How the hell does somebody like Nooshin just disappear into thin air in Mexico? She’s almost 6 feet tall, a giantess among mexicanas and mexicanos alike. Her right eye is crooked and wandering — and half the country is superstitious enough to recoil in horror from it, crossing themselves against the Evil Eye. Tiny scars ghost across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose. She’d have trouble hiding in the WNBA, let alone Mexico.

I’m going to find her.

That’s what I keep telling myself as I grind through these hours, fizzling with stress and exhaustion. The cellphone is welded to my ear. I’m probably racking up a zillion dollars in roaming charges and overage minutes, but what the fuck.

I’ve called every goddamn hotel in Guanajuato. Twice.

I’ve talked to that supercilious prick Beto — and just in case he was lying to me, the front desk secretary at the Baden-Powell Institute, the semester-abroad school where he teaches.

I’ve even enlisted the tourism director for the City of Guanajuato, a liver-faced Irishman named McMurphy. His #1 priority is making sure there’s enough green cervezas for St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. But he made time to issue an emergency bulletin to every tour guide in the city, instructing them to be on the lookout for Nooshin.

All that, and still no trace of her.

Nooshin left Guanajuato. She left me. As incredible as that seems, it’s the only possibility left.

She has enough money for a bus ticket. I picture her face pressed against the glass of a sleek rumbling Greyhound bus — except in Mexico it’s Estrella Azul or Aventa, not Greyhound. She’s heading back to the house we rent in Tijuana, or maybe even America. In fact she could be across the border already. Those buses haul ass on the ultramodern toll highways.

That’s why I’m telling sob stories to disembodied voices on the phone, using a mix of perfect English and pretend-bad Spanish. My wife and I got separated…did she purchase a ticket on your bus line recently? Guanajuato to Tijuana, or just Guanajuato to anywhere? The customer service reps speak in calming tones. They’re used to dealing with lost and stranded Americans. But no matter how much they double-check and triple-check, they can’t seem to find Nooshin’s name in their passenger manifests.

After I run out of bus lines to call, I begin testing other mental images. Maybe her face is pressed against the glass of an RV, because she caught a ride with American retirees visiting Guanajuato. Or maybe she’s staring out the cab window of a semi-trailer, because she got robbed and now she has to hitchhike across the map. Or maybe…

Too much of this shit and I’m going to lose my fucking mind.

In the bathroom I try to avoid the Nick in the mirror. My reflection is haggard, with sunken eyes that have darkened into ultramarine and the makings of a helluva beard. I’m wearing my t-shirt inside out because I spilled on it and it was my last clean shirt and doing laundry, for chrissake — who the fuck thinks about doing laundry at a time like this? Some handsome portrait of true love I’m turning out to be. If she could see me now, she’d just keep going.