Avenida Revolucion. Everything tacky about Tijuana used to fit into those two words. This was the dumping ground for all the sunburned tourists and underage college kids and senior citizens who poured across the border to gawk and drink $1 beers and fill prescriptions cheap. Our dollars were the lifeblood of La Revo, as the locals call it, and every local was hustling for a transfusion. The result was a Disneyfied flea market – kiosks vending every kind of crap imaginable, boulevard palms and fruity tinted stucco, bellicose elementary-aged panhandlers, more neon than Vegas, doormen shanghaiing tourists into dark interiors, signs that bray CHEAP-O-RAMA, the only empty garbage cans in Mexico, “Get on the zebra for a picture!” even though it was just a donkey painted in stripes.
Now all the signature cheap-and-cheerful tackiness has been replaced by a ghost town vibe. Avenida Revolucion is a boulevard of vacant storefronts with SE RENTA and FOR RENT signs in the windows. Almost every crap-vending kiosk is gone, and the donkey painted in stripes too. Prostitutes have to do their own shanghaiing into dark interiors and shout “No condoms!” in desperation. Neon signs have gone dead all up and down La Revo, their shops closed or just trying to save money on electricity. The Barney Fife-like municipal police are still around, but trading stares with federales patrolling in black uniforms with ski masks and full combat loadouts. Only the garbage cans are the same – still empty – because nobody is using them. The sunburned tourists and underage college kids and senior citizens have stopped crossing the border. Who wants to become a statistic in the drug cartel wars?
I’d feel shitty about the way Tijuana is sliding into anarchy and taking Avenida Revolucion along for the ride, but hey – the $1 beer is now a $.50 beer.
Mid-afternoon and I’m kicking back in Pepito’s Café, one of the few surviving tourist restaurants on La Revo. I’m the only customer in a room of empty tables. My third Budweiser sits next to a half-eaten cheeseburger. Frontera – the best newspaper in Tijuana – is open in my lap. I scan the columns for crime reporting, trying to get a feel for the good and bad parts of town. Or nowadays, the bad and worse parts of town. At the same time I’m checking my voicemail, the cellphone squeezed between my ear and shoulder. No sense risking it earlier. Where I’ve been, it’s not safe to flaunt white skin and cellphones. I don’t want to be mistaken for somebody with money.
The messages are about what I expect after a day incommunicado:
Professor “Frankie” Chavez, UCLA’s neocon harbinger of doom in the academy. Calling with an update about the rest of Javier’s funding. The update is, there is no update. Stay loose, champ.
Phoebe, asking if she left her macramé beach bag in my truck. A sure sign that our breakup is gathering momentum. Property reclamation underway.
A couple students with complaints about grades. Both are chronic dumbasses who will only pass “Introduction to European History” thanks to grade inflation. I should just call them back and say so, but I don’t. I’m increasingly distracted by the girl.
She’s a slender thing with caramel-colored skin. Her long inky hair is wrapped in a colorful headscarf, which ripples in the backwash of passing vehicles. She sits on a cement bench, one Nike tucked beneath her, staring a hole through the traffic. She was motionless when I arrived at Pepito’s and ordered my first $.50 beer. That was an hour ago. She’s still motionless now.
But the really intriguing thing? The Mexican sharks are leaving her alone. Tourists have become preciously rare chum on Avenida Revolucion, but the street vendors veer toward her with their pinwheel-bedecked carts, then veer away. Even the pushy beggars, styrofoam cups in hand, are keeping their distance. I’d conclude there was easier prey in this sea – except she’s the only tourist in sight, besides me.
That does it. I have to check this girl out. I settle my bill and stride over to block her sun. “How’s it going?”
There’s a pause. A lingering pause. A long lingering pause. I feel like I’m growing moss. “Que pasa?” I try again, just in case she doesn’t speak English.
The girl shivers a little, as if the diesel smoke is turning cold. The headscarf turns incrementally in my direction. “Sorry. Did you say something?”
“I said hi.” I shift warily, fearing another pause.
“Hi.”
