairbinder. I think it was the tortoiseshell one. And finally the Tampax box. I definitely remember finding that on top. We bought a whole armload last month in Sinaloa, at the brand spanking new Pemex in the town with the weird calendrical name, El Veinticinco de Enero or something like that.

I turn the featherlight box in my hand, examining its muted blue-and-pink shape. It hasn’t been opened. Yet.

Out in the hallway the bathroom door creaks opens. Barely-audible sockfeet are approaching.

I jam the box of tampons into her backpack and bound off the bed, racing the muted footfalls, trying to reach the laptop recharging in the corner before she arrives in the doorway.

The city attorney of Aldama isn’t happy to meet with us. The stout man is a bustle of irritation, waving us into his office hurry-up style, collapsing into his chair, frowning deeply. He has the blunted nose and cauliflower ears of a boxer. The rest of his face is like pumpernickel dough, dark and lumpy. He wears a tan dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, neatly-pressed jeans, and cowboy boots. A hairy hand rises to his neck, where a crucifix dangles from a thick gold braid. His fingers close around the crucifix protectively. He noticed my evil eye.

I drop my chin, hiding behind the sweep of my bangs. Two mismatched chairs face the city attorney’s desk. One is all wood, the other is cheap molded plastic on a metal frame. Neither looks very comfortable. I pick the wooden chair, sitting carefully because of my long polo dress. Then I pull a notebook and pen from my shoulder bag and wait attentively. Time to look like a dutiful assistant.

“These are old pictures of Aldama?” Nick says in Spanish. He’s still standing. Dawdling, really. Over by a wall decorated with black-and-white photographs, the kind with handwritten captions in the bottom corners. “Lot of coal mining back then. More than now, from the looks of it.”

“Senor. Please. Have a seat.” The city attorney is glaring now.

Nick ambles toward the unoccupied chair next to mine. Then he stops abruptly, craning his neck. “That’s a nice view of the plaza.”

The city attorney twists around in his desk chair, glancing out the window. The hand remaining on his desk turns into a fist, lumpy and scarred. I flinch just thinking about how his knuckles got that way. I hate hate hate boxing. All bloodsports, really.

“I was robbed at knifepoint out there yesterday,” Nick is recalling. “While four cops watched from the steps of this very building.”

The city attorney has lost all patience. “I’m sure they were on break.”

“They were drinking tequila.”

“Then they were off duty.”

“Ah,” Nick says.

He finally takes his seat, making a show of getting comfortable. Watching his lazy motions you’d never guess he was born in a hurry. But this is how Nick operates. When someone wants him to hurry up, he slows down. And vice versa. I catch myself smiling down at my notebook. He’s the same way in bed with me.

Nick reaches over to my lap and grabs the photocopied shipping manifest. “We’re here to see you about the Korea Textile maquiladora tax records. It seems there’s some confusion about the number of boxes.”

The city attorney waves at the paperwork in Nick’s hand. “My secretary already provided you with the documentation. We received 13 boxes. That’s all.”

“That can’t be right. The Chirbampo municipal jail shipped…how many boxes?” Nick knows exactly how many boxes. But in Mexico it’s the underlings who are supposed to know the details, not the bosses.

“37 boxes,” I say on cue. “The Chirbampo municipal jail shipped 37 boxes.”

The city attorney’s eyes remain fixed on Nick. “We received 13 boxes. That’s all I can tell you, senor.” He stands, signaling the interview is over.

Nick doesn’t get out of his chair. He just slouches there, rubbing at his bald spot. Normally it’s a nervous involuntary reflex, but this time it’s deliberate. “What do you think happened to the other 24 boxes?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe they fell off the truck.”

The city attorney shrugs, a muscular gesture. It makes the polo pony on his shirt rise and fall. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“You haven’t even asked me what I want with those other 24 boxes.”

“No, I haven’t. Because I don’t care.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. I’m being paid to digitize the Korea Textile maquiladora archive. All of it, including the tax records.” Nick crosses his arms obstinately, watching the city attorney for a reaction.

The reaction isn’t good. The stout man’s frown has deepened all the way into a scowl. But he doesn’t say anything.

