The Mexican Year

It starts with a microphone screeching to life in a brief wail of feedback.  Then a couple of coughs – not deep ones, just a man clearing his throat.  Finally a voice begins chanting in mellifluous Arabic.  The call to prayer swells through the apartment and into our bedroom:

God is the most great. God is the most great.
God is the most great. God is the most great.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Come to pray! Come to pray!
Come to success! Come to success!
God is the most great. God is the most great.
There is no god worthy of worship except the One God.

There’s a pause of scratchy background noise, like a tape recording turned up too loud.  Then the noon prayer begins.  It’s the second of five daily prayers in Islam.  I peek out of the bedroom.  My mother-in-law has taken over the living room, creakily struggling to stand and then bending down again.  Her favorite muezzin from Iran is broadcasting from the stereo.  He sells more tapes and CDs than most Persian pop stars.

I retreat behind the bedroom door and flop on the bed.  I’m pretending to have my period.  Menstruation is the only form of birth control I have left.  Saman is terrified of PMS and periods and female hygiene products.  Maybe most men are, I don’t know.  Having my period also means I’m religiously unclean.  I can’t touch a Quran or enter a mosque.  Even better, no praying with my mother-in-law allowed.  What a relief!

Of course, I can’t fake my period forever.  But I’m so desperate I don’t care about forever.  I just want to make it through today – without getting pregnant, please God, please.

“Daughter-in-law!”  My mother-in-law’s voice is a harbor horn.  “Come here, daughter-in-law!  I have a Quranic tape for you to listen to!”

Grumbling, I dawdle out to the living room.  My mother-in-law and I have a relationship that’s strained at best, insufferable at worst.  She never liked me.  I’m not up to the standards of Azovidegh women and definitely not good enough for her son.  My lazy eye is the Devil’s mark, or just proof that I’m retarded.  Why do I have to be so tall, so skinny?  My Farsi has improved but I still don’t speak it like a real Iranian.  I have the grace of a donkey.  And when am I finally going to give Saman a son?  After a few minutes around her, what little self-confidence I have is gone.  Extended visits leave me shattered and mute.

My mother-in-law is holding out a cassette tape.  “Here.  Take this.  You can’t pray with me, but you can still listen to the Quran.”

“Okay,” I sigh.  I don’t want to listen to a scripture reading.  I want to listen to the music that Nick sent me, my last trace of him.

“I see you’re disappointed that you can’t pray.  What a typical American reaction.  Here women want to do everything that men do.  They think being unable to pray during their cycle is unfair.”  She laughs, a mocking noise.  “Only God knows the pains we suffer during our cycle.  It is truly proof of His mercy that we are excused from prayer.”

I’m looking down at the tape.  Its label is a cursive challenge of right-to-left swirls and dots.  I know how to speak Farsi, but I’ve never been much good at reading it.

“You’ll learn that old age has at least one benefit.  Your monthly cycle will end and you can pray every day.  It’s God’s way of bringing us closer to Him as we near death.  Blessed is God and His infinite mercy!”

“Blessed is God and His infinite mercy,” I echo.

My mother-in-law settles herself in Saman’s recliner.  I’m not allowed to sit there.  It’s “his” recliner, not ours.  But my husband never says a word to her when she sits in it.  He just moves humbly to the couch.  Extending the footrest, she fixes me with a sour look.

“What?”  I clutch the tape to my flat chest, bracing myself.  “What have I done wrong now?”

“Can’t you even tell time, daughter-in-law?”

Stupid me.  It’s almost half-past noon.  Her soap opera will be on.  She wants a cup of honeyed tea and a dish of pistachios.  I hurry into the kitchen.

Her disapproval chases after me.  “Your eyebrows.  They look like mustaches.  You need to pluck them.”

I start to defend myself – “I like thick eyebrows…!” – but what’s the use.  I’m indefensible.

I return with a serving tray of tea and nuts.  I place the tray on a stack of magazines.  The stack was sanitized for my mother-in-law’s benefit.  The Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition has vanished, and every abused copy of Maxim too.  Saman is such a hypocrite.

