The Mexican Year

I’m leaning over the tiny balcony that juts from the apartment building’s facade, basking in another warm Mexico City night. The railing presses comfortably against my pregnant stomach, taking some of the weight. Traffic is ebbing tiredly through the cobblestone street below. Teenage girls flash teeth and skin as they giggle down the sidewalk, followed by a pack of boys in floppy clothing. On the corner an enterprising vendor is selling peeks through his two telescopes, one labeled “Luna” and the other “Venus”. Kids are lining up with grubby fistfuls of centavos. Don’t ask me how you can see ANYTHING through this smog, but maybe that’s what he’s really selling — hope.

Spanish spills out of the cramped living room behind me. Inez and her mother are bickering in their affectionately hostile way, a ritualistic cadence of accusations and denials. Their conversation is a raging river with familiar phrases bobbing in it.

I wish my Spanish was the fluent kind, effortless and perfect, but it’s not. Not even close. Instead I have to beg “un poco mas despacio, por favor” — a little slower, please — until the words stop blurring together. My head becomes a confusion of machinery, translating everything into English and then back into Spanish. Even when I know exactly what to say, I don’t always say it right, struggling with pronunciation that’s nothing like English or Farsi. I punctuate with facial expressions and wave my hands a lot, a frustrated need to communicate that boils into gesturing.

Eventually their back-and-forth dwindles into quiet. I can hear the flipping noises of Inez’s mom reading the newspaper. A black-and-white picture of Andres Manuel Lopez Alvador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, is splashed across the front page in a telegenic grin. Her two legs jutting out from beneath the newspaper are still trim and shapely, tapering into fluffy pink slippers. I find myself wondering why she never remarried.

Inez is curled on the loveseat-sized couch and nursing an alarmingly large glass of amber liquid — tequila, I guess. Her head is wrapped in a black towel with even blacker tendrils of hair plastered to her forehead. Nick finally told her she looked stupid with that aluminum-can-in-a-blender dyejob, so tonight she switched back to her natural hair color. I’m discomfited by her inner sadness, as if a deep perpetual moan is wracking her body but never escaping out her mouth. That’s me, if Nick ever cheats or leaves me with this child.

The phone rings.

Inez’s mom is sitting closest to the old-fashioned thing. She folds the newspaper carefully and lays it aside, then raises the receiver daintily, the way a queen might. Her aquiline face is disapproving. She sighs “Aceptare las cargas” — I’ll accept the charges — and waves me over.

“Nick!” I say breathlessly, already knowing who it is.

“Hey you. My flight just got in. You wouldn’t believe how much this airport has changed.” I picture him glancing around the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport with bleary red-rimmed eyes.

“How’s…your brother?” I ask trepidatiously.

“He’s still alive. I guess the doctors had to do another surgery. They’re trying to stop all the bleeding in his brain, but…” Nick sounds like an old man, even though he’s only 27. “Wendy thinks he’ll be gone before I get there. She’s sending her boyfriend to pick me up.”

Suddenly I’m heartbroken. “I wish I was there with you.”

“Yeah. Me too. I — I…” His voice fades into the hiss and crackle of long distance, then comes back again. “I wanted him to meet you.”

I feel a warm tear trickle down my cheek, and brush it away. Inez is looking at me oddly, an expression of curious disgust that I’ve seen in a million faces before hers. My right eye is fluttering around in its socket, just like it always does when I’m overwrought.

Nick’s voice is booming in my ear. “Okay, let’s talk about you driving back to Tijuana. First, Mexico City. I know I’ve said all this shit about how it’s the most dangerous place on earth to drive, but here’s the deal — you need to be an asshole, Nooshin. I know it’s not in your nature, but for a couple hours you need to be an asshole. You cut in front of people, you don’t let anybody cut in front of you, you even bump another car if you have to. Be a total fucking asshole!”

I’m nodding fervently into space, psyching myself up. “Okay! I can do that!”