“I think I know why those 24 boxes have gone missing. That way the lawsuit against Senor Reyes will be dismissed for lack of evidence, right?” Nick leans forward conspiratorially. “Whoever misplaced those boxes for Senor Reyes was probably supposed to destroy them, but I suspect they’re still around. Hidden somewhere. Because those boxes are leverage on Senor Reyes. An insurance policy, let’s say. Or even blackmail material.”

Goosebumps are rising on my bare arms. I can’t believe Nick is talking to the city attorney this way. Aldama is no welcoming pueblo of a couple hundred people, like Chirbampo. This is a poor and desperate city of 50,000. Anything could happen to a pair of Americans like us. We’re probably in danger of being tossed in jail — or worse.

But the city attorney doesn’t pick up his phone and order our arrest. Instead he leans forward across his desk, bracing his weight on his palms. That fight-scarred face is even more intimidating close up. “I’ll say it again, senor. I don’t care. Now get out of my office.”

“I’d pay for access to those 24 boxes. After the lawsuit against Senor Reyes has been dismissed, of course.”

“Get out!”

“Of course. We appreciate your time, senor.” Nick is changing mode. He tosses the shipping manifest back to me and gets up — quickly. His broad shoulders are vanishing from the office before I can even steady myself on these stupid wedgie sandals. I almost have to chase after him.

We clatter down the stairwell of the municipal building and spill out into the bright sunshine. Around us the plaza is wide-open, an empty lake of patterned cement. Vehicles circuit the fringes, some glinting in the cool afternoon, most dull with coal dust. I keep glancing over my shoulder, expecting the city attorney and cops in hot pursuit.

Nick slows to avoid a few pigeons strutting and bobbing toward us. His profile is resigned. “That was pretty stupid of me, huh?”

“Omigod. That was the stupidest thing ever!” I pound on his arm with small fists, angry and afraid. “How could you say those things to him? What the heck came over you? You could’ve gotten us in big trouble! Or maybe — ” I gasp in terror. ” — maybe we are in big trouble.”

“Yeah. We should probably leave town. Just to be on the safe side.” He pulls his Kangol hat out of a back pocket and slaps it onto his balding head. Something electric is happening beneath the brim. “Where the hell did I park?”

“Over there,” I say urgently, pointing out his rusty Ford Explorer. It sits between a panel truck and a pickup tilted by a flat tire.

We resume our blistering pace across the plaza, glancing around to see if anyone is following us. Down a side street I can see a barren hillside dotted with mine derricks that are barely taller than Nick and I put together. What did he call those tiny mines? Oh, yeah — pocitos. Little holes.

“What are you doing?” Nick asks in irritation.

I’m unfolding my antique Polaroid camera as we powerwalk. “I want a picture. To remember this by.”

“Fuck that.” But he doesn’t stop me.

I don’t bother sighting around the plaza, I just press the button blindly. Click. Then another click. Might as well double my chance of getting something good in the picture. “Does this mean I’m done digitizing the archive?”

“Yeah. Well, no. Maybe not yet. I might still get access to those 24 boxes.”

Nick plows into the afternoon, his face a mask of hopeful stubbornness. Struggling to match his long strides, I feel even more afraid, even more angry. I’ve seen the same expression before. On Saman’s not attractive, not unattractive face. Whenever my husband talked about saving our marriage. Right up to the point where he broke my nose.

Aldama. It should be a swear word. I can’t think of a better way to pay homage to this altiplano shithole. Coal is everywhere. Piling up in empty lots and ditches. Streaking down the sides of buildings. Coating the roads in glinty dust. The puddles probably shine black when it rains, and there’s an acrid taint to the air. Old-timers I’ve met swear you can get black lung disease without ever working in the mines, either kind — the big commercial operations or the tiny hand-worked pocitos.

The new city center is informal, taking the mantle of primacy without asking, a strip of buildings that grow like mushrooms along the highway. This is the old city center. A district of decomposing structures, walls buckling into dangerous angles, many of the windows broken. Hard to believe this used to be the elite address in Aldama, a place of wealth and refinement. Mining executives with Scottish and German surnames. Abogados in three-piece suits who carried briefcases full of contracts. Managers who kept the mines humming day and night. But that was a long time ago.

