“Shit!”

The word is a primal groan. I almost jump out of my skin, then glance wildly across the cab at Nick. He slumps over the steering wheel as if he’s been shot — except he hasn’t, thank god. My boyfriend straightens up, his face a mask of frustration. Then he slumps over the steering wheel again, smacking his forehead into the hard plastic with an audible thump. I watch the ritual uncomprehendingly. Thump thump thump.

We’re idled at a traffic signal, waiting for the horizontal bar of lights to turn green and usher us deeper into the urban canyons of Mexico City. Sunbeams drown in the afternoon smog, so thick I can barely see five blocks. Electric-powered buses sizzle and spark beneath a canopy of overhead wires. A streetkid darts between the paused vehicles, trying to sell copies of La Jornada that he scavenged from coffee shops and park benches. Sexy two-dimensional giantesses float in Fendi and Banamex and Range Rover billboards, staring down at sidewalks carpeted with beggars. The stereo is playing a bootleg copy of an Kaiser Chiefs disc, filling the Explorer with a hoarse refrain:

Oh my god, I can’t believe it
I’ve never been this far away from home
And oh my god, I can’t believe it
I’ve never been this far away from home

My gaze is drawn to the movement of an oncoming figure. Whoever he is, he’s larger than the streetkids. And wearing a bushy mustache. And…uniformed? The cop is jogging toward us, one palm raised in an imperious HALT gesture, a whistle shrieking in his mouth.

“Nick!” I hiss through clenched teeth, trying to act casual. “There’s a cop — ”

“I know,” he sighs. “Hoy no circula.”

“Hoy no circula? Today we can’t drive?”

“Today is Monday, which means nobody with a 5 or 6 as the last digit of their license plate can be on the roads.” Nick points at a sign dangling from the traffic signal, which explains a cruel transportation math:

Lunes - 5 y 6
Martes - 7 y 8
Miercoles - 3 y 4
Jueves - 1 y 2
Viernes - 9 y 0

“Doesn’t matter if you’re a foreigner or not. My license plate number still ends in 9,” he shrugs in resignation. “Squeeze in.”

I unbelt myself — my tummy, really, considering it pokes through the triangle formed by the shoulder and lap belts — and slide against Nick’s hip. The cop climbs in next to me, just like that. His eyebrows are hairy caterpillars above the much bigger hairy caterpillar of his mustache. We make awkward eye contact and decide it’s better to stare straight ahead.

Spanish sloshes from one side of the cab to the other. Nick’s tone is contrite but amateurish. His perfect Spanish is nowhere to be heard. He’s playing the American farmboy adrift in the Mexican bright lights, big city. The cop sounds irritated. He points dramatically using his HALT hand, which was made for emphatic gestures. See that sign right there? The sacrosanct traffic laws of Mexico City have been broken.

The light finally turns green. More Spanish sloshes around. Nick yanks the steering wheel to the right, banging into my elbow. The windshield fills with sidewalk vendors, straggly boulevard trees, graffiti-defaced political posters, entryways to apartment buildings. Then he hangs another right, and another, and finally another…until we’ve completed a circumnavigation of Inez’s block. The parking spot we just abandoned is still there, a gap of curb between a dilapidated pickup and a shiny midnight-black Lexus.

“It’s an innocent mistake. You’re Americans,” the cop is saying in Spanish, turning benevolent. Forgiving.

Nick doesn’t miss the cue. “Now that I understand the law, I don’t want to trouble you with any paperwork. The citizens of Mexico City, they need you back on duty. Right?”

A modest shrug jostles my shoulder. “I live to serve the people.”

“Then please, accept this as a token of my appreciation.” Nick’s arm juts in front of me, flaunting a $20 bill.

“Yes, yes,” the cop is nodding. The money disappears as quickly as it appeared. The Explorer rocks one way, then the other, and the car door slams. The cop hustles down the sidewalk, back to the intersection and his next bribe. We’re alone again. The Kaiser Chiefs are singing you and me, we’re made…

My voice is a nervous exhalation. “I didn’t think you’d get rid of him for only twenty bucks.”

“At least we’ve got the money,” Nick points out. A couple days ago we didn’t. But there isn’t any triumph in his profile, just a wan distance.

“You’re a million miles away,” I say gently, letting the closeness between us linger, squeezing the contour of his thigh.