“Leave first thing in the morning, before traffic gets insane. Then take the toll highways all the way back to Tijuana. No shortcuts, no sightseeing, no picking anybody up. Just go flat out. You can make it in two, maybe three days.”

“Straight back to Tijuana on the toll highways! Got it!”

“I’m borrowing a bunch of money from my sister. I’ll pay off the cellphone so it works again, and put the rest in your checking account for gas and food and motels.”

“But…that’s a lot of money. Like, maybe even a thousand.” Our cellphone bill alone is $500.

Nick’s voice softens into a tortured affection. “Look, just be careful, okay? And call me every couple hours. No, wait — every hour. I want to know where you are! I want to know you’re okay.”

After he clicks away the apartment is like a tomb. Inez and her mother scrutinize me with muddy eyes, waiting for a report. Traffic noises filter in through the open balcony door, muffled and sluggish in the night. I think of this place called Mexico City, how vast and abstract it seems to a foreigner like me. My imagination opens in a single spot — me behind the wheel of the Explorer, lost in a vehicular war zone. For a moment I’m in a limbo of fear and dread. When I glance across the cab, I’ll only see the empty passenger seat which is my usual station. My fear and dread turn into loneliness, so strong it makes my heart stutter. But then I glance down at the swell of my stomach, at the miracle growing inside me, and I feel a calmness there. I’ll never be alone again.

I’m the last passenger to board the plane, banging down the aisle and sweating angrily under my UCLA t-shirt and cargo pants. I just finished sprinting through Mexico City International Airport, a surprisingly plush obstacle course of queues and ticket counters and armed security checkpoints and terminal corridors that seem even longer than they really are. “You’re too late for a seat assignment,” complained the airline employee manning the gate, waving me through. “Just get on board before it pulls away.”

Pulse still racing, I cram my backpack into an overhead compartment and take a window seat in row 26. A chubby Hispanic girl sits in the aisle seat, staring fixedly at a magazine picture of a supermodel in a bikini. She notices me noticing her and glances across the empty middle seat, breaking into a grin. I make smile movements with my face and look away. The stewardesses are doing their parody of a suffocating person reaching for an air mask. Soon the pilot mumbles over the intercom, declaring his intention to assert our unnatural presence in the air.

“I’ve never been to Houston before,” the girl says in Cuban-accented English. “I usually fly into Miami. That’s where I live, where my family lives. I was born here, but we came from Cuba originally.” She’s older than I guessed, maybe thirtysomething, and gabby as hell. “I have an aunt and uncle in Houston, so I’m going to visit them and see my cousins too.”

The plane charges and tears a hole in the air. I watch the smoldering summit of Popocatepetl dwindle and fade. From this height the Valley of Mexico is filled with a chaotic patchwork of humanity. The upscale districts are easy to spot — more swaths of green for yards, public parks, even golf courses. The slums are solidly earth-toned. They flash with reflections from corrugated aluminum shacks. Nooshin is down there somewhere. I can picture her with unnerving precision. She’s a pooch-bellied scarecrow in a Gap hoodie and jeans and Nikes, right eye twitching madly behind her veil of inky bangs, confused — maybe even scared — but trying to be brave.

Suddenly I’m a torch of remorse. I should’ve waited for her at the internet cafe, rendezvousing as planned. I should’ve given her a crash course in Mexican driving. I should’ve said goodbye…

“I was in Mexico City for business,” the Hispanic girl is saying. “Well, mostly business. I managed to have some fun. The company I work for, it has a Mexican subsidiary. Every April my department performs a site audit. This is the first year I’ve been assigned to the site team. Usually I just do remote support during the audit. What about you?”

I stir from my unhappy reverie. “Say what?”

She leans closer, bulging over her armrest. “What brought you to Mexico City?”

How the hell do I answer that question? Admit I got stuck there, waiting to grow a pair of balls so I could UCLA — tell Hercules — that I’m dropping out of the Ph.D. program? Confess that I have no fucking idea how to be a father? Admit my terror at the prospect of whoring for a real job?