Now it’s dinnertime and the crumbling central plaza is deserted except for a young girl. She looks about 14, but her green lycra skirt barely covers her ass and her stockings only reach to mid-thigh. The palm of one hand is pressed against her cheek in surprise, as if she doesn’t want to believe she’s here. Then a middle-aged man emerges from a sidestreet and clatters up to her in cowboy boots and says something. Haltingly, she follows him along the pavement. Her fingers keep slipping behind to tug down her skirt, but it’s useless. The man hails a coal-streaked taxi and she climbs tentatively in. By now her hand covers half her face.

Standing on the far side of the plaza is the municipal building, huge and half-ruined and serving several needs at once — city hall, district court, maintenance garage. Four policemen gaze stonily from the front steps, passing a bottle of tequila. A mongrel is chained in the open garage door, doing the actual guarding of the municipal vehicles parked inside.

I’m supposed to be meeting with the assistant city attorney. He promised to answer my questions about the missing tax records of the Korea Textile maquiladora archive. In exchange for a hefty contribution to his children’s private education fund. We agreed to rendezvous for dinner. In Mexico that can mean anything from 5:00 to tomorrow.

I glance at my cellphone again. It still lies there uselessly, an open clamshell on the passenger side of the truck, reporting NO SIGNAL on its display. Nearby a skeletal phone booth rises from a plaza corner, its plexiglass blown out. I trot over to make my calls, first to my sister, then to check on Nooshin.

Wendy answers on the third ring, sounding as chilly and exhausted as February in Des Moines. “Yeah?” she sighs, creaking around on the floorboards of the old shambling Victorian she shares with her longtime boyfriend. “Who is it?”

“Hey sis. It’s me. How you doing?”

“Nick? Nick! I thought you were in Mexico. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until later in the year. More like Thanksgiving or Christmas or something.”

“I am in Mexico,” I say, and decide not to tell her where. Aldama is depressing enough without having to describe it to somebody else.

“You’re too late. I already took care of everything.”

“Say what?”

“Didn’t Brian call you on Sunday?” Wendy asks, invoking our big brother.

“Uh, maybe. I got a call from some Iowa number I didn’t recognize. There was no voicemail, so I never bothered calling back.”

Cruel laughter fills my ear. “That was probably him. He got busted for solicitation in Winnishiek County.”

“Solicitation,” I echo numbly.

“Yeah. And on the Sabbath, even. Mom and Dad are so pissed they kicked him out of the farmhouse. He’s staying in a motel now.”

“What did Brian want when he called?”

“Money. He had to pay a fine and get his pickup out of impound.” More cruel laughter. “Serves him right. That’s what I say. Did you know he was buying it from hookers?”

All my memories of Brian are flooding back, each one more tortured than the last. A gentle giant who taught me how to ride a bike, bait a panfish hook, lay down a straight and steady weld. An unattractive dork who only rated mistreatment from the girls, especially Kimmie Krenzel, the center of his sad mooning universe. A codependent who never wanted to escape the poisonous orbit of my parents, accumulating psychosomatic illnesses while he waits to inherit the farm.

“Look, Wendy. I gotta ask you something.” I rock my weight back and forth in the phone booth. “Something really personal.”

“Okay,” she says warily. Our family isn’t big on the personal, let alone the really personal.

“Remember when you had that abortion? It didn’t change anything between you and Glenn, right? I mean, you guys are still together. So things must be cool. Huh?”

I hear a lighter flare in the background, then several puffs. That’s how she keeps her elfin figure. A steady diet of Virginia Slims. “Nah. It didn’t really change anything between us. We’re still good.” She exhales tiredly. “Why? You get a girlfriend pregnant?”

“Maybe,” I admit, but I’m not really thinking about Nooshin at the moment. I’m thinking about Wendy’s tired exhalation. “There’s something you left out. What else did you want to say?”

“Well…” The floorboards creak steadily. She’s pacing now, trying to organize the thoughts in her Prozac-dulled head. “It just kind of…clarified things, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s different for other couples, but for us…it was like, if we don’t want a kid now, then we don’t want kids at all. That’s just not who we are together. We’re just…us. Me and him. You know what I’m saying?”