“You mind if I sit here?”
She bobs a shoulder noncommittally. Good enough for me. I take the opposite end of the bench.
Her profile belongs on the wall of a pharaoh’s tomb. My libido is already trying to picture her in something gauzy and fantasial, instead of the Old Navy hoodie and track pants she’s wearing. But the image doesn’t quite work. She seems too…practical. The kind of girl who doesn’t see much point to lingerie since it’s just coming off anyway.
“I’m Nick, by the way.” I stick a hand into the DMZ between us and give her my patented megawatt smile. “And you are?”
A sideways glance. Her clasp is soft and fleeting. “I’m Nooshin.”
“Pleased to meet you, Nooshin.” My head bounces with rhymes. Aleutian and Confucian. Stay of execution. The 1910-1917 Mexican Revolution. “That’s a cool name. It’s Iranian, right?”
“That’s right.” Suddenly she’s looking right at me. Half-looking. One of her dark eyes is slightly askew. She tries to hide it behind a drape of bangs. “How’d you know?”
“I’m a grad student up at UCLA. That part of Los Angeles is called Tehrangeles because of all the Iranian-Americans.” I’m fascinated by her wandering eye, a perfect but wayward twin. When she focuses on something it starts out in the right place, then drifts a little. Or a lot, sometimes. Twitching. Barely leashed.
So the first mystery about her is solved. The street vendors and beggars are leaving her alone because they’re superstitious. This girl isn’t just somebody who can give them el mal ojo – the evil eye. This girl is the evil eye.
“I know what you’re staring at.” Nooshin raises an unpainted fingernail to her right eye. “I can see perfectly fine. People never believe me, but it’s true.” Then she’s in profile again, talking to the shuffling glint of vehicles. “I’m okay with being different. Otherwise I’d be going against God. God made me this way for a reason.”
God. A dangerous topic with friends. Let alone strangers who gaze into traffic like they’re contemplating a suicidal dive.
I follow her gaze into the street – and discover she’s actually been observing the fishbowl windows of a Domino’s Pizza on the other side. A solitary American family crowds a table, stuffing their faces with caloric glee. “So that’s it,” I remark, more to myself than her.
“What?”
I yank a thumb at Pepito’s behind us. “I was eating a late lunch, reading the paper and stuff, and meanwhile you were just sitting here. Looking out into the street. I couldn’t – ”
Alarm is rising in her face. “Were you, like…stalking me?”
I raise my palms defensively. “No way. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Seriously. That’s why I came over here. Just making sure you’re, uh…you know. Okay.” My excuse is having a strange effect on her. The alarm is gone, but something else is in its place. What, I can’t tell yet. “So? Are you okay?”
Nooshin lets her chin drop. “Am I okay? Am I okay?” she echoes softly. Rolling the words around on her tongue. Bemused. Then she laughs to herself. A private moment.
“What’s so fascinating about that Domino’s Pizza, anyway?” I ask, back on task. Solving the second mystery about her causes a third – how could those fishbowl windows preoccupy her for an hour?
She shrugs evasively.
“Me, I’d call that a touristic malapropism.” I watch her to see if she understands that word. She seems to. No pinched brow, no blank nod. “I mean, come on. You leave the country for a meal and you still have to make it Domino’s? Get a tortilla wrapped in week-old newspaper, for chrissake. Drink some water that’ll make you sick. Experience the real Mexico.”
Her smile is a polite flicker. “I was watching the waitstaff. Like, their faces. Their body language. Wondering what they think about the people they serve. What they think when someone tries to use high school Spanish on them. Or when someone opens up a wallet with more money than they make in a year. And I suspect they don’t really think about it. They probably think about other things, or maybe nothing at all. Because that’s easier. That’s always easier, as a general rule.” Thin hands are clasping and unclasping in her lap.
Suddenly all the jigsaw pieces slam into place. A young woman identifying with the servers, battling doubts about her life, non-confrontational and anxious. Could pegging her as an unhappy housewife with a domineering husband really be this easy? My gaze drops to her writhing hands. The left one.