Instead I just mutter “I’m a tourist…” and lose myself in a copy of the in-flight catalog. It’s full of Sharper Image crap, like monogrammed golf tees and shiatsu massage chairs and keychain self-breathalyzers. If only Marx was parked in the middle seat next to me, witnessing the future. This is how capitalism triumphs — not by giving people what they need, but by giving people what they want.

“Hey. Mr. UCLA t-shirt! You want something to drink?”

The Hispanic girl is the type who interjects herself into everything. The stewardess hovers in the aisle, slightly annoyed with her conversational antics. Just like me. But I take the pretzels and ask for a Diet Coke anyway.

“I’m an accountant,” the Hispanic girl is telling me, looking older with every word. She rolls a pretzel between her fingers. “This is the first time I’ve been to Mexico City in…five, six years? That’s when we bought the company that became our Mexican subsidiary. I was part of the execution team back then, you know.”

“Execution team,” I echo, contemplating my plastic cup of Diet Coke and ice. “That sounds like fun.”

“Well, actually…” She proceeds to fill my left ear with a litany of corporate gossip — infighting, gross mismanagement, Sarbanes-Oxley violations. From the sounds of it, Enron was nothing compared to her employer.

Outside my thick oval of plexiglass is a field of clouds. If Nooshin was sitting next to me, she’d be marveling at their gossamer beauty. Finding imaginary shapes — “Look, that’s a bunny rabbit!” Laughing in contentment. But I couldn’t take her with me. We only had enough money to buy one last-minute plane ticket, not two.

I glance sideways at the Hispanic girl, whatever her name is. Maybe she gets her paycheck from a corrupt and dysfunctional global megaconglomerate, but I bet she could buy two last-minute tickets if she wanted. And all the geegaws in the in-flight catalog. And a house with rooms aplenty for children.

Her hands are poised above a laptop keyboard, tap-tap-tapping away. There’s no ring on her ring finger. I don’t know what that means — never married? divorced? — but suddenly it’s poignant. She gropes for connection on airplanes and visits her relatives across distant geography. She’s the inverse of…

Brian.

Somehow I managed to block out his name, our awkward brotherhood, everything rushing me back to the same family that drove me away — until now. The Hispanic girl really is the inverse of him, a man who dispensed with connection entirely and isolated himself on the familial plot of corn and soybeans.

The stewardess makes a sweep with a gaping white garbage bag and clears our trays of ripped packaging and plastic cups. Trying to distract myself from this raw and gaping wound, I focus on the breasts jutting beneath her nametag. They’re full, probably C cup, and…not big enough for Brian. My brother was gonzo for chicks with big tits. A boob man.

Flinching, I lean back and close my eyes. Desperate for a distraction, I summon a vision of Nooshin. Sprawled in bed beneath me, wherever that bed might be. Sensual and caramel-skinned and melting into my shape. Giving herself to me like no girlfriend I’ve ever had. Giving herself to me in a way that redefines “girlfriend”, suffusing the word with more power than I ever intended to give her, upending the project plan of my life.

The pilot rouses me with a command to fasten my seatbelt and shut down my electronic devices.

“You don’t like to talk?” The half-statement, half-question drifts across the empty seat between us. The Hispanic girl is putting away her laptop, a pierced annoyance showing in her chubby face.

We descend, ears popping. The plane halts in a flurry of baggage-grabbing. She stands, trying to get into the aisle, but it’s too crowded. She sits back down. Not being able to leave makes her feel like she has to say something else. “Look, I’m sorry to bother you — ”

A dam breaks inside me. “I’m flying home to see my brother. He shot himself in the head trying to commit suicide, and lived. He’s in critical condition at the Mayo Clinic.”

Her eyes flare into dinner plates. She opens her lipsticked mouth to say something…but no words come out. Then she bolts into the crowd of shifting, lunging, grabbing people from all over the hemisphere. Meanwhile I stare out the oval plexiglass at Houston, which hides behind a sleek concrete-and-glass airport terminal. Next stop, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minnesota. I don’t know how long it takes to drive down to Rochester and the world-famous Mayo Clinic where Brian is clinging to the same life he just tried to end, but it’ll be too fast and not fast enough.

