Aldama is one of those places that makes me wonder why I ever left Tijuana and followed Nick into the “real” Mexico. Watching the high empty altiplano unfold from the passenger seat of the truck, it feels like voyaging into a dreary netherworld. First the stunted yucca and paddles of beavertail cacti die out, then even the desert grass. Only the two-lane highway is left, bisecting a vast sea of barren dirt. Craggy mountains press in menacingly from the horizon, resolving into peaks that spill into steep angry hillsides of jagged rock. Finally a dreary smog appears in a valley ahead.

“That’s gotta be it,” Nick announces, breaking our tired silence. His voice sounds like a century of stale coffee and dust. I turn toward him hopefully, eager for conversation or just a sidelong glance. He remains frozen in profile, annoying me with a favorite trick — no hands on the wheel, letting the twin ruts in the highway steer the Explorer for him. In the opposite lane is a matching pair of ruts carved by endless overloaded trucks.

We turn off the highway below an exit sign canted at such an alarming angle it almost scrapes the semi-trailers mingling into Aldama. The city is a collection of drab scenes repeated again and again. Cinderblock buildings flaking back to their natural gray. Rusted oil tanks surrounded by puddles of shiny oil. Holes where bargain-basement mechanics encourage cars to pull overhead. Decrepit bars with semis parked in long lines outside. We see the whole pathetic truckstop of a city without even trying, suddenly arriving at a sheer cliff face where the main drag dead-ends.

Our destination is somewhere behind us. The municipal jail, which supposedly contains the tax records from the Korea Textile maquiladora archive. The same tax records which were embargoed in Chirbampo’s municipal jail — then moved here, to Nick’s unpleasant surprise. He explains that practicality is the rule in rural Mexico. If you want something guarded 24 hours a day, you put it in the jail. We almost drive past it again because the building’s stucco is flaking into white powder on the sidewalk, obscuring the giant city emblem painted on the front wall. Luckily I notice a police car parked out front.

Inside is a lobby of dirty white tile surrounded by dirty white walls. A dozen cops are hanging around the front desk, braying at each other. Their conversation immediately thuds into silence when they see the two Americans walking in the front door. Nick plunges across the lobby and into their midst, towering over them. He introduces himself and shakes hands, chatting in rapidfire Spanish, sometimes laughing. I trail after him. My job is to stay in his shadow, speaking on cue, the usual lines. Their appraising stares make my skin crawl.

Within minutes the desk sergeant is leading us down a hallway to a varnished door turning amber with age. “El jefe” — the boss — he says simply, throwing open the door so it bangs off the wall. The chief of police’s office is just as dirty and crowded as the lobby, only with plainclothes officers in jeans and untucked Hawaiian shirts and clip-on holsters. They’re watching a soap opera blare from a small black-and-white television. The familial resemblance of several officers is striking.

The chief of police is an ancient withering man with a leathery sunken-cheeked face. He looks like he was born in this office and plans to die here too. He puts on foppish reading glasses to scrutinize Nick’s letters of introduction from UCLA, the University of California Regents, and the Estado Baja California Norte Departmente de Administracion. The letterheads only deepen the wrinkles in his brow.

My stomach does a somersault when Nick explains that we want access to the Korea Textile tax records. As he’s warned me, the Mexican Constitution guarantees the sanctity of the legal process. Anyone who tampers with evidence can be jailed for 50 years. If we tried this in Mexico City, he predicts we’d be arrested on the spot.

But out here in Aldama, Nick just makes a show of taking out his wallet. He offers a donation to the local constabulary, which is probably short on equipment vital for public safety…no? Suddenly the chief is our best friend, snapping his skeletal fingers and ordering a plainclothes officer to fetch us the document storage key.

“Tell me I’m good,” Nick smirks, flipping the key in his palm as we consider the plain locked door on the far side of the lobby.

“You’re good,” I say nervously, glancing over my shoulder, wondering if they can still arrest us.

“Only cost me 60 bucks.” He fits the key into the lock. “I was prepared to go up to a hundred.”

“You’re very good.” Then I quickly amend “The best!” just so he knows how much I adore him.

Nick’s smirk fades into a trapped look. “Uh, yeah. Well. Let’s see what I bought.”

The mystery door opens into a cavern of blackness — which turns into a converted broom closet, when he finds the lightcord for the solitary dangling bulb. Cardboard fruit boxes are stacked on shelves that reach to the ceiling, some broken-sided and spilling paper everywhere. At the back of the closet files are heaped in a pile like a burial mound. Something small and dark scampers away.