“Nah. You lost me.” I’m polishing the bald spot on my head.

“I don’t know if I can put it any better than that.” There’s a pause in my ear as the creaking stops, then the hiss of a beanbag chair — maybe the same one she had in her bedroom on the farm. You can take the kids out of the parsimonious Roberts family, but you can’t take the parsimonious Roberts family out of the kids. “Well, okay. Let me try to put it another way. Hmmm.”

“Yeah?” I prod.

“I think it’s like this. Getting pregnant, it brings up the whole kids thing, right? Just kind of forces you to deal with it. Are we going to have a kid now? Which is like, are we going to have kids ever? So if you decide not to have a kid now, that’s what you decide for the whole relationship. Because really, if you want kids, then why put it off? Why not just go for it, and marriage too, and…”

Except I’m not listening to her anymore. I have company outside the phone booth. A ragged wino reaching through the empty sides at me — with a rusty pig-sticker of a knife. I’m being robbed in broad daylight in the central plaza of Aldama, right in front of the municipal building that houses the city hall and district court and maintenance garage, with four drunken cops looking on. Only in Mexico, man.

Aldama is a brighter place with Marta in it. And not just because she dresses like…well, I was going to say she dresses like a prostitute, but that’s only in rural Mexico, where women’s clothing is stuck in a puritanical timewarp. There are two things you don’t see here — a woman in pants, and a man in a skirt. But Marta’s gaudy skintight dresses could pass for clubbing attire in Tijuana. In LA her outfits wouldn’t even catch your eye.

She’s a theatrical little creature, chatting noisily, using big overblown gestures — waving her arms around in amazement, pinning a hand to her forehead when dismayed, pantomiming sex acts. Making herself the center of attention. All faces turn to her. Often in amusement, sometimes in disgust, but always watching.

My guesstimate of Marta’s age keeps changing with her performances. Sometimes she laughs too loud, dancing around, making such a fool of herself that I wince. Then she seems like a ditzy teenager with no social graces. Other times she can seem ancient. Outside the jail this morning, a bunch of grade school boys called her a whore and pelted her with rocks. She picked up the rocks and hurled them back, screaming in Spanish I couldn’t understand. Her angry reflexes made it seem like a familiar role, the long-harassed prostitute.

Now I’m encountering her in a truckstop diner, down on the blighted strip that includes the jail and our “hotel” — I’m using quotation marks because it’s really more of a flophouse, with rarely-washed sheets and a common bathroom and clients who often pay by the hour. Anyway, Marta and her friends aren’t welcome in the rest of Aldama. They stick to this district, a couple miles of grimy shopfronts and industrial buildings and cinderblock bars with drunks stumbling in and out.

Marta is sitting with three other gaudily-dressed girls, telling them a story — but in a really loud voice, so the whole diner can hear. A horrible accident on the highway, witnessed by a truck driver who was lucky to survive the carnage. Vehicles torn apart like scrap metal, gas catching fire, limbs severed, I don’t know what else. She’s talking so fast I can’t keep up with her Spanish. I suspect her over-enthusiasm is fueled by something more than the caffeine in her Coke. I’ve seen her and the other prostitutes take pills and act differently afterward, sometimes becoming jumpy and argumentative, sometimes sinking into glassy-eyed lethargy.

The electronic strains of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” begin to jingle in my backpack. I glance down at it, sitting on the dirty floor squeezed between my Nikes, so I’ll feel its absence if someone snatches it. I really need to change that stupid ringtone. Back in Mazatlan it seemed like a funny celebration of my relationship with Nick — research assistant, Girl Friday, girlfriend. But now I might be pregnant and he’s backpedaling into awkward distance and it just seems sad.

“Hello,” I say wanly.

“Hey.” His breathing is scratchy, as if he’s getting a chest cold.

I wait for more words, but there aren’t any. “Hey back. How are you? You’re not getting sick, are you?”

“Sorry. I’m a little distracted. I get a crappy signal here, so I have to stand in the middle of the fucking street.”

“Hang on, I’m a little distracted too.” Marta is trying to eavesdrop without knowing English, interrupting to ask me who I’m talking to, and generally making a nuisance of herself. “No me jodas!” — don’t bother me! — I protest.