Lost. I’m lost in Mexico City. The kind of lost that seems almost existential, like God is having a bad hair day and taking it out on me. Because really, how else do I explain getting lost when the stupid cab dropped me off right in front of the internet cafe? Sure, the name painted on the window wasn’t an exact match to my pronunciation. Like that means anything. I’ve pronounced “Wal-Mart” wrong in Spanish and still gotten there. And sure, Nick and Inez weren’t waiting for me inside. They were just delayed somewhere in this delay-prone Land of Manana, I’m sure. All I needed to do was hang at the definitely-probably-maybe-right internet cafe and wait for them, right?

But then I started to panic, the kind of panic that begins with a foreign country and empty purse and no cellphone. A goosebump here, a goosebump there, until my skin was a carpet of fear. The big digital numbers on my runner’s watch were counting down the daylight — 3:39, 4:06, 4:41. I didn’t want to be trapped inside, clinging to hope and fluorescent lights while the city sank into a predatory darkness. So I circled the block, checking for other internet cafes and Nick’s Explorer with the Iowa license plates, and that led to crossing the street and circling the opposite block, and then the block after that, and next thing you know…

Like an idiot, I’m standing on a busy streetcorner and consulting a tourist guidebook and rubbernecking in confusion. Nick’s first rule for surviving Mexico City (or is it his second rule? or 14th? I lose track…) is NEVER EVER ACT LIKE YOU’RE LOST. Always walk with a purpose, as if you know exactly where you’re going, and duck into a store or restaurant to consult a map if you get lost. But detouring indoors every half-block gets old after a while, and this jutting tummy feels more like a bowling ball than a baby boy, and maybe someone will take pity on me and give me directions. So I lean against the hot metal of a lightpole and flip through my guidebook with a broken-nailed finger. Eventually I find the chapter titled “Zona Rosa”, which describes this posh district in between Chapultepec Park and the Aztec-old city center:

The Zona Rosa was named after all the buildings painted in varying shades of pink…

I glance around tiredly, really not caring about colors at this point. There are still pinks everywhere, but the palette has diversified — honey-colored yellows, watered-down purples, mint greens. Even more riotously colorful are the flowers blooming in decorative sidewalk planters and big concrete urns. This is the only place in Mexico City where I can’t smell the smog. Although I can still taste it, a grainy soot of vehicle exhaust that coats my mouth.

You will know that you have arrived in the Zona Rosa when you find yourself walking along streets that are named after European cities, like Geneva, Dublin, Oslo, Warsaw, and Nice…

Actually, the streets on this side of the Zona Rosa are named after famous rivers — Tiber, Congo, Mississippi. I’m standing at the geographic impossibility of the Nile and Amazon. Not that I’m complaining. Nick told me Mexico City has 100,000 streets and a third of them aren’t even named! Now if I could just understand why the block numbers on this side of Avenida Rio Amazona are 3800s…but the other side is 700s, beginning with that Citibank skyscraper, a towering inferno of reflective glass catching the sunset.

The Zona Rosa is the financial heart of Mexico City, where the bolsa (stock exchange) and many bank headquarters are located…

All I know is ATM machines are everywhere, embedded into facades, with beggars sitting conveniently nearby. They seem to constitute half the population of the Zona Rosa, human miseries parked on cardboard scraps with their palms upturned. Back in Tijuana my heart used to break for them, especially the impoverished dirty-faced kids. I’d burst into tears of dismay and frustration, wishing I could do something — anything — to alleviate their plight. But millions of beggars later, I’m just numb. I see them without seeing them. They’re part of the landscape that I blank out, like the garbage-strewn alleyways and ditches.

