Ahhhhh. This is how every morning should begin, with a nice relaxing shower. Sure, the water is bone-cold. And so freaking calcified that it takes half a bar of soap just to get some suds. And polluted enough to paint weird smelly rings around the drain. But if you can ignore all that — and I can, after living out of a tent for the last week — then ahhhhh.

From beyond the shower curtain, a single gasped word. “Omigod.”

I pause in the freezing deluge, inadvertently striking a disco pose — one arm upraised, the other cocked at my armpit with the soap. But the only noises are water splashing and the faint roar of traffic down on the street. Shrugging, I go back to my shower.

Then three more words shrieked in delight. “Omigod omigod omigod!”

This time I poke my head out, holding the shower curtain tightly against me so I don’t leak polluted water onto the bathroom floor. “What the hell’s going on?”

Nooshin is aglow in the other half of the claustrophobic space, a rail-thin girl with a tummy that juts out. She’s standing in profile and half-dressed, wearing her jeans unbuttoned at the top and tugged below her pregnant bulge. An unhooked bra is dangling loosely from her shoulders and across her flat chest.

“Nick! This bra is really tight!” To demonstrate, she twists her back toward me. She has to torture the clasp shut across her protruding ribs and vertebrae. “I think I’m finally getting boobs!” Then she twists the other direction, showing me her front. “Ta-dah!”

I almost burst out laughing. Nooshin is one of those girls who never needed to wear a bra, and usually didn’t. But now she can strain proudly against the panels of her 32AA.

I shut off the water and peel open the shower curtain. “You’re so sexy,” I say — and the proof is pointing right at her.

“Nick, don’t you dare!” she starts to say, giggling. Outside the bathroom door are the loud sounds of Inez and her mom clattering around the apartment. Nooshin points at a small pile of folded laundry on the toilet lid. “Your clean clothes are right there.”

I towel off and shrug into my clothes. Boxer shorts, white tube socks, cargo pants, gray ribbed t-shirt — all freshly laundered in the stacked washer/dryer in the hallway closet. One more thing we’re getting out of this stop. A free laundromat.

Nooshin is contemplating herself in the mirror above the sink. Her gaze is downcast at her shirt, which is actually my shirt. The largest t-shirt I own, a plain white expanse dotted with a tiny UCLA logo above the heart. She spreads her arms. “Look, I’m a kite!”

I join her reflection, embracing her from behind. My hands slide beneath the billowing shirt, feeling the silky bulge of her tummy. Our son.

Her dark gaze locks on mine. In the mirror her left eye is the crooked wandering one. “I really need to get some maternity clothes. Just a pair of jeans with a stretchy front and some shirts, that’s all.” She sighs dreamily. “And one cute outfit, just one. Like, a new maternity sundress. Or maybe a skirt with an adjustable waist.”

“We don’t have the money right now. Only your paycheck came through. Hercules put a hold on mine,” I admit sourly. Some provider I’m turning out to be. I can’t afford to buy her lunch, let alone maternity clothes.

Nooshin lifts my hands to her mouth and kisses the knuckles, one after another. “That’s okay. Once he gets your dissertation and the archive, he’ll change his mind. Right?” My stratagem to avoid dismissal from UCLA for knocking up my research assistant, repeated until we can almost — almost — believe it’ll work.

The bathroom door shudders with knocking. “Hey! You guys done in there or what!” Inez yells in Spanish. “Come on, I’m going to pee my pants!” Her voice is more ragged and hoarse than I remember. The breakup with Julio has precipitated a decline into chainsmoking, among other things.

We enfilade past each other in the cramped spaces of the apartment, which belongs to Inez’s mom, a fiftysomething patrician-looking woman with a coiffure like a coppery jetstream. She glides around in a svelte black catsuit, her attractive features screwed into an unattractive expression. She’s permanently dismayed by life, taking it — and by “it” I mean everything — very, very personally. I treat her like a minefield. Circle warily, and never cross.

Of course, somehow Nooshin has intrepidly struck up a friendship with her. Which is another way of saying things haven’t clicked between Nooshin and Inez. I was hoping they’d be best buds, like Phoebe and Inez during her visits to UCLA. Those two raised more hell on Sunset Boulevard than should be legal. But none of that feminine chemistry is evident here. Nooshin and Inez interact like two bricks rubbing together.

Inez’s mom is searching for her purse and bitching loudly about the bus. Surprise, surprise — according to her it’s usually early, frequently late, and never on time. The purse is a patent leather rectangle dangling on the back of the apartment door. I debate whether to betray its hiding place, then decide to see how long it takes her to discover it on her own. My fun is spoiled when Nooshin calls out “Alli es!” — there it is! — and earns an indulgent smile.

