The little thing I hate about this classroom in Young Hall – everywhere you look, it’s a million shades of piss.  The cracked and yellowing linoleum on the floor.  The walls painted that institutional hue called “Bruin gold”.  The ceiling tiles stained from water damage.  The broken mildewed shades that dangle in front of the windows.  Nothing an 8.0 on the Richter scale wouldn’t fix, but I haven’t felt a tremor from the San Andreas Fault in months.

The big thing I hate about this classroom – the students filling it.  This is my dumbass section.  If you’re a TA with two or more sections, you always have a dumbass one.  The eyes are duller, the answers slower, the grades worse.  What you don’t expect are so many students like that.  UCLA needed to cap enrollment or add teaching assistants for this popular class.  It did neither.  Teaching more with less, as Corporate America would sloganize it.  So instead of the usual 30 students per section, I’ve got 42 staring at me right now and 47 in my other section.  Standing room only.  Get your degree from the diploma mill while it’s still hot.

You always know who your best students are.  They seem like higher intellectual life forms compared to their classmates.  Grading their papers and exams you want to give them an A+++ because of the grade inflation giving everyone else a B.  In this section it’s Cooper and Hye-sun, who always sit on opposite sides of the room, as if their intelligence is too explosive in proximity.  Cooper is the cocky blond fratboy type.  He looks like a walking Aeropostale advertisement.  Cute girls circle him, but none in geosynchronous orbit.  He went all quarter without a female study buddy, keeping his options open.

Hye-sun is an earnest Asian girl who’s hot from the neck down, not-so-hot from the neck up.  I see her around campus doing impromptu musical numbers with other evangelical Korean-Americans.  She always stops performing and runs over to chat.  She’s also my only regular visitor during office hours.  Right now she’s sitting in the front row.  Reeking of perfume.  Mooning up at me with big almond eyes, as if I’m dishing the wisdom of the ages instead of just blathering on autopilot.

Most students are like Carrie, a slumping indolent goth who always sits in the back row.  She’s a couple years older than the rest of the class – a junior among freshmen – and looks like she came to UCLA for the methadone program, not the education.  I startle her with a question about European emigration patterns.  “Was that covered in lecture?” she says warily.  “Because I wasn’t taking notes.”

A hand is waving desperately.  The hand is connected to Hye-sun.  I overlook her and scan the room.

Cooper and I make eye contact.  Do you want me to answer the question? his eyes ask.  Let somebody else take this one my eyes reply.

But nobody else raises a hand.  I stare down at blank faces, ponytails, bald spots, stocking caps.  The silence is deafening.  Take Cooper and Hye-Sun out of the mix and there isn’t enough brainpower to power an electric toothbrush.

“Okay, that’s it.  Everybody out of here!” I tell the piss-colored room.  About the benediction you’d expect from a TA on his fourth tour of duty.  I don’t remember exhaustion like this during my first stint as a teaching assistant.  Back then I probably burned with passion instead of cynicism, eager to do shit like teach – actually teach – instead of just rubberstamp transcripts on the way to graduation.

Hye-Sun lingers with her annoying enthusiasm, this time for European emigration.  I watch her mouth move and pretend to listen.  I prefer it when she sings those Christian recruitment jingles.  Then my backpack starts ringing.  “Sorry, I’ve got to take this call.”

“No problemo.  See you during office hours!”  She taps my fist in goodbye, a ridiculous gesture coming from her.  Evangelical Korean-American students are unhip.  Period.

I grope in my backpack, past the laptop and books and papers, until my hand closes around the small metal shape of my cellphone.  Reflexively I check the caller ID.  FARID AND NASRIN NIZRA–.  The last name is truncated in the display, but I already know who’s calling.  And it isn’t somebody named Farid or Nasrin.  “Nick here,” I growl.

There’s a slight pause.  “Oh.  Hi.  This is Nooshin.”  Another pause.  “Do you remember me?  We met in Tijuana and – ”

“Of course I remember you.  How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, thanks.  I was just, um…  Is this a good time to talk?  Or maybe I should call back?”

“This is a good time for me.”  I briefly debate whether to tell her one truth, two truths, or no truths.  I decide to risk two truths.  “I was just thinking about you, actually.  I have to go down to Tijuana again.”

“Really?  Are you moving down there already?”

“Nah.  I just found out I’m not getting as much research funding as I thought.  So I need to look at more places down there.  Cheaper places.”  I try to be all c’est le vie when I laugh, but instead I just sound bitter.