Be prepared for a lively and diverse nightlife, since the Zona Rosa has also become the heart of Mexico City’s gay and lesbian community…

What gay and lesbian community? The half of the population that isn’t begging is dressed in business attire, coats and ties and blouses and skirts, or just slumming in the tourist’s wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts. The blandness of urban fashion is disorienting. I could be back in LA. I could be anywhere, really. But no one is advertising their samesex orientation with a leather outfit or butch hairstyle or rainbow pin. I can’t spot a single person who looks even vaguely gay.

Finally on the next page — a stylized map of the Zona Rosa. Rose-colored streets grid across a pale pink background. Tourist traps are marked with miniature 3D drawings. In the upper righthand corner, a comedic skeleton is drowning in an outsize sombrero and clenching a rose in its teeth. It takes me a moment to realize its bony limbs are pointed in the cardinal directions. Despite the saccharine-cute design, all the streets are clearly labeled. I’m not as lost as I thought.

I force myself into motion, slogging through the slanty sunlight and long shadows. No time to waste. Dusk is creeping up the skyscrapers. I let panic fuel my tired legs, striding fast…faster…fastest. My momentum deflects a would-be purse snatcher, who steps out from the blackness of an alley and bobs alongside me, almost jogging, falling behind. I don’t bother to stop for a yellow-turning-red light, barging in front of bumpers, turning the intersection into a parking lot. Horns blare — until I glare at the brown faces swimming behind the windshields. I’m six feet tall and pregnant and evil-eyed. No mexicano wants to mess with me. I might, uh…shoot deathrays from my crooked eye, or whatever.

“Nooshin!” The voice is husky and female and Mexican, pronouncing my name as an exaggerated Noo-sheeeen! “Nooshin, over here!”

I escape the crosswalk onto the sidewalk, and vehicular motion resumes behind me. Exhaustion is coagulating in my limbs. I slow and stumble and stop. My backpack slides off my shoulderblade and freefalls to the crook of my elbow. I glance around.

Inez is carving through a sidewalk throng at me. Her spiky hairstyle is melting into a silvery lump. She’s dressed like a skate punk, wearing layered t-shirts over jeans with a wallet chain. Her lips are painted a glossy oxide white and twisted into a wavering line. I can almost feel the agony radiating off her. And Nick… I glance around, but Nick is nowhere to be seen.

Up close Inez’s eyes are pink-lidded. “Nooshin, I…he had to leave for the airport, his brother tried to commit suicide, he shot himself in the head and lived, oh god…” Her voice strangles away, then comes back again. “He got a call from his sister while we were waiting for you, he had to fly back right away, he…”

I’m more lost than ever. What Nick told me about his family can’t fill a memory. I don’t even recall his older brother’s name. No, wait — Brian. I think his name is Brian.

Inez is pressing something hot and metallic into my palm. The keys to the Explorer. Nick’s keys. “He wants you to drive back to Tijuana, right away. And…” She fumbles in a front pocket, digging into her jeans for a slip of paper. “Call this number. This is where he’ll be.”

The area code is 641. I imagine a numeric overlay on rural Iowa. Somewhere in that flat vastness of corn and soybeans is his family’s homestead, where Brian grew up and stayed. The same farmstead — the same family — that compelled Nick to leave and never look back. Until now.

A solicitation touches my elbow. “Nooshin? Are you okay?”

What am I supposed to say? I’m very NOT okay? I’m burning with resentment that Nick is suddenly abandoning THIS family — me and the baby — for the family he claims to hate? I’m super incredibly pissed that he just blew all our money on a last-minute plane ticket? I’m wishing he took me with him?

Instead I stare down at a phone number in his handwriting, and all my resentments crystallize into a single word — “Shit!” Inez doesn’t care, doesn’t even notice. Maybe a Muslim girl swearing is no big deal to her. Or maybe her thoughts are focused on Nick, just like mine are. In my mind I’m chasing after his presence. His receding presence. I already realize my life has changed again, tilting back into uncertainty.