Bingo.
A gold band. I didn’t recognize it at first. Partly because I wasn’t looking, since I’m not used to girls her age being married. Mostly because she has the wedding ring turned upside down, hiding the diamond in her palm. “That’s smart,” I tell her, nodding at the subterfuge.
Nooshin glances down at her lap. “You mean this?” Her hand opens to reveal a modest rock, then closes again. A protective gesture. Or maybe she doesn’t want to think about it. Out of sight, out of mind. “It seemed like a bad idea to flash it around.”
“You here with your husband? Friends or coworkers? A tour group?”
Wrong tangent. Her body language is cooling fast. She turns so I can only read half the OLD NAVY lettering draped across her flat chest.
I try to salvage the conversation. “Me, I’m here by myself. I just drove down from LA for the day, checking out rental properties. I might have to live here. For a whole year. Doing fieldwork for my Ph.D.”
“I know where you should live! Over there. Those are really awesome places.” She points half a mile inland to a glassy bank of condos rising into the hazy sky. “I walked over there this morning, and they had this big sign on the sidewalk advertising how the model is open, come in and check it out. So I did. The view is incredible. Standing on the balcony, I felt like I could see all the way to Japan!”
“How much is rent there?”
Her face clouds. “I don’t know. The prices were in Mexican money. Pesos. I can’t remember a number now.”
I study Nooshin more closely. The afternoon sunlight is casting angular shadows across her delicate features – steep cheekbones, a pointy nose, the kind of sharp jawline endemic to supermodels and starving refugees. Tiny scars ghost across her forehead, reminders of the difficult truce between a little girl and her wandering eye. Her lips are fuller than the rest of her.
I’m trying to get my head around a leftover piece of the jigsaw puzzle – she’s been here in Tijuana by herself the whole day. Straying pretty far from Avenida Revolucion and the tourist district. No apparent Spanish, no familiarity with pesos and exchange rates. Sticking out bigtime, especially with that headscarf and fucked-up eye. I can’t decide whether she’s utterly fearless or just plain stupid. Probably some of both.
“When are you going back across the border?” I ask. “Or are you staying in Tijuana for a while?”
Nooshin checks her watch, the sports kind with oversized numbers that are easy to read while exercising. I can see them from the opposite side of the bench. 4:37 PM. “I’m taking the trolley back to downtown San Diego. My brother-in-law is picking me up after he’s done with work. Maybe sixish, maybe later, depending on traffic.” She nibbles her bottom lip. “It’s kind of out of his way. Well, really out of his way. But he insisted. He can be really insistent.”
“You want a ride?”
“A ride?”
“I’m headed back to LA anyway. I can drop you off anywhere between here and Koreatown. That way you don’t have to kill any more time by yourself, and your brother-in-law doesn’t have to come get you.”
Now it’s her turn to scrutinize me. I wonder what she sees. Maybe just the buff dude with the megawatt grin. But I doubt it. She seems like the type who doesn’t miss much. Male-pattern baldness hidden under my vintage KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ meshback. The knee that jackhammers in perpetual restlessness. Hiking boots that cost more than the rest of my clothes put together.
After a while her right eye wanders off. “Are you sure it’s not a hassle for you? Totally sure?”
“Yeah. Totally sure.”
Another long pause. She looks away, fretting. Apparently I make the ride home easy – and other things hard.
Then a moment of decision. She pulls a cellphone out of her hoodie and speaks a single word into it – Farid. Voice-recognition dialing. “Hey. It’s Nooshin. You don’t have to pick me up today. I’ll take a bus back.” There’s a pause. “I’m sure there’s a bus. I see them all the time.” Another pause. “No, nothing like that. I’m just fine. Downtown is great. I – ” She gives me a guilty look and switches to another language. Maybe Farsi. I get the impression the conversation is raging back and forth.
Finally she clicks the cellphone shut while an unintelligible male voice is still yelling out of it. “Okay! Where are you parked?”