My mother-in-law glances around the apartment, frowning.  Life’s disappointments are carved deeply into her face, a premature aging blamed on the Azovidegh family’s declining status in Iran.  I think there are other reasons she’s in her 57th year but looks older by a decade.  Her arranged marriage has produced three sons and two daughters and little if any happiness.  She originally came from Tuzbak, an oasis village in the great salt desert of Dasht-e-Kavir.  The only time I asked about her ancestral home, she described an upbringing of hardships – sandstorms that blew salt instead of sand, outhouses and kerosene lamps and always being hungry, a solitary mosque with no minaret that barred female worshippers.

“Where did you put the remote?” she finally snaps.

I startle and look around.  “Um…”

“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open.  Find it!”

All my frantic searching accomplishes nothing.  Other than making me look like a lazy wife who doesn’t stay on top of her household.  Saman has managed to lose the remote again.

“I’ll miss the beginning!” my mother-in-law wails.

I resort to turning on the television and satellite box by hand.  Saman prefers to watch American TV but still has a glut of channels from the Middle East, including Jame-Jam from Iran.  The soap opera is an Egyptian one with Farsi subtitles.  I glimpse too-pretty actors on a cheap interior set.  I don’t know the characters and plotlines, and I don’t particularly care to.  I’m not really a soap opera kind of girl.

She only moves her eyes toward me.  “Are you going to listen to the tape now?”

“I guess so.”

“The reading is Sura 4.”  Her eyes go back to the television.

I’m vaguely familiar with Sura 4.  A chapter of the Quran better known as “Women”.  I’ve tried to put as much distance between me and it as possible.  Raping women if they’re non-believers?  Up to four wives, or temporary marriages to a prostitute?  Husbands beating their wives with God’s sanction?  That’s not my Islam.

I drift into the kitchen.  The tape is right where I left it, on the counter next to the honey.  Its inscrutable Farsi label is an accusation.  Saman isn’t the only hypocrite here.  What is my life now but a scene from Sura 4?  A traditional Iranian man has certain expectations, and so does his family.  But I chose this marriage anyway.  It was a choice made naively, fearfully, even stupidly – but it was still a choice.  The only real choice I’ve ever made about myself.  That’s why I hover miserably, pawing at my wet cheeks with a dishcloth.  Unmaking my choice is the same as unmaking the girl who made it, the wife who’s lived it.  What will I be left with if I unmake me?

I’m standing in the Latin American Studies department.  Twilight bleeds the place of its bustle and multiple dialects of Spanish.  Most of the lights are turned off, most of the doors are shut.  The remains of a party litter the flat surfaces – appetizer platters with the shrimp all gone, picked-over pizza getting cold, opened bottles of wine.  Maria Ortiz, my funding nemesis, passed her orals today and the department threw a goddamn fiesta to celebrate.  When I passed my orals I didn’t even rate a slap on the ass.  That’s the kind of warm affection I engender in people.  I’d be pissed about it, except the sentiment is mutual.

I grab a bottle of something red and swig directly from it.  Cabernet sauvignon.  A good one, way better than the stuff I can afford.  But I abandon it when I discover a lambrusco that hasn’t even been opened yet.  I stuff the torpedo-shaped bottle into my backpack, next to last week’s undergrad assignments for “Introduction to European History”.  I need to stop carrying them around and start grading them.

Past the lobby and administrative alcove is a hallway that deadends into an office door.  The nameplate is etched without a title or the “emeritus” honorific or even a full name, just a single word – HERCULES.  The door is slightly ajar with shadows inside.  I make a fist and rap on the heavy wood.

“I’m not here,” a rumble answers from within.

“Eugenia says different.”

“For chrissake.”  Not much of an invite, but it’ll have to do.

The office is a wide but shallow space pressed up against a wall of glass, now hidden behind vertical blinds.  The left half of the room is floor-to-ceiling cherry shelves in the floor plan of an E.  The right half is a sitting area with black leather couches and framed pictures of Hercules posing with luminaries, like Barack Obama and various presidents of Mexico.  Spanning the halves of the room is the messy book-stacked desk where Hercules the academic and Hercules the politician collide.