Things I Love About Mexico City is a very short list, but here’s something right near the top — even in this gargantuan frenzied dystopia, you stumble across pockets of unexpected beauty and calm. And I’m not talking about the well-known retreats, like the lush glades of the Bosque de Chapultepec and the sunny gondola-choked canals that crisscross Xochimilco. Any tourist with a guidebook can find those places, to say nothing of 25 million locals. I’m talking about the offbeat stuff. Like the pristine and silent Leon Trotsky Museum, ignored by all the crowds flooding to the Frida Kahlo Museum further down the street. The agricultural research station in San Angel, with its endless open-sided greenhouses and humid rows of tropical plants. That spectacular English country garden in Polanco, hidden behind the ivy-leafed walls of an imposing compound — but accessible, if a dude like Elliot Parner shows you the secret door buried in the vines.

And now, this small sleepy cathedral a few blocks from Inez’s apartment in Coyoacan. It hides in plain sight, camouflaged by its sleek 1930s-era architecture. The Catholic Church of that future — all layered lines and sloping corners and squat height, like a stubby cement spaceship waiting to rocket to God. Driving past I assumed it was a private residence or maybe a hip new store, but pausing on the sidewalk its true nature becomes apparent. Crosses are indented into the lintel, and a cobblestone path leads around the side to an octagonal chapel, protruding from the side of the cathedral like a fuel pod.

“Come on, Nooshin!” barks Inez’s mom, peeling open the front doors, a pair of massive concrete shutters that must pivot on hidden counterweights. Her mom resembles Jackie O, looking back at us in those goggle-eyed sunglasses and white silk scarf tied around her head.

I feel Nooshin’s hand slip from mine. “Well, I better go get blessed…” But she hesitates, tall and pregnant and conflicted in my peripheral vision.

“You still haven’t told Inez’s mom that you’re Muslim.” A statement, not a question.

“Well…” She elongates it, we-lllllllllll.

I turn to look at her. The clouds gap and sunlight washes over us, highlighting the tiny scars that ghost across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose, casting shadows under her steep cheekbones. Her right eye jerks nervously when Inez’s mom barks “Nooshin!” again.

“I’ll wait outside,” I decide. I lean in for a quick kiss, then watch her traipse up the flattened steps to the cathedral entrance. She pauses to wave at me, like a traveler bound for deep space, then the doors swing shut.

I wander the grounds, following the cobblestone path around to the octagonal chapel. Seven sides are enclosed, one is open. Inside is a forest fire of votive candles and a scaffolding matrix. A half-restored fresco looms overhead. The face and flesh tints of a crucified Jesus are missing, as if the artist is afraid to tread on divinity, and pots of pigment line the scaffold.

“Will you shoot me?”

What the — ?!? I whirl around and discover a young mexicana holding out a digital camera. She’s silent in crepe-soled pumps and wearing a demure blocky dress the color of charcoal.

“Will you?” she asks, gesturing with the digicam again.

“Uh, sure.”

I take the minuscule thing and peer through the sight, expecting her to stand smiling. Instead she flushes her long hair out over her shoulders, then kneels down on the cobbles. In profile she remains praying and crossing herself for long minutes, while I snap a couple gigs of pictures.

“Thank you, thank you.” She takes the camera and then my hand. “Beatriz.”

“I’m Nick.”

She sends me a disconnected smile, then stares around us. “Look at this, look at this.”

I glance around at all the icons, dancing in votive flames. “Uh, yeah.” I grope for the conversational thread. “Just, uh…look at this.”

Beatriz has produced a taper and is searching the chapel, moving from one bank of icons to the next. She pauses in front of a framed picture of John Paul II contemplating the Virgin of Guadalupe during his last visit to Mexico.

I feel obligated to comment. “I hear the new pontiff, Ratzinger, put John Paul on the fast track to canonization.”

She flares angrily. “He is already a saint, already a saint! He heads the saints in the cathedral of heaven!” Her voice is lilting with passionate certainty. “He and the Virgin of Guadalupe send all our prayers to God. Direct.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Praying action shots and talking in double and hotlines to god. I start backing out the door.

“Why are you here?” Beatriz asks suddenly.

