From this overlook, Guanajuato is a thousand pastel buildings poured into a steep tree-lined valley, no room for cars, barely room for people. The University of Guanajuato stands out the most, a block-long whitewashed facade that abuts a massive flagstone stairs and bell tower. The Basilica Nuestra Senora is also unmistakable, a cheesecake-yellow cathedral that contains the oldest piece of Christian art in Mexico. After that everything blurs into preserved colonial architecture. The spectacular view hasn’t changed much since the 1700s, thanks to Guanajuato’s designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. Here you can’t stack one brick on top of another without a historic preservation permit. Compare that to Tijuana, where the future is just a wrecking ball and construction crane away.

But the postcard vista didn’t lure Nooshin and I to this overlook. We’re here to get the oil changed in my truck.

Guanajuato only has two streets for vehicles and no automotive garages. Want something done to your ride? Then you have to drive up to the trincheras — trenches. These garages are literally just a slit in the ground. Park over it and the Mexican mechanic goes underneath. No historic preservation permit or other UNESCO blessing required.

Business is slow on this overcast Thursday morning. The instant we crest the overlook, mechanics are baying for our money. Half the shouts are in English, half in Spanish. “Best mecanico in Mexico, over here!” “Aqui, senor! Muy barato y rapido!” Their desperate faces storm the Explorer — which is scary for Nooshin, because we’ve got our windows rolled down. She gives a shriek and recoils toward me.

I pat her scrawny thigh in a reassuring but absentminded gesture. My attention isn’t really on her — or even the crowding mechanics, for that matter. I’m focusing on a teenager who hasn’t joined his colleagues. He slumps in a lawn chair next to his slit trench. He wears a scraggly beard and a jumpsuit with more stains from salsa than grease. A cheap plastic toolbox is open next to his sandaled feet. Every other toolbox in sight is closed.

“Who’s that?” I say in loud Spanish, pointing at the teenager.

The chorus is immediately more of the same. Come here, don’t go there. Cheap and fast. World best service. One mechanic even offers to guarantee his work — after noticing I have Iowa plates. But nobody answers my question about the teenager. Not even the teen himself, now staring evenly at me.

I rev the Explorer, parting the sea of mechanics who crowd the hood. Then I drive over to the teenager and his open toolbox. I brake almost-but-not-quite over his slit trench, a negotiating position. “You good or something?”

“My dad is. He’s the best up here,” the teen says in a squeaky voice. He can’t be more than 15 years old. “Can you wait around? He’ll be back in a minute.”

“I just need an oil change. 5W-30. You could do that for me, right?”

“For 5 dollars or 80 pesos, senor.” This voice is deep and emerging from nearby bushes. The kid’s dad, hoisting up his coveralls after a toilet break. He’s not much older than me. Indian features dominate his coppery face — thick brow, wide cheekbones, flat nose. Up close he reeks of grease and tobacco smoke. He looks past me to the passenger seat. “Good morning, senora.”

Nooshin blushes uncomfortably. She’s a wife, alright — but not mine. “Good morning, senor.”

The mechanic tilts his head, causing lank hair to fall across one strap of his coveralls. “Pop the hood.”

“Why?” I ask, already groping for the release.

He walks around to the front of the truck and raises the hood. There’s a pause as he listens to the engine idle. “Gun it a couple times.” After I do, there’s another pause. Longer this time. Protracted enough for Nooshin and I to exchange a shrugging look. Finally he slams the hood back down. “Go fetch the oil and filter, Adriano.”

The teenager comes to life, scrambling off his lawn chair and into the bushes. Apparently the mechanics hide their parts and supplies from each other. Meanwhile the dad waves me into position over their slit trench.

I kill the engine and climb out. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing good, senor. You’ll be lucky to get another 1,000 kilometers out of this engine.” He gathers an oil pan and wrench, then squirms under the Explorer’s rust-eaten frame and into the trinchera. “The lifters are shot. They’re a hydraulic roller design. Too expensive to replace unless you’re made of money. And one piston sounds bad, maybe two. I bet the piston skirts are collapsed.”