“I’m over on…on…” At first I’m too dumbstruck to finish the sentence. Standing up she’s almost my height – and I’m 6′1″. She has to be 5′11″, maybe even 6’0”. “I’m over on Calle Cuarta. That means 4th Street.”
“I guessed as much when I was walking around.” Nooshin falls into step beside me, a girl who has no trouble keeping pace with my long strides. “Plus I still remember some Spanish from growing up in East LA. Today has been kind of cool like that. It just pops into my head.”
We talk about East LA as the empty blocks of Avenida Revolucion roll past. I know her part of La-La Land better than most white los angelenos, so it’s easy to hold up my end of the conversation. She grew up in the Terrazas Park neighborhood, a gritty warzone of Asian triads and Hispanic gangs. Humble roots and then some, compared to the rich Iranian-Americans who comprise Tehrangeles.
When I finally announce my rustbucket Ford Explorer and wave her toward the passenger side, she starts cracking up. Pointing at the dusty license plate on the back bumper. “Nick! You’re from Iowa? No way!”
I almost snap the key off in the lock. What is this, flyover country bullshit? Like I’m not sick to death of attitudinal Californians already.
Nooshin folds her long limbs into the passenger seat, still laughing. “We’re, like, neighbors! Saman and I – my husband, Saman – we live in Kansas City right now. I haven’t been to Iowa yet, but it’s only a couple hours up I-35. Is that weird or what?”
My anger instantly cools. “Yeah. That’s weird alright. What do you think of Kansas City?”
“Who knows? I haven’t seen much of it yet. We just moved there.” She’s a pretzel in the seat, twisting around to survey the rear of the truck. “Do you live out of your car or something?” I’ve got the back seat folded down to make room for all my camping equipment. “Oh. This is camping stuff. Cool!”
I start the truck, listening to the engine rattle. The dilemma of old vehicles – good rattle, or bad? “You and your husband go camping a lot?”
“I wish. I’ve never been camping in my life. Where do you go camping?”
“Wherever I happen to be on the Pacific Crest Trail.”
Most people have never heard of that arcane footpath. But Nooshin almost shrieks, “The PCT? I’ve always wanted to hike the PCT! When I was in high school I even bought this one book about hiking the PCT in California. It was full of these really cool pictures from the 1970s, and stories about getting from one resupply point to the next, and – ”
I grope behind my seat until I produce a dog-eared copy of Jeffrey Schaffer’s classic Pacific Crest Trail guidebook.
“That’s it! Oh wow!” She flips the pages excitedly.
“I was up on the PCT three weekends ago. Went in from Horseshoe Meadow to Forrester Pass and back. Not the right time of year for that altitude, so I had to do it with a zero-degree bag and extra food. But that was the appeal. Having the trail to myself. Just me, the Sierra Nevadas, and a lot of cold blue sky.”
For a while there’s silence. Well, silence except for the engine rattling and punk music wailing from the speakers and the inevitable honking horns of Tijuana traffic, which even a drug war can’t diminish.
“Where are you going hiking next?” she asks, not looking up from the guidebook.
“I don’t know. The desert, probably. Someplace at low altitude, so it’s warm.”
“I hear there’s lots of good desert hiking in San Diego. Out in the east county, past the mountains. Ocotillo Wells, where all the off-roaders go.”
“Sounds cool. You should go out there before you fly home to Kansas City.” My attention is on the slowpoke Honda ahead of me. I’m almost-but-not-quite-bumping its rear fender. Encouraging it aside.
“I don’t have the gear. Any gear.” Nooshin tosses the PCT guidebook into the back and freezes. “Um… Nick? Shouldn’t you give that guy some room?”
“What?”
“The car in front of – ” She turns her head, watching as the Honda peels off.
I step on the gas, hustling through a stale yellow light that becomes a fresh red one. Brakes squeal and horns blare. Ahead of us the border crossing is almost wide-open. On this side, anyway. Vehicles with Baja California Norte plates wind to the horizon on the other side of the border, commuting back to homes and citizenship in Tijuana.