“It’s my birthday today,” she suddenly blurts.

“Happy birthday then!  How old are you?  Or don’t you want to say?”

“I’m 23.”

“Are you doing anything special to celebrate?  Getting any cool presents?”

“My sister is making halva for me.  That’s my favorite dessert in the whole world!  It’s one of those recipes that’s really easy to learn and really hard to master.  No one makes it like she does, especially not me.  Not even our mom.”  I wait for more, but her excitement dies into silence.  So much for birthday joy.

I figure it’s got something to do with her husband.  Whatever his name is.  “Is your husband flying out?  You flying back there?”

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

“Ah,” I say.

“Yeah.”  A million words pass in that three-word exchange.  Then she turns the discomfort around on me.  “How’s your not-even girlfriend?  Phoebe?”

I’m surprised she remembers.  I only mentioned Phoebe by name once.  I file it away under the heading NOOSHIN – mind like a steel trap.  “Phoebe is just fine.  If she gets that macramé beach bag.  Otherwise she’ll be suicidal or homicidal, I’m not sure which.”

“What’s so special about that beach bag, anyway?  Did her grandmother make it for her?  Something like that?”

It never occurred to me to ask Phoebe that question.  Living in LA, you get used to people fixating on stupid shit.  Bands.  Celebrity sightings.  Crap with a bright future on eBay.  And with women, the usual tyrannies of fashion – clothes and shoes and other accessories of fleeting hipness, “in” this heartbeat, “out” the next.

“Anyway, you definitely didn’t have it in your truck,” Nooshin is saying.  “I looked everywhere.”

I flashback to her bony ass in the rearview mirror, wiggling around in the back of my Explorer.  “I believe you.  I don’t have it in my apartment either.”

“Hey, that reminds me.  You never told me what living in Koreatown is like.”

Koreatown is the wrong district of LA to describe in a conversation, which is why I put her off when she asked me about it in Tijuana.  But now I find myself describing the scars of the place.  Its origin as a dumping ground for poor Korean War refugees in the 1960s.  The riots that engulfed the neighborhood after the Rodney King verdict.  The Mexican and Guatemalan and Nicaraguan families who move in whenever a Korean family moves out.  The fire damage and blight that still lingers.

“You make it sound worse than Tijuana,” she says.

That’s worth a laugh.  “Nothing is worse than Tijuana, dude.  It’s the asshole of North America.  And a great place to get yourself killed, if you’re not careful.”

“Really?  It seemed okay to me.  Dirty, for sure.  Probably the dirtiest place I’ve ever been.  Garbage just gets dropped anywhere and everywhere, I guess.  But otherwise – ”

“You only saw the tourist district and downtown.  Those are the best parts.  The rest of Tijuana – the real Tijuana – that’s where it goes from bad to worse.  Much, much worse.”  I can feel my anger boiling.  I’ll have to live in the much, much worse Tijuana for a year, thanks to goddamn Hercules.

“Do you…” Nooshin starts to say, then her voice falters.  She has to start over.  “Do you want some company?”

“No way.  Not the places I’m going.  I might take a gun with me, but I’m not taking you.”

“Okay,” she says in a tiny voice.

Something is happening in the vicinity of my solar plexus.  Great.  First the girl gets under my skin, now she’s messing with my guts.  I take a deep breath and blow it into the empty classroom.  “I’ve got a better idea – what if we do a day hike somewhere in San Diego County?  Maybe up in the mountains, maybe out in the desert?  What do you think?”

She blooms into a touching and pathetic happiness.  “Really?  That would be so awesome!  That’s, like, the best birthday present ever!”  Then she restrains herself.  Self-conscious.  Embarrassed.  “Um, you know what I mean.”

No, I don’t.  And thank god.  “Okay, you figure out where we’re hiking.  I’ll bring the wheels, the water, and the whatever else.  Cool?”

“Cool!” Nooshin agrees.

Later when I-10 is a parking lot and I’m just another single-occupancy vehicle going nowhere fast, it finally hits me – calling me was her birthday present to herself.  She’s reaching out to a total stranger.  1,500 miles from her husband, 0 miles from her sister, and reaching out to a total stranger.

The rearview mirror is full of camping equipment and through the back window, lines of hoods and windshields.  But I’m seeing her ass.  Trying to see the rest of her.  The girl who was a jigsaw puzzle put together is back to pieces again.