I freeze. Her tone is almost accusatory, as if she can see right through my ribcage to this atheistic heart. “My girlfriend, uh, she’s pregnant, and she’s here to get blessed.”

“Then may God bless you too.” She considers the taper wrapped in her fervent hands, then dips it into a flame. “I will pray for both of you, I will pray for both of you.”

I watch her park the taper in front of a sheaf of flickering lights. Beatriz bows her head and clasps her rosary and begins praying to…Hispanic Barbie? I peer at the doll in fascination, at its handmade garments and slippered feet. Somebody has painstakingly crafted it into a miniature replica of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The slur of praying stops. She raises a placid face and beams at me wetly. “Soon, Nick, soon the Church on earth will be united with the Church in heaven. A celestial union. Soon, very soon!” Her voice is a hypnotic music. “Light for the future of the world! Very soon, very soon!”

I’m looking at her like bats are about to burst forth from her eyesockets. “When?” I ask dully.

“When?” Beatriz tilts at me oddly. “Did you ask when?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what I asked. When. When is all this going to happen.”

“Very soon!” she repeats. Like, duh. Wasn’t I listening?

Very soon also seems like a perfect time to get the hell away from her. I thank her for praying for us, edging toward the door, hey I think my girlfriend is calling me…

Every stride back toward the street is an escape building momentum — and not just from Beatriz’s rapture of Catholic belief. A famous anthropologist once said that if you want to know a Mexican, you should ask him about God. But I want to be done with Hispanic Barbies made into icons, and superstitious mexicanos who cross themselves to ward off Nooshin’s evil eye, and a country sinking into a morass of drug cartels and beggars and snarling dogs. For the first time in my life, I want to be done with Mexico.

The father of my child is drunk.

At 11:37 AM, according to the slanty digits of my runner’s watch.

On a Sunday, with church bells pealing through the smog, a holy appeal to the vast and overwhelmingly Christian population of Mexico City.

Not that Nick cares about the religious implications. He’s an agnostic when it comes to the beliefs of other people, but an atheist for himself. He refuses to acknowledge any higher power in his life. There is no God to make or unmake him, only Nick Roberts. The “ultimate accountability” he likes to call it.

I’m not amused by his ultimate accountability right now. As far as I can tell, it’s indistinguishable from just doing whatever he wants. This morning he wants to get drunk with Elliot Parner, his new best friend. After he got drunk with Elliot last night, which is why we stayed overnight here. I’ve already heard their excuses. Last night it was drowning the pain of UCLA’s defeat in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. This morning it’s fending off the hangovers. I’d have more respect for Nick and Elliot if they just admitted it — right now their lives seem better drunk than sober.

Elliot I can understand. He smiles without using his eyes, laughs too loud, brags. Every five minutes another reference to missing his wife and kids, missing America. Then why take a job here in the first place? For the money, Elliot claims. But I don’t believe him. He’s fleeing from his life. All the way to Mexico City and into a bloody mary with a beer chaser.

Nick doesn’t have that excuse. His life is happy now — or it’s supposed to be happy, anyway. As happy as mine. We’re in love and having a baby! I understand why he worries about the future, because I worry about it too. Finishing his Ph.D. and supporting a stay-at-home mom, if that’s what I turn out to be. But is that any reason to get drunk and stay drunk? Grandfather’s voice is booming in my memory, a Farsi proverb. Lotfan be rajioye zaban velayat, moraa-je’e konid. Every day is full of worries, and just as many joys.

I scowl with resentment and avoid their rowdy presence. It’s easy to do. I’ve never been in a condo this big before. 3,000 square feet. Every room seems to lead into another room. Now I’m in a bedroom — the third I’ve discovered. Taupe walls angle together and apart at weird angles. The queen-sized bed hides under a goosedown comforter, a necessity in this frigid air-conditioning. A teak dresser wider than tall is empty. So is the walk-in closet.