Nick’s broad shoulders almost span the closet, so I wait in the doorway while he pulls boxes off the shelves and riffles through them, doing a quick inventory. His face doesn’t light up like a Roman candle, but it doesn’t twist into a frustrated scowl either. “Some of the tax records are here, but not all of them,” he announces, standing up and smacking his head into the lightbulb. There’s a faint crack and the closet plunges into darkness again.

We go back outside and stand by the Explorer in the stark afternoon sunshine, revising our plan of action. “Divide and conquer,” Nick proposes, slapping his palms together eagerly. “You get started on the digitizing, I track down somebody in the city attorney’s office.”

My eyes stray past his handsome face to Aldama, clinging to life in the high sierra. “The city attorney’s office? Why?”

He jerks a thumb at the fading CARCEL DE ALDAMA sign. “This is a city jail, not a district or state prison. That means all paperwork is kept in the city attorney’s office. Including the paperwork for the disposition of the Korea Textile maquiladora’s tax records. That’ll tell us where the missing documents went.”

“Uh, Nick? It’s Sunday afternoon. How are you going to find someone in the city attorney’s office?”

“Have some faith in me.” His grin is utterly confident. “When a gringo makes a nuisance of himself in rural Mexico, asking for help, guess what? People help.”

“You should just wait until tomorrow.” I put the tips of my Nikes together.

“You want me to hang around?” There’s a pause. “Well, yeah. I suppose I could do that.” Nick’s weight shifts from one hiking boot to the other. “This splitting up, maybe it’s not such a good idea after all. You know what? I’m just going to stay here with you — ”

“No!” I erupt in dismay, then quickly soften my protest. “No. You go off on your own. I can take care of myself.” Suddenly I need to prove my independence to him — and more importantly, to myself.

“Nooshin.” The word is a dangerous peak he wants to summit.

“You’ll be back in a couple hours. Tonight at the latest. Right?” I’m willing him to be gone — and missing him before he even leaves. “But you don’t have to go right away. How about we get a hotel room first?” I’m surprised by the abject need in my tone.

Something unusual is happening in Nick’s icy blue eyes, in the angular planes of his face. An uncharacteristically nervous look. It’s like he’s noticing me for the first time, wondering why this dust-streaked girl with the mooning face is following him across Mexico. Except he’s looking at my tummy instead of me.

“Fine. I’ll get the hotel room, then. You, you just call me…when you’re done finding someone from the city attorney’s office.”

An uncomfortable silence hangs between us in the cacophony of the busy street. I mourn something deep inside. The idea of us, I suppose. We must be over. He’s never turned down sex before. Maybe he’s planning to get it from someone else. Somewhere else. I make a mental note to check the Explorer’s odometer when he gets back.

I grab my backpack out of the truck and sling it over my shoulder — and almost collapse under the weight of the laptop and scanner inside. Nick steadies me while I stand there expectantly. Finally he rewards me with a kiss, but his stubbled lips only brush my cheek. The gesture is oddly paternal. Another uncomfortable silence envelops us.

I look back toward the street again. “Well, I suppose you should get going.”

“Yeah.” Nick moves incrementally towards me, then hesitates. “You sure you’ll be alright on your own? For a couple hours? Until tonight?”

He seems disappointed when I nod. The gesture launches him into motion, folding himself behind the steering wheel and slamming the door and merging into traffic. I’m left on the curb, a girl in his rearview mirror, waving goodbye.

I glance around at the tired buildings flanking the pockmarked avenue, looking for a hotel. Nothing bears a resemblance, not even when I walk a few blocks in the direction of the mountains. Then I ask an elderly woman shuffling by, knotted hand holding a shawl around her shoulders. She gives me directions to the nearest hotel, out by the highway, a Mexican chain for business travelers that Nick and I can’t afford. There has to be something closer and older and most of all cheaper. Finally she relents with a disapproving look, pointing down the street to a blighted strip.

I walk further through the dust and diesel fumes and discover the hotel is more like a flophouse, complete with prostitutes hanging out under the huge weatherbeaten eaves. They’re a startling flash of color in this drab place, hooting at the semi-trailers that rumble past, trying to entice the truckdrivers into a quickie.