The man in the pictures is seated in an imposing leather captain’s chair.  His dark collar-length hair is circled by a UCLA visor.  He wears a ribbed turtleneck sweater that drapes flatly into his lap.  He looks up from the paperwork he’s reading and scowls, the carved mahogany of his face coming alive.  “Haven’t you left for Thanksgiving yet, Mr. Roberts?”

“Good to see you too, Professor.”  I shrug out of my backpack and drop into one of the wingback chairs facing the desk.  “I came by to – ”

Hercules is already silencing me with a leathery palm.  “Let me guess.  You’re here to ask for a supplemental grant.”

“Tammy-Sue talked to you.”  I expected it, so it’s easy to keep my voice calm.

“She said she explained what a supplemental grant is to you.  So you know that as a graduate student, you’re ineligible.  Now leave me alone.”

“That didn’t stop Cecilia Snyder from getting a supplemental.”

“Cecilia preserved an archive in the Ecuadorian rainforest.  I suggest you apply for a student loan if you want more funding.”  Hercules drums bony knuckles on the desk.  “Unless you’re planning to preserve an archive you never told me about, we have nothing further to discuss.”

“Well, actually…”  I unzip my backpack and fish out a multi-page letter on Budweiser stationery.  The beer’s famous crown logo pirouettes through the murk when I drop the letter on his desk.

“What’s this?”

“Just read it.”

He stares a hole in my face for a while, then finally glances down and begins to read.  Beneath the visor his dark eyes are moving faster.  “You’re going to preserve an archive?”

“M-hmmm.  A corporate archive.”

“For a Budweiser distributor?” he retorts angrily, his brow a Cyclopean line.

“The signatory owns a defunct maquiladora in Tijuana called Korea Textile S.A.  If you read the next page, you’ll see that he’s authorizing me to make a digital archive of all company papers and donate it to – ”

“ – the UCLA Latin American Studies department,” Hercules interjects, flipping ahead.  “What’s this part about adequate resources?”

“Well, the signatory is only prepared to execute this agreement if adequate resources are provided for the undertaking.”

“Like a supplemental grant, I suppose.”  He’s back to staring a hole in my face.

“This would be a research legacy for future generations.  All the inner workings of a maquiladora?  Board minutes, executive memos, HR and payroll data, you name it.  There’s nothing like it in the world.”  I lean forward a little, selling hard.  “Plus it’ll make two great press releases for the Latin American Studies department.  The initial announcement, and the follow-up when it’s available for use.”

“So you get more funding, and I get an archive and some publicity.  What’s in it for this Budweiser distributor?”

“The archive has to be called the Juan Angel Santelana Archive in perpetuity.”

Hercules glances at the letter again.  Chuckling now.  “You sold him naming rights.  His name memorialized on something besides a headstone.”

I find myself relaxing into laughter, all buddy-buddy, one manipulative sonuvabitch to another.

“Did you cook this up after you talked to Tammy-Sue?”

“Nah, it’s been in process longer than that.  I was planning to use this archive for my dissertation research anyway.  But the idea of preserving it, all the digitization, that’s new.”  A lie to whitewash my mercenary instincts.

He rummages around in his desk for a complicated-looking form.  “You’ll need to fill out this application.  And I’ll warn you now.  I expect a stellar proposal, with every expense anticipated.  Return the application to me when you’re ready.”

I’ve never seen a supplemental grant application before.  It’s like something out of the 1950s – triplicate with carbon copies, meant to be completed on a typewriter or just by pressing really hard with a ballpoint.  The applicant fields are pre-filled.  I stare at Hercules’ name, his office address, his contact information.  Realization seeps through me.

“Is something the matter, Mr. Roberts?”

“You’re the one who gets the grant.  I’ll just work for you.”

“I believe the popular expression is, you’ll be my bitch.”  He guffaws at my discomfort.  “Even God couldn’t get a supplemental awarded to a grad student.  So the funding goes to me, and I hire you as an independent contractor.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“No?  Then you might as well take out a student loan.”

“Fuck that,” I say through gritted teeth.  “Best advice I ever got?  Make somebody else pay for grad school.”