His nuzzling is the forced kind, a brief indulgence to keep the pregnant girlfriend happy. Then the far-away look comes back. His icy blue eyes are focused on something impossibly distant. Like the future, maybe. Our future.

My heart flutters into despair. “You don’t really like Afshar for a boy’s name, do you?”

Arctic oceans blink at me.

“You know. Afshar?”

Suddenly Nick is chuckling. “Nah, that’s not it. I love the name Afshar.” He pats the slope of my tummy absentmindedly. “Let’s walk over to Chinatown.”

The segue loses me. I slide out after him, squeezing past the wheel — the closest I’ll ever come to driving his truck, probably — and follow his broad shoulders down the sidewalk. “Chinatown? Mexico City has a Chinatown?”

“Yeah. A small one. The barrio chino.” He slows his pace, letting me fall into stride beside him. “There were widespread pogroms against the Chinese a century ago. Not many Chinese left to make a Chinatown.” A hand loops around my waist, the palm rocking on my hip. “Some of the Chinese were merchants, but most were coolies imported by the American railroads during the Porfiriato. The Mexicans, they murdered them by the hundreds.”

“God.” The word sounds lame when I murmur it, incredibly insufficient. But I don’t know what else to say.

The barrio chino is far enough away to make my feet hurt, even in my powerwalking Nikes. Finally we’re wandering through a plethora of gaudy signs in Chinese and the occasional bank in Chinese architectural style — timber framework, bright primary colors, multi-storied pagoda roofs with flaring upturned corners. The Spanish I overhear is sprinkled with sing-song Chinese. I feel like an utter giraffe on the cracked and heaving sidewalks, crowded by people even shorter than most Mexicans.

I pull Nick into a touristy shop crammed with odd merchandise. Giant painted-wood buddhas. Strange posters for Hong Kong movies I’ve never heard of. A hundred different kinds of chopsticks. Chinese wedding blessing scrolls. Silk kimonos with elaborate brocaded designs. Suddenly I feel the impulse to buy everyone a gift — Mom and Dad, Nasrin and her hubby and my niece and nephew, even Saman and my in-laws — but as quickly as I feel it, the impulse falls and breaks on the floor. There’s only Nick now. Nick and the baby boy we made.

Back on the sidewalk he discovers a hole-in-the-wall bar. It’s the kind of place that would’ve been invisible if the door wasn’t wide open, revealing a thatched canopy over the bar and Chinese calendars on the wall, the kind with traditionally-attired models posing with Western products. There are only two people inside — the bartender, a loud shock-haired Chinese who greets us in horrid Spanish, and a lone patron who resembles Mao if Mao had ever worn a t-shirt that said KISS ME I’M IRISH. They’re a little surprised to see a pair of towering gringos wander in and duck beneath the thatched canopy, but then Nick orders baijiu and a Tsingtao chaser and they aren’t so surprised anymore.

I’m tempted by the Tsingtao — I haven’t had a beer in several weeks — but my What to Expect When You’re Expecting book is militantly anti-alcohol. Never mind the fact that pregnant Mexican women drink all the time, and this isn’t a nation of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome citizens. I sigh and ask in Spanish, “What do you have for non-alcoholic beverages?”

The bartender hovers at the rail, staring at me expectantly. It’s as if I haven’t said anything at all.

“Something without alcohol? Alcohol-free?” I try again.

More expectant staring.

“Um, Coca Cola?”

Those two words are a universal language. He bustles into motion.

Nick and I nurse our drinks through a bizarre conversation. The bartender turns out to be a former Communist Party cadre who left China and the Party for reasons I don’t really understand. He launches into a rambling tirade about China and Hong Kong and Taiwan and even Tibet — almost yelling at us, he talks so loud — and his best Spanish phrase is a perfect “like, fuck this shit!” which he uses liberally to describe pro-capitalist policies and the Tiananmen Square protesters and Fulan Gong and god only knows what else. I can’t tell whether he hates those things, or hates the Party for hating those things. Meanwhile the Mao lookalike interjects seemingly random things in Chinese, causing the bartender to nod vociferously and exclaim “just like that!” as if they’re somehow talking about the same thing, which I’m convinced they aren’t.

The bartender wants us to stay for another round, since no one else has showed up. Nick is game, but also drinking on an empty stomach. He keeps leaning into me for abrupt kisses, acting warm and tipsy — too warm and tipsy, really. So I leave a generous tip for the bartender and wave goodbye to Mao and drag my boyfriend outside.

