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.