My gaze is immediately drawn to the only one standing up, at first because she’s the prettiest, then because she’s the youngest. She has a bright welcoming face and hair dyed copper and the lustrous skin of Indian ancestry, probably Otomi in this part of Mexico. She’s still blessed — or cursed — with the lithe body of a teenager, plainly evident from the skintight polka dot dress she wears that barely covers her butt. Mexican men prefer their women with curves, so she’s working harder for business, flirting recklessly.

They all fall silent and stare at me as if they’ve never seen a freakishly tall gringa with the evil eye before. “Buenas tardes,” I mumble politely, making my Nikes slap faster across the concrete. “Buenas tardes,” they chorus back. Then I reach the scarred double doors leading into the hotel.

I’m stopped by a hand on my elbow, a paralyzing touch. The youngest prostitute, asking me for money. To her I’m a rich American like on TV. She wouldn’t believe it, but she probably has more money than me. I shake my head and shrink from her touch and escape inside. As the doors swung shut I hear her mutter “puta!” — bitch! — and resume bantering with the other prostitutes.

The desk clerk is a washed-out man showing off his tattooed arms in a wifebeater. He has deliberate trouble counting my multi-colored pesos, testing me to see if I know the currency. I do. He waits until the room key is in my hand to tell me this is a bad part of town, especially for an American. Only go out during the day. Always keep your door locked at night. Blah blah blah. It takes me a few heartbeats to realize he’s serious. I nod gravely, giggling on the inside. Who knew there was a good part of town in Aldama?

My room isn’t much different than the cells I saw in the jail, except that it has a window overlooking a trash-strewn alley, and it doesn’t have a toilet and sink squatting in the corner. There’s a single communal bathroom at the end of the hallway. I carefully inspect the bedsheets to make sure they’re clean. They’re not, of course. I can’t find any fresh stains, but they stink of B.O. when I hold them to my nose. I plan to sleep in my clothes on top of the bedspread, wearing an extra sweatshirt at night for warmth.

The prostitutes are gone when I return to the street. The massive wooden benches beneath the eaves look even larger without anyone to fill them. I retrace my steps back to the jail, slowing my pace to enjoy a routinely spectacular altiplano sunset and buy some dinner from a street vendor. He’s assisted by his adorable twin daughters, maybe 9 or 10 years old. They’re still dressed in their Sunday best and eagerly practice their nascent English with me, all dozen phrases, while he swells with pride.

Afterward I stop in a claustrophobic store literally bursting with merchandise. Colorful boxes jam the shelves like a vast marketing kaleidoscope. Barrels are stacked in some aisles, others are lined with bikes and trikes decorated with chrome and streamers. Pinatas hang from the ceiling so low I have to duck. I manage to find a three-pack of lightbulbs and haggle with the shopkeeper for a single one.

Back in the jail I return to the converted broom closet and replace the broken bulb myself, not wanting to owe any of the cops a favor if I ask them to replace it for me. Then I sit crosslegged on the cold tile, my arms casting stark shadows as I work. Peeking behind shelves I find an electrical outlet for the laptop and scanner. I dig through each cardboard box painstakingly, one after another, making notes as I digitize the yellowing sheafs.

I’m just starting to find my rhythm when everything is interrupted by a boisterous gaggle of prostitutes — all ages, all sizes, all wearing too much makeup and not enough clothes. They’re here for visiting hours. An odd ritual to me, but common in Mexico according to Nick. Prisoners with money can buy sex in their cells, or trade for it using something like cigarettes or tequila. The cops take a cut for making it happen, escorting the hookers to the cells and back, even though prostitution is technically illegal. Once I asked Nick about it, and he explained the Mexican viewpoint is men have needs and prey on each other if women aren’t around. Better to tolerate a minor crime than foster worse ones.

I get the impression it’s a slow night, since there don’t seem to be many trips back to the cells. Instead the prostitutes mostly hang out in the lobby, chatting with each other and the cops who joke around with them, breaking up the monotony of their shifts. Naturally I become a focus of their attention, the gringa working in the broom closet. I keep my back turned, discouraging interruptions, but I can hear them talking about me.