Belatedly I realize that I’ve never crossed the border with somebody like her before. A probable Muslim, judging by her headscarf and Iranian heritage. Visions of the Department of Homeland Defense sodomizing me with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution fill my head. But we sail through the border station and ID check with an impatient wave. Hurry up, pal. Get into the United States and out of my queue. The agent’s superficial inspection makes me feel even worse, in a way.
We’re blasting up I-5 through the slumsville known as Chula Vista when my cellphone rings. I glance at the caller ID. Phoebe. I answer with a sigh. “Is this about the beach bag?”
“Did you find it?” she asks too eagerly.
“I haven’t seen it. Try one of your other boyfriends.”
For a few bars of punk music there’s nothing but static and humming pavement and Nooshin’s feigned disinterest.
“Well. That was a shitty thing to say,” Phoebe says.
“Was it? Be honest with me.”
“Now you’re getting all possessive on me? Now? Isn’t it a little late for that?”
“It’s never too late for the truth.”
“Nick.” There’s something piercing about the word.
“What?”
“If you weren’t you. And I wasn’t me. And we weren’t us.” Phoebe laughs bitterly. “What do you want me to say? That I love you? Because I don’t. But I like you.”
“I like you too.”
“Then give me my goddamn beach bag back. I left it in your truck. I know it.”
“Your beach bag is not in this truck!”
“I’ll look for it,” Nooshin says quietly, and unbelts herself to grub around in the back.
Phoebe is an accusatory tone in my ear. “Who was that? Are you with a girl?”
“No! I’m hurtling down I-5 only caring about you and your fucking beach bag! I’ll call you back if I find it!” Then I hang up and turn off the cellphone, muttering under my breath.
“Girlfriend?” asks Nooshin, a bony ass in the rearview mirror.
“Not anymore.”
She returns to the passenger seat, buckling the seatbelt without a problem. Phoebe always struggles to get the strap across her torpedo tits. “I didn’t find any beach bag.”
“It’s macramé, if that helps.”
“Sorry. I didn’t find any macramé either.” She starts tap-tap-tapping on the dashboard like it’s Star Trek and she’s Scotty, staring dead ahead in comic tension. “The macramé sensors are reporting nothing at all, Captain!”
“That’s got to be the worst Scottish accent of all time,” I chortle.
Nooshin is laughing too. “Yeah. That was pretty bad. I really suck at accents.” Her headscarf has become so loose she can pin inky hair behind her ears, composing herself.
We exit at Clairemont Drive, diving off the highway into a commercial strip of junky malls and office buildings adorned with FOR LEASE signs. Beyond lies the customary gradient of property values – apartment buildings, condos, and finally private homes. We make it past the apartment buildings, but not to the private homes. She directs me into a townhome development intended to resemble a Tuscan village – red tile roofs, brickwork peeking through plaster, flowering planters beneath every window. The only thing missing is a Catholic church with a tormented statuary Christ out front.
Her pointing arm is a navigational imperative. “That one over there. 825. Except park on the other side, 823.” The left half of a shared driveway. I bounce to a halt amidst vericulture, throwing the Explorer into park.
And voila, the end of it. A temporal acquaintance. Born in Tijuana, died outside of it. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Except that’s not how I leave it. “Here’s my card,” I say, as if it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll stay in touch. “Call or email if you want. Anything comes up. Whatever. Okay?”
Nooshin’s crooked stare is aimed right at me. But only for a heartbeat. Then she’s turning away, distracted. Faces are glaring out the front window of 825, the garage door starts lifting. She almost bolts from the truck. Her goodbye is a flash of wandering-eyed innocence, some sweet words, and a slamming door.
Later I’m flying across the sandy barren landscape of Camp Pendleton, the last line of defense between San Diego and annexation into Greater Los Angeles. Out my window the sun is a bloody orb drowning in the Pacific. I try to dwell on the usual things – my graduate career, a year researching Mexico, how I feel about Phoebe.
But my mind isn’t on the usual things. My mind is on her. Nooshin. A strange girl on an even stranger journey. For some reason I really hope she makes it. Wherever she’s going.