“That’s what I like about you – your predictability.” Hercules tilts waaaaaaay back in his captain’s chair, a smug pose.  “From the day I admitted you to this department, I don’t think you’ve managed to surprise me once.  Not even with something like this.  At first, but no.”

I snatch the paperwork and Juan’s letter off his desk.  “Do we have an understanding or what?”

“Make sure your proposal is truly stellar.  For the record, I didn’t do Cecilia any favors.  I won’t do you any favors either.  My only interest is preserving a unique archival resource.  Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Then we have an understanding.”  Hercules points his visor brim at the desktop again.  Our meeting is over.

I retreat from the office with his name on it, pausing to grab another unopened bottle of wine on my through the lobby.  I feel like getting drunk, not celebrating.  The prospect of becoming Hercules’ bitch fazes me.  Right now the balance of power is in my favor.  I can kick him off my dissertation committee.  But if he can fire me from my own supplemental grant…

Outside the chill is timid, barely seeping through my sweatshirt.  Around me the campus is ebbing into pre-Thanksgiving slumber – mostly empty walkways, student commons with only a few students, parking lots with glinting shapes scattered across them.  My inner Iowa farmboy pauses to enjoy the moment.  This is when UCLA feels like a small town, not a campus of 50,000 lost souls.  50,001 counting mine.

In the pitch blackness of our bedroom, tiny diodes of green light are the only illumination.  They stare at me from the nightstand, their count as relentless as the sour huffing against my cheek, the wet smacking between my thighs.  6:05.  6:06.  6:07.  Hurry up and finish, husband!

I want to urge him out loud, but the words are trapped in a choking panic somewhere in my chest.  My mother-in-law is sleeping in the guest bedroom, a very thin wall away.  I would die of embarrassment if sex noises woke her up!  That’s why I just lay here, flat on my back and mutely enduring.

“Uhhhhhhnnnn,” Saman finally wheezes into the side of my face, and his slamming quickens and stops.  After a while the bed creaks softly.  His sweaty weight disappears.

I blow shallow breaths into the darkness, letting my panic ebb with the apartment’s funereal silence.  There’s a click and light floods from the bathroom.  My husband is revealed to be nut-brown and mustached, his confident bulk matted in hair.  He’s the only man I’ve ever seen naked.  I try to spot the thing that gives me more pain than pleasure, but I can’t.  His kir is shadowed beneath the overhang of his belly.

I wait for the shower’s splash and gurgle before rising.  My first stop is the dresser, where a box of kleenex awaits.  I hike up my sleepshirt and wipe between my legs with a tissue.  Then I open my underwear drawer and –

“Daughter-in-law!”  The summons is a thunderclap in the calm, almost making me jump out of my skin.  “I’m ready for my breakfast now!  Daughter-in-law!”

I hate how she always calls me aroos – daughter-in-law.  Just once, just one single measly time, I want her to call me by name.  Nooshin.  Could you make my breakfast now, Nooshin?  Or maybe Let me help you with that, Nooshin.  Or even Your lavash is delicious, Nooshin!

Dream on, girl.

Meanwhile my hand doesn’t find what it’s groping for in the dresser.  I click on the light and pull the drawer open all the way, searching for the plastic case.  Maybe it slipped behind that unopened package of bras I never grew into?  But after I move everything out of the way, nothing is left.  My confusion sharpens into suspicion.

I detour into the steamy bathroom, where Saman is silhouetted in the shower.  “What did you do with my pills?” I hiss at the shower curtain in English, signaling that I want an American conversation instead of an Iranian one.

He’s washing his armpits.  One hairy line of knuckles rises above the flowered plastic, then the other.  “What?”

“My birth control pills.  Where are they?”

“Don’t you keep them in your underwear drawer?”

“Yeah, but they’re gone.”  My hands are fluttering nervously.  I make a conscious effort to still them.  “Seriously.  They’re gone.  Did you do anything with them?”

Saman peeks out from behind the curtain.  He’s grinning like an idiot.  “I threw them away!”

“What?” I gasp.

He disappears behind the curtain again.