Male voices invade my seclusion. “Nooshin!” yells Nick. “Nooooooo-shin!” echoes Elliot. I ignore them until I can’t anymore. Then I retrace my steps through the condo, marching angrily, until I reach the foyer. I grab my purse and slam the front door behind me.

The elevator discharges me into the parking garage. Oops. I meant to get off in the lobby. When I spin around, it’s too late. The metal doors won’t open again. Not unless I have a building key.

I follow the sharp incline, past rows of bumpers to the exit. It’s easy enough to duck under the gate arm. I emerge into the baking noonday heat. The cobblestone street pulses in rhythm to a nearby traffic light — awash in vehicles belching exhaust, then deserted, then awash again. I begin to stride down the sidewalk.

At the end of the block is La Casa Cultura — the House of Culture. The museum is unmistakable, an arabesque relic dwarfed by the grimly modern buildings that surround it. The portico greets me with a pair of immense wooden doors bound with iron. Convinced of their mass, I push forward with both palms…and discover they’re almost weightless on their hinges, losing my balance and stumbling inside.

The museum’s interior is quiet and cool and dim. Floodlit displays of natural history stretch from the Big Bang in the very first panel to the evolution and migration of humans in North America. About half of the panels are dedicated to cultures of Mexico’s eastern seaboard. Usually I’m underwhelmed by excavated ceramics, but one pre-Colombian culture made very unusual and beautiful pottery in animal motifs, especially feline and fish shapes. I’m surprised we didn’t see reproductions in the tourist markets of Veracruz.

At the far end of the museum is a stone staircase. I climb its worn treads to an overwrought wonderland. The entire second floor is dedicated to paintings and sculptures from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, religious in nature and baroque or rococo in style. A Muslim girl can only take so much Catholic iconography, but I force myself to stare at every single cherub and saint. For a few seconds, at least.

The third floor shows a modernist shift. The traditional religious themes are gone, replaced by portraiture and landscapes inspired by the breathtaking beauty of Mexico, volcanic eruptions and craggy mountain ranges and flowered plains by glossy lakes. I linger in front of the landscapes, trying to identify their locales, wishing I could recognize them from my travels with Nick. But everything seems strange, unfamiliar, just plain off. Even panoramas of the Central Valley are unrecognizable, since Mexico City now laps over its rim.

On the fourth floor I arrive in the 20th century. There are several murals on display, all painted by socialistic Mexican artists in the 1930s. Another room features art from the 1960s — photomontages, soft sculptures, paintings studded with materials that project from the canvas. I circle the floor, trying to pick out my favorite work. Finally I decide on a cubist rendering from the 1920s. It depicts a train winding through Copper Canyon, the humongous gorge that’s four times bigger than the Grand Canyon and twice as deep. Squared-off shapes slide into each other, a dynamic rendering of massive green mountains and tiny orange train.

There is no fifth floor, no 21st century. I’m forced to retrace my steps down the stairs. My sandals echo in the deserted galleries. I feel a pang of disappointment when I discover the gift shop is already closed, its interior dark. That’s Mexico for you — employees close when they feel like it. The girl working the gift shop probably had a date with her boyfriend or something. I’m shocked when I glance at my watch and discover it’s past 4 PM, closing time. The entire afternoon passed unnoticed while I drifted through the exhibits, and the museum apparently closed without even a cursory check to see if everyone had left.

A security guard is sitting behind the entryway desk. I watch him admit a pair of visitors. Noticing me his eyes widen momentarily, then narrow to slits. “Vaya, vaya!” he says irritably, pointing at those heavy-looking wooden doors. I realize he’s illegally keeping the museum open after hours so he can pocket the entrance fee.

The street outside is empty now, only filled with long shadows and quiet. I sit on the curb in front of the museum, unwilling to return to Elliot’s condo. A lone street vendor is pushing his burrito cart down the opposite sidewalk. He pauses to wave at me. I shake my head. I’m not hungry enough to eat dinner — even though I missed breakfast and lunch. Around me is a forest of office and apartment buildings, all going dark darker darkest as the light wanes from the sky.