“Tu papi, eh?” she laughs knowingly, using a term with a double meaning — daddy and lover. Then she abandons me, bouncing off to the counter, where a couple truck drivers have been looking over their shoulders at her.

“Who are you talking to?” Nick is asking in my ear.

“Marta is her name. She hangs around by our hotel. And this diner. You’d be proud of me — I’m actually eating! And, well…she shows up at the jail for visiting hours. She’s, like, a prostitute.” A trepidatious giggle escapes my throat, because I can sense him bunching with anger.

But maybe I’m wrong. Nick’s voice is calm, almost cold, when he suddenly says, “Pop quiz — do you know where the most valuable real estate in Aldama is?”

What? I blink into space. “Um, the most valuable real estate…” My head is spinning, trying to answer his question, trying to figure out why he’s asking it in the first place. “Are you talking about the plaza? No, wait. I know — out by the highway! The land out by the highway, right?”

“The most valuable real estate in Aldama is RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, Nooshin. Everybody wants to be seen with an American. Do you have any idea how valuable that is, looking cool and special and important to their friends, to the whole fucking town? So don’t just give that real estate away. Especially not to a hooker.”

I catch myself nodding urgently, as if he’s scrutinizing me for a reaction.

“Okay, let’s review,” Nick says. “Who did I make friends with in Chirbampo?”

Fluttery panic. Is this another trick question I’m going to get wrong? “Everyone?” I finally answer. Because it’s true. Nick ingratiated himself with everyone while interviewing half the town.

“No no no. The person I mostly focused on.”

“Don Fidel.”

“Right. And what did our new friend Don Fidel do for us?” My mouth is left hanging open while Nick plunges on. That was a rhetorical question, apparently. “He made the introduction to Senor Reyes. And he gave us free room and board. And he paid Dr. Samesh’s bill for your treatment. And he even set us up with a condo in Mazatlan.” Nick pauses to let that sink in, and I hear traffic rumble around him. “Now tell me — what is Marta the Hooker going to do for you?”

My gaze flickers to the counter, where Marta is leaning between the two truck drivers, arms draped around their fleshy necks, flirting at gale force. “She can’t do anything for me,” I say quietly, as if afraid she’ll overhear.

“It’s worse than that. Let Marta hang around, and you know what people will talk about? How that American girl showed up, and she had all of Aldama waiting to throw themselves at her feet, and she chose to cozy up with a hooker. It’s worse than spitting in their faces, Nooshin.”

The diner begins to blur with tears. “But that isn’t what happened! I’m not getting friendly with her. And how was I supposed to know that, anyway? I’ve been so smart about the stuff I knew. Nick, really I’ve been. I didn’t get ripped off by the hotel desk clerk, and I haggled for a lightbulb, and I’m not wearing my watch, and — ”

“You’re right,” he sighs suddenly. “I keep forgetting you’ve only been in Mexico a couple months. You make me forget, you’re doing so well here. You really are. Look, I’m sorry. Okay? Sorry.”

Marta swings by the table, brazenly stealing a bite of my hamburger, then promises the entire diner that she’ll be right back. I’m part of the audience staring after her swaying hips, confused by her exit — until I notice her and one of the truck drivers meet up outside. They vanish around the corner, in the direction of the parking lot.

“Is it over between us?” I ask him weakly. “Like, the girlfriend and boyfriend part?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” The reply bristles with affront, but underneath it Nick just seems lost. Groping. Maybe even guilty.

“You know what I’m talking about. You know…” I cup my hand over the cellphone and mutter quietly, “When I said we could get a hotel room before you left, so we could…” Then whispering. “When you didn’t want to have sex with me.”

He explodes into relieved laughter, peals of it. “That’s what you meant! You crack my shit up, girl.” After a while he composes himself. “Haven’t I said I could starve to death in bed with you? But that doesn’t mean I’m always in the mood.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way you looked at me.” He’s a mental Polaroid, discomfited, icy blue gaze at an unfamiliar angle — focused below the flat chest he claims to love so much, but above my hips. “The way you looked at my tummy.”