“Where are you guys going?” I ask in plaintive English, realizing their silhouettes are filing out the apartment door and into the stark light of the hallway.

Nooshin pauses to peck me briefly on the lips. “Inez’s mom is taking me to Vip’s for breakfast, then Chapultepec Park. We’ll be back sometime this afternoon.” She leans in close, throttling her voice to a whisper. “No being mean to Inez today, promise?”

“Promise,” I sigh.

She spins on a Nike and resumes her momentum goodbye, all skyscraper height and tossing inky hair and tragic ad-hoc maternity wardrobe. I’m already missing her before the door closes on the oddest couple in Mexico City.

Behind me the toilet flushes, really more of a flaccid draining noise given the lack of water pressure. The bathroom door opens. Inez squeezes around my hands-on-hips pose, a lit cigarette smoldering in the corner of her mouth, and disappears into the kitchen.

“They’re going to Vip’s and Chapultepec Park,” I gripe jealously in Spanish. “Did you know that?”

“Yeah, Mom said something about it.” Cabinets bang open and shut. She emerges from the kitchen in a tired puff of smoke, dressed in black leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt with some sort of complicated political cartoon on the front. Her silvery hair is spiked haphazardly with gel, like an aluminum can that lost a fight with a blender. She’s carrying a alcoholic-sized bottle of tequila.

“Whoa. A little early for that, isn’t it?”

Inez pointedly ignores me, collapsing onto the couch. She stabs out her Lucky Strike in an ashtray, then wrenches open the bottle and takes a gaudy swig. Tequila and cigarettes. What a lousy breakfast.

I pace restlessly in the small living room, a couple strides one direction, a couple strides back. “So what are we doing today?”

She takes another swig. “I don’t get the attraction. With Nooshin, I mean. I just don’t get it. Unless it’s because she needs rescuing. Her screwed-up eye and all that.” And another swig. “Is that it? Are you her knight in shining armor? Does she make you feel like a hero?”

I don’t stop pacing. “You’re just jealous because you and Julio broke up.”

“No I’m not!” Inez smacks the tequila bottle onto the coffee table hard enough to rattle the ashtray. The reflexive violence of the gesture seems to chasten her. “Okay, fine. I admit it. I’m jealous. But I still think you’re just trying to live out some stupid rescue fantasy with her.”

I’m watching the rhythmic progress of my hiking boots, but my eyes are seeing Nooshin, a whole collage of her. Her delicate beauty and shy beaming smile and octopus-ink hair. The way she always sits with one foot tucked underneath her. Her rampant silliness and atrocious accents. How she melts into me when we embrace, and the way I can feel her heart flutter just beneath the skin. The poetry scribbled in her secret notebook in fervent purple loops, with our initials in arrowed hearts. Her antique Polaroid camera snapping at weird sights, never what you’d expect. That crooked wandering eye, a window to her soul meant only for me, and the new life we made — our family — swelling her tummy.

My face is almost tortured with a huge smile. “You want to know what it is? She’s the coolest person I’ve ever met. Seriously.”

“You think she’s cool?” The question is poisoned with sarcasm.

I stop pacing and stare at Inez, hard. “Why don’t you like her?”

She can’t hold my gaze. Her shadowy eyes drift to the amber bottle, full of escape. “I like Phoebe better, that’s all. Liked. Whatever. Now SHE was cool, man.” She makes an off-handed gesture. “What happened to you and Phoebe, anyway?”

“Nooshin happened,” I shrug. It’s really as simple as that.

“That’s like me and Julio. Another chick happened.” Inez’s hoarse voice breaks, like concrete cracking into pieces, but her eyes only moisten. Knowing her, the tears ran out shortly after the breakup — if she ever allowed herself to cry at all.

“Enough of this?” I ask, leaning over to tap the open lip of the tequila bottle.

Before my hand can close around the neck she asks, “Why didn’t we ever hook up?”

It’s a good question. A long time ago we almost got together — a few times, now that I think about it — but for some reason it never happened. The buzz wore off and we retreated from each other, back into ourselves. But it’s just easier to say, “You met Julio and I met Phoebe.”

My answer is a door slamming shut, assuming it was ever open in the first place, and Inez of all people knows it. She steals away the bottle for a final gulp, then wipes her mouth with a shirtsleeve. “So anyway, let’s go find some trouble,” she says while teasing up spikes from her silver hair, doing her best impression of the Inez I used to know.