Later a potty break takes me to the only women’s bathroom in the jail, a neglected place of stained sinks and grimy toilets and a floor littered with cigarette butts. I’m mortified when I walk in on the youngest and prettiest prostitute, washing herself after a detour into one of the cells. Her polka dot dress is hiked up around her waist and she isn’t wearing any underwear. She finishes unselfconsciously and pulls down her dress and introduces herself as Marta, watching me while I pee without letting my butt touch the dirty seat. Then she fixes her makeup and hair in the mirror, shifting her eyes to look at my reflection, chatting as if our encounter is the most natural thing in the world. What am I doing in the broom closet and Mexico? Am I a lawyer, or maybe a journalist? Do I have a husband or boyfriend? We emerge from the bathroom together and the cops standing in the hallway frown at me in disapproval.

After that I overhear her describe me to the cops and other prostitutes as her “nueva amiga” — new friend. She tells them I’m doing extremely important work and shouldn’t be interrupted. Except by her, of course. If they have any questions for me, they’re supposed to tell her and she’ll ask for them. Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice to have someone to talk to after a stony day of near-silence with Nick. I look forward to her brief interruptions, when she lingers in the doorway and smokes, extending her arm into the lobby to ash on the floor. I feel a little sad when visiting hours are over and she waves goodbye, making circles with her palm like she’s cleaning a dirty window, her face split with a jaunty grin. Then she and the other prostitutes are gone and the jail falls silent behind my back, cops muttering at the front desk, an occasional clank from the cells.

Eventually I lose myself in a repetitive series of motions, taking documents out of the boxes and loading them into the sheet feeder and putting them back, scribbling notes, repeat. My brain is on autopilot, then it isn’t on anything at all.

“Senorita.” Then louder. “Senorita!”

Dumbly I twist around and look up at the cop standing in the closet doorway. I can barely see past his jutting belly. His lips are moving beneath a walrus mustache. It’s always so hard to understand Spanish when I’m exhausted. After a while I gather that he’s asking me if I want some coffee, and maybe an escort back to my hotel.

I’m not wearing my runner’s watch with the oversized digits — just one less reason for a desperate Aldama streetkid to mug me — so I ask the cop for the time. 1:30 AM. Just hearing it makes all the remaining energy fizzle out of my body. But there’s no way I’m letting him escort me back to my hotel. If there’s anything I’ve learned so far in Mexico, it’s the cops you worry about, not the criminals.

I debate calling Nick. And decide not to, when I see that he hasn’t called me.

Outside the streets are empty and moonlit, the buildings full of shadows. My Nikes sound like bomb-slaps on the sidewalk. Multiple shadows of me stretch in all directions, one shadow-me leaning away from the hovering moon, others running from streetlights and neon beer signs. If I stand in the lights a certain way one of my shadows becomes a Quasimodo, hunched and misshapen by my backpack.

I have to let myself into the hotel, working the locked front doors beneath a humming bulb that’s attracting moths. I pause to consider their ghostly flitting shapes, wondering where they live. This stretch of altiplano seems so barren and desolate by day, but at night becomes a dreamscape filled with life. In the mountains I can hear the drifting echo of coyote yips, and bats wheel overhead snapping at moths, and in dim alleys I’ve seen the flash of eyes — probably rat eyes, although I tell myself they’re just mice.

To my astonishment the tattooed clerk is still behind the desk, ghastly in the pall of a green lampshade and flickering TV. And he’s awake, even. His bejeweled fingers are wrapped around the neck of a half-empty tequila bottle. I don’t see a glass anywhere.

To his astonishment the solitary gringa is strolling the bad part of town in the middle of the night, not barricaded in her hotel room praying for the safety of dawn. I want to giggle at him. Nick and I live in a crime-ridden border city in the midst of a drug war, where on average 2.1 Mexicans die nightly from unnatural causes, and the house we rent is decorated with barred windows and deadbolts with chains on all the doors and dead cats strewn across the “lawn” of paver blocks. Aldama feels as safe as a mosque compared to our life in Tijuana.

I’m tired after climbing the stairs with my heavy backpack, so tired I can’t even finish stumbling to the hotel room door. I rest on a carved wooden bench, which sits in front of the only clean thing I’ve seen — a window overlooking the main drag. My cellphone’s battery claims to be dead, but I try it anyway, dialing Nick’s number. The call goes through and rings three times before I get his voicemail.

I rest my forehead against the cool glass, listening to my boyfriend’s voice tell me I should leave a message. I tell him our hotel information and provide a staccato update, afraid the battery will run out any word now, but it doesn’t and I’m left listening to the roaring silence. I debate whether to fill the static with “I love you”, and open my mouth, and start to say the words — but that’s when the battery dies, stranding me alone in Aldama.