I’m nodding, even though the mechanic can only see my hiking boots from beneath the truck. We hear the same things listening to the Explorer’s engine — noisy lifters, pistons knocking. The toll of 140,000 very hard miles on the odometer. “How do you figure I’ll only get another 1,000 kilometers?”

“No matter which direction you’re headed, you’ve got a mountain range in your way.”

I catch myself nodding again. More irrefutable logic. I could baby the truck across the altiplano or coastal flatlands, if I wanted to go easy on the gas pedal. But mountain driving in Mexico? Then it’s the topography stressing the engine, not the driver.

Nooshin’s shadow joins mine, reaching across the gravel toward the next mechanic and his trench. “Are they trying to rip us off?” she whispers in English.

“We’ll know in a minute,” I whisper back.

A minute is about how long it takes for the teenager to return with an oil filter box and a 5-gallon oil drum with a hand pump. I inspect everything carefully. The filter in the box is new. When I squeeze some oil into my palm, it’s the color and clarity of liquid amber.

I borrow a rag from the teenager and wipe off my hands. “Nope, they’re not trying to rip us off,” I announce to Nooshin.

“But I thought he said we need a new engine.”

“We do. Sooner rather than later. But I’ll worry about the engine, not you. Got it?”

“Got it.” Relief flashes across her face. Being pregnant for the first time is plenty for her to worry about.

My cargo pants jingle with an annoying ringtone. I dig out my cellphone and make a face. Hercules calling — again. I’ve been avoiding him for…oh, two weeks now. Ever since I discovered that most of the Korea Textile maquiladora’s tax records went missing. His voicemails are piling up. According to the cellphone’s display I’ve accumulated 11 of them. I can guess the content of each and every one. Only the first was polite. The rest are increasingly angry. Call me, Mr. Roberts. Motherfucking yesterday.

“I need to make a call,” I tell Nooshin. “Why don’t you get some pictures of the view?”

“I already have a million pictures of Guanajuato.” She leans into the truck for her antique Polaroid camera. “I think I’ll get some pictures of these trenches instead.”

The teenager comes to life again. “Take my picture, senora!” he urges in Spanish, already clowning for the camera. “How’s this? Huh?”

I wander down the road a ways, putting some distance between myself and Nooshin’s acute hearing. Other mechanics watch me from their trench-garages, glowering as if I’ve stolen food out of their mouths. I ignore their hostility and thumb through my speed dial. Right past Hercules’ number to Chuck Leondice.

I listen to the connection ring, feeling my blood ice up. Hercules’ old attorney pal will always remind me of a mob boss paroled after doing 25-to-life. Dark mane greased back and going silver on the sides. Bags under his restless eyes. Roman nose, pinched mouth. The most intimidating law school prof ever.

He picks up halfway through an answering machine message. “Leondice here.”

“Mr. Leondice? This is Nick Roberts. Hercules is my dissertation advisor. We met when — ”

“I remember you. I already did my favor to Hercules. Goodbye.”

“Wait! Just one question. Please.”

A loud sigh fills my ear. “Does it pertain to the unusual circumstances of your friend’s mahr?”

This is the second time that Leondice has astonished me. First by knowing what a mahr is — and now by remembering all the details of our prior consultation, when I visited his golfside home before leaving for the Mexican interior. Not bad for a sixtysomething who wears Depends.

“This question is about me. I need to know what happens if I violate the UC system’s academic code of conduct.” When there’s only the humming static of silence, I plunge on. “This friend of mine, she isn’t just my research assistant. I’m involved with her. And now she’s, uh…pregnant.”

“Judging by your tone of voice, she plans to keep the child?”

“Uh, yeah. Both of us. We’re going to raise the kid together.”

Leondice laughs, a grating noise. “Then you lost your only defense — plausible deniability.”