We stand outside on the corner for a while, watching the sky swirl with pollution. Pagoda lamps bleed into the murk. Past the rooftops of the barrio chino is a forest of hulking shadowy skyscrapers. Then a hostess shilling for business presses a paper menu into Nick’s hand, urging us to visit her restaurant. Only then do I realize that I’m starving.

I’m clueless how you choose a good restaurant in Chinatown if you don’t have a recommendation or guidebook. Do you go with the tiny dimly-lit place where a few Asians are bent over their tables? Or the big brightly-lit place that’s packed with Asians and some non-Asians too? The latter, we decide, hoping all those people can’t be wrong. Nick orders the special, some kind of cold squid-and-pasta entree. I wind up with salty deep-fried frog legs, which are delicious although still on the bone. We share a metal decanter of green tea.

I find his knee under the table. It’s pistoning relentlessly. “Hey,” I say, calming the motion with my palm. “Just tell me what’s on your mind, okay?”

The sharp angles of his face keep changing. He doesn’t know how to feel. Suddenly he leans across the table at me, banging plates aside. He pauses to wipe off his elbow. “I’ve been thinking about quitting grad school.”

“Wh-what?” I manage to gasp.

“I’ve met all the requirements for an M.A. So it’s not like I’d quit empty-handed. I’d get something out of it.”

“But you’re almost done with your Ph.D.!”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one with two more flaming hoops of bullshit to jump through.” Nick counts on fingers aimed sideways. “First, my dissertation isn’t done until my committee says it’s done. Second, I still have to defend it.”

“So? ”

“So that could take another year or more, for chrissake. And…” He stirs uncomfortably, his forearms flexing on silverware. “The baby will be here before then.”

“Just because we’re having a baby doesn’t mean you have to quit. Think of all the grad students you know. A lot of them have kids, right? They’re still pursuing their Ph.Ds. They make it work.” I feel myself glowing with hopeful enthusiasm. “We can make it work too. Haven’t we figured out how to make it work in Mexico?”

“But…” His voice tails off.

“This is what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve dedicated what, four years of your life to studying Mexico? UCLA gave you a full ride, and you have me as a research assistant. You can’t throw this away, Nick. I won’t let you.”

Nick flinches when I say “research assistant.” But that’s his only reaction to my hopeful pleading. Otherwise he remains silent, hiding beneath his Kangol hat.

“What?” I finally say.

He sighs. “You’re such a Nooshball.”

“Now you’re patronizing me.”

“Christ. Can’t we just let this drop? I’m not in the mood. I’m really not.” He leans back and shovels a forkful of squid into his mouth.

Something breaks inside me like a dam bursting. Tears stream down my cheeks. I hide behind a napkin, trying to staunch my misery.

“Hey. Come on. Stop crying.”

That only makes me cry harder. “You’re treating me…like Saman did. Shutting…me out,” I say around sobs.

His voice becomes cold. “I’m not shutting you out, goddamnit. I’m being honest with you – I don’t feel like talking about this right now. Maybe tomorrow, alright?”

I’m trying to compose myself. It doesn’t work very well. The entire restaurant is stealing glances at us when I return the napkin to my lap. I play with my bangs, arranging them into a protective curtain. Only a sliver of my face is exposed. The left side, over my good eye.

Nick is confronting me across the table, hands balled into fists, his expression almost tortured. “You know how hard I’ve struggled to survive on my funding? Really fucking hard, Nooshin. And that’s when there was only me. Now there’s you and the baby. The economics don’t work.” He waves off my rising protest. “Shut up and just listen, would you? You wanted me to talk, so I’m talking. You’ve only got a high school education. So realistically, you’re going to be taking care of the kids. Any income you brought in wouldn’t offset the cost of daycare. That means I need get a job, a real job, to support you and the kids, and…why are you looking at me like that?”

“You keep saying ‘kids’,” I say in a daze.

All the frustrated anxiety drains out of Nick. He thinks about it, then laughs. And blushes a little. “Well, yeah. I mean…I’ve always figured we’d have two. A boy and a girl, you know? Afshar will need a little sister.”

I try to snuggle into his embrace across the table, but my swollen tummy catches on the edge. The surface tilts, clattering things. He pulls his chair around the cluttered surface, coming closer. He drapes me in a muscular arm, polishing the ribbed contours of my back with an open palm. A stupidly passionate noise boils up my throat. I already want to make another baby with Nick, and I haven’t even delivered our first yet.