Nick holds the phone away. “Jesus fucking Christ!” he moans in the background, like an animal in pain. Then he’s back in my ear. “Can’t we just enjoy this? I mean, I was really enjoying this — and now WHAM, we’re having conversations like this. We’re always having conversations like this!”

His reaction is terrifying. I’m torturing him, a Chinese water torture of accumulating needs. My need for intimacy — and for reassurance, and definition. My need to link him to this pregnancy, even just the hope of it. My need to twine our futures. I hear my voice hobble tearfully, an agony of apologies, omigod…

But he’s already gone. I’m weeping into the perfect silence of a dead connection.

Marta comes back after I’ve used up all the napkins blotting at my hot wet cheeks and switched to the hem of my t-shirt. She blows through the front door, tossing her coppery hair, skin glowing, a grand entrance — except it’s only into a greasy diner hazed with cigarette smoke. She pauses at the counter to steal a drink of the other truck driver’s Coke, swooshing it around in her mouth, gargling with it. Then she abruptly spits it onto the floor. The cook yells something in angry shock, and several customers chuckle. Marta just laughs and flashes a wad of Mexican pesos, their colors faded with use. The bills probably add up to a couple bucks American. “Now I can afford my own lunch!” she says cheerfully, and sinks her buck teeth into another bite of my hamburger.

Forget my usual waking rituals — the lazy eyelid-peeling yawn, the luxurious stretch until vertebrae pop, the groping for Nooshin on her side of the bed. Today I’m jerked forward, slamming into an immovable object. It knocks the wind out of me. A steering wheel, for chrissake. I just took a steering wheel in the solar plexus. Sucking air, I collapse back into the driver’s seat. At least the setting is familiar. I’m surrounded by the cracked dashboard and patched seats of my ancient Ford Explorer, the only handout I ever got from my parents. What’s outside is anybody’s guess. The windows are too fogged up to see.

Hydraulics whine. The truck rocks again, more gently this time. It comes to rest at a pronounced angle. I’m aimed up a launch ramp for takeoff.

Panic should set in, but it doesn’t. I’m too hung over for that. Everything has the sickly reek of cheap tequila, starting with my own breath. In the cupholder is a Diet Coke from Mr. Tost, the Mexican equivalent of Taco Bell. The pop has been adulterated with Sauza Blanco. Its flask-style bottle lies on the passenger seat, so empty that I could almost believe it was never filled. My temples throb harder just looking at it.

I shoulder the door open, wriggling halfway out before its weight pins me. The frame is squishing my face. My left hand scrabbles on metal until it grabs the door handle. One hiking boot dangles in the air, the other scrapes along the floorboards. With a cursing effort I force the door further open — and topple to the ground. Luckily it’s a short drop.

The front end of the Explorer has been hoisted into the cool morning sky. A tow truck in police livery is responsible. The operator spills out of his cab in surprise. So much surprise that he doesn’t say a damn thing, just gapes down at me. Gaping seems to come naturally to him. His slack mouth is framed by a drooping handlebar mustache, and stacked above it a blistered nose and narrow-set rodent eyes. He wears coveralls so greasy they could be declared a strategic petroleum reserve. Blinking into the sunlight, he raises a hand to shade his face — the wrong hand, casting its shadow onto the gravel shoulder next to him. After more blinking he switches hands. At first I pegged him for a standard deviation south on the IQ scale. Now I’m thinking two standard deviations south.

I rise to my feet unsteadily. Because of the hangover, not the fall. “For fuck’s sake, dude. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

The operator looks at me quizzically. My bad. I defaulted to English. I repeat myself in Spanish, adding a couple more vulgarities for emphasis.

That gets a rise out of him. “I tried, senor. I tried! But there was no movement inside, no noise. I think to myself the truck must be abandoned.”

“It’s not abandoned if the windows are fogged up.”

His face goes blank, as if he’s unfamiliar with that causal relationship.

“Come on, you moron. Put my truck down.” I slap the front quarterpanel of the Explorer, causing dust to clang off. “I’m in park anyway. What were you going to do, drag the wheels all the way to the impound lot?”

The operator doesn’t say anything as he lowers the truck. To him I’m just another rich American. I can afford new rear tires — and a lot of other shit besides. Times like this remind me that wealth is relative. Especially in a developing country where most people make $7 a day.