“I figured that part out for myself. My question is, what the hell do I do now? Is there any way I can avoid being dismissed from UCLA? Can I still finish my Ph.D. somehow?”

“That’s three questions, actually. Attorneys care about that kind of thing. But I’ll give you a break, since you obviously need one.” In the background I can hear him settling into a chair — wood squeaking, bones creaking. “Ever hear of throwing yourself on the mercy of the court?”

“Sure.”

“That’s what usually happens in situations like this. You plead with the academic conduct committee. We fell in love, yadda yadda.” He laughs again. “It’s amazing how often that works.”

“So that’s what I should do?”

“I’m not telling you what to do. We’re just talking here. The content of this conversation is legal information, not legal advice. Understood?”

“Yeah, yeah. I understand.”

“I don’t think you’ve got a prayer in front of the committee. You’re her boss, you’re her landlord, you’re the only person she knows in Mexico. That’s a lot of coercion. Then factor in her high school education, her status as a housewife with no employment history, her lack of other means of supporting herself. Then add her status as an ethnic and religious minority, and — has she divorced her husband?”

“Not yet,” I say through gritted teeth.

“And she’s still married.” Leondice doesn’t laugh this time. “No, you don’t have a prayer. The committee will conclude you exploited your position of authority and took advantage of her circumstances.”

I’m watching Nooshin stroll around, a skyscraper of a girl with caramel skin and long blowing hair and sunglasses hiding her crooked eye. The words hit me like blows. Took advantage of her. Exploited her. Coerced her. Everything beautiful between us is falling apart.

I shift the cellphone to my other ear. “This isn’t helping.”

“I suppose not. Okay, here’s about the only way I can see it working out for you. First, finish your dissertation and submit it to Hercules for approval — before you return to UCLA. The academic conduct committee will be less likely to dismiss you if your dissertation is already written.”

“Alright. I can do that. I’ve already written three, four chapters.” Never mind that the quality of those chapters is in free fall. “What else?”

“Second, she needs to get divorced, or at least file the paperwork. You’re already the bad guy. But you’re an even badder guy until she’s legally a single woman again.”

“That makes sense.” Goddamnit. I wish I’d never talked Nooshin out of getting a quickie divorce.

“Third, you marry her.”

“I — what?”

“Assuming her divorce is finalized in time, of course. Marrying her is the ultimate make-good. But even then there’s still a chance the committee could dismiss you.” Leondice shades into grimness. “Or you could just forget the Ph.D. Quit grad school and walk away.”

Suddenly there’s a jackhammer in my head. Instant fucking migraine. I walk over to a nearby rock and plop down on it. My entire adult life has been dedicated to getting this Ph.D. Four years of grad school — and four years of undergrad school, slaving away at Iowa State for the grades and GRE to qualify for a free ride at UCLA. If I quit and walk away…

I already know what my father will say, because he’s said it before. A million repetitions drilled into my psyche. You’ll never amount to anything. But now I’m staring down the gunbarrel of amounting to even worse. A loser who knocked up his girlfriend — some other dude’s wife — and threw away his only chance to be somebody. Rural Iowa is full of corn and soybeans and stories like that.

Leondice is tired of my silence. “This is one more call than I promised to have with you. Now Hercules owes me a favor. Remind him the next time you guys talk.” The line goes to static.

A shadow slides across the gravel and stops at my hiking boots. Fear dulls my pounding headache. I glance up, expecting Nooshin — but it’s only the mechanic. Noticing my miserable posture, his coppery features shift from businesslike to empathetic. “Don’t worry, senor. It’s not that bad. You can get a used engine cheap. You want, I’ll find one for you and do the replacement. Cost you maybe 900 dollars, maybe 1,000.”

Fumbling out my wallet to pay for the $10 oil change, I laugh like an idiot, harder and harder, until my ribcage aches. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Ph.D. disaster waiting to happen, Nooshin in the crosshairs of her in-laws and family, a complicating baby on the way — and my goddamn truck won’t make it over the mountains without a new engine.