I glance around while he unhooks the towchains. One of only two coal-mining regions in Mexico, Aldama is rife with pocitos — literally “little holes”. These tiny mining operations are cowboy outfits. Just a couple miners working a shaft in the ground. Their locations are betrayed by humble towers of reclaimed i-beams and homemade gusset plates. Every couple minutes the altiplano’s silence is shattered by a muscle car drag race — salvaged 1970s Ford and Dodge and Chevy engines, lifting buckets up and down. Most pocitos only produce 30 tons of coal per day. That translates into a daily wage of $25 for the miners. Enough to risk their lives in a hole with no safety precautions, not even a hardhat.

The tow truck coughs into motion. “Have a nice day, senor!” the operator yells. In the tall sideview mirror he’s gaping at me, then the road, then me again. “And call the jefe! The jefe wants to talk to you!”

The last thing I want to do is call the chief of police. But I still nod and wave goodbye. Aldama’s octogenarian jefe is the buttered side of my bread. I already bribed him for access to the jail’s stash of Korea Textile tax records. What next?

Back in the Explorer I go slick with sweat and almost throw up, suddenly exhausted. The hangover is sinking its meathooks into me. I should’ve bugged the tow truck operator for a bottle of water. I need something to wet the Sahara in my mouth.

Through my dirty windshield lies the outskirts of Aldama, creeping closer to the pocitos and their rickety towers. I don’t remember driving out here last night. In fact I don’t remember last night, period. Did I call Nooshin while shit-faced and hating life? Or did I spare her? I flip open my cellphone to confirm. Thank god — no outgoing calls. But plenty of incoming ones. Nooshin a couple times, last night and this morning. Hercules twice this morning, pissed that I’m ducking him. A strange number with an Iowa area code.

The dashboard clock changes, drawing my attention. It’s 10:37 now. I give myself a minute to recover, waiting until it becomes 10:38. Up and at ‘em, Nick. Time to kick ass like it’s never been kicked before. The clock changes again. 10:39.

I start the truck and roll the windows down, letting fresh air blow through. The Mr. Tost cup and empty Sauza Blanco bottle get tossed outside. It can’t be littering when a whole nation does it. The wind is rustling paper in the backseat. I twist around and discover a spiral-bound notebook, with a bunch of pages torn out and crumpled up. Add “shitty writing” to my list of accomplishments last night.

I unfold the pages and smooth out the wrinkles. They’re practice notes in my bad handwriting. Some are chatty evasions:

Nooshball,Playing hooky from life. I’ll call you later.

Your buddy

Others are more explanatory:

Nooshin,Thanks for putting up with all my shit lately. I need some time and space to think about things. I’ll be gone for a couple days. Call me if something comes up.

Nick

Too bad I can’t remember what the hell I was thinking when I scribbled down this bullshit. Then I open the notebook. My final draft awaits on the top page:

Nooshin,You’re right. I don’t know what I want anymore.

We’re the best thing that ever happened to each other. We’re the worst thing that ever happened to each other.

I’m your boss, you’re my employee. UCLA will crucify me for sleeping with you and there goes my Ph.D. You’re Saman’s wife, I’m the boyfriend you’re cheating with. Your family wishes you were dead and your in-laws threaten to make it happen.

I don’t know how to reconcile who we are with what we are. I have nightmares about it. Not just us falling apart, but our lives too.

I need to be gone for a while. Whatever happens, I love you.

Nick

I can’t decide whether it reads like a romantic confession, a breakup missive, or what. Not that it really matters. Nooshin will never know I wrote any of this. I use the Explorer’s cigarette lighter to torch the notebook and torn-out pages. I throw them out the window onto the gravel, where they shrivel and char.

And blow into the nearby grass. The cindered pieces aren’t as dead as they look. Embers blaze to life, setting fire to the brown tufts. Fucking fuck.

I open the door and stumble around the truck and chase after the baby grassfire. Smoke curls up around me as I stamp out the hotspots. My skull gongs with every heartbeat, the horizon line jumps around. I slow down, trying to keep my balance, and my skin bursts with a cold clammy sweat. A few nearby miners stop and stare — especially when they see me drown the last stubborn flames in vomit.