“Saman!  You can’t just, just…”  I’m laughing in disbelief, almost giddy with shock.

Over the rushing water he laughs with me.  “I know!  It is exciting!”

My laughter turns into a coughing fit.  The bathroom begins to tilt and spin around me.  At first I’m looking at Saman’s familiar silhouette behind the flowered plastic.  Then a framed picture of the snow-capped Alborz Mountains ringing Tehran, hanging above the towel rack.  Then the toilet, with the water-filled aftabeh for my mother-in-law and a roll of toilet paper for me.

I sag to the bathroom floor, huddling on the moist tile, and close my eyes.  The sounds of running water fade, and Saman’s laughter.  All I can hear are the voices of my aunts, echoing from my senior year of high school.  You’re no princess, and you can’t expect to find a prince….  An agonizing truth, but numbed by the despair lapping in.  Use your youth while you’ve got it…  Their Farsi is forever chiding.  Take the first man who comes along, because there might not be another…

I’m strung out by these long trips to Tijuana and back, especially the protracted border crossings.  The American side has been impossible since 9/11, taking an hour if you’re lucky, hours plural if you’re not.  Having Iowa license plates because I can’t pass California emissions doesn’t help.  Why is an Iowan like me crossing so often?  Respond in the wrong way and boom, the Border Patrol is stripping my truck to the chassis.  Lack of contraband isn’t proof of innocence to them, just proof they need to try harder to find some contraband.  The Mexican side has been impossible since last October, when drug cartel violence turned Tijuana into an abattoir.  140 people were killed in three weeks – shot dead in gun battles that raged across the city, assassinated in front of family members, torched or decapitated or dumped alive into barrels of acid.  Even in Mexico enough was finally enough.  Now the federales stop vehicles to check for smuggled weapons and ammo, America’s leading export after manufacturing jobs.  Nothing like a jumpy 18-year-old soldier with an M16 poking around in the back of my truck.  Camping isn’t big in Mexico.  They get suspicious of my gear real quick.  I’ve even been accused of hauling around a meth lab.

Thank god the border crossing is uneventful tonight.  I catnap in the queue, waking whenever somebody honks a horn behind me.  The downy-cheeked soldier working my line actually recognizes me.  “Viaje por camping, senor?” he grins, waving me through.  I buy a coffee from a roadside vendor on the central expressway, then think better of it and toss the styrofoam cup out.  It could’ve been drugged, those headlights could be somebody following me.  Better stop at a legitimate java joint instead.

I hit the Marriott in Los Venados with the moon coming up.  I’m surprised by construction equipment in a corner of the parking lot and a floodlit banner announcing GRAN INAUGURACION!  What kind of fuckwit builds a new hotel in Tijuana these days?  There’s a war on, for chrissake.  I assume I can get a room cheap, even have my pick of entire deserted floors.  Wrong.  The front desk clerk informs me the hotel is booked solid with a convention of some kind.  Guess I’m sleeping in the back of my truck tonight.

My real destination is the hotel bar, a short walk across the palm-draped lobby and past an armed security guard.  The sports-themed room is overrun with Mexican businessmen, all cloned from the same basic blandness – dark hair and eyes and skin, neatly trimmed mustaches, neutral-colored suits with power ties.  This is Mexico, so they’re all smoking like chimneys.

The bartender is a thick-necked bull of a man engrossed in a futbol match.  He waves me off like a pesky fly when I try to order a Dos Equis…then a Negra Modelo…then just a goddamn Corona.  Finally he rumbles that the bar only has Bud and Bud Lite.  Bottles or tap, my choice.

“What the…?” I start to groan, then stop before I lose even that trivial choice.  “I swear, all I drink when I’m in Mexico is Budweiser.”

“That’s the way we like it, amigo,” says a smooth voice in barely-accented English.  “This is a Budweiser distributor convention.  Whenever we get together, our hosts are kind enough to stock our products – and our products only.”

I glance over and discover a blank-faced Mexican parked at the bar, a man of indeterminate age and sexuality.  His oily hair is slicked back in a Valentino helmet.  A bushy mustache hovers above his upper lip.  His suit matches the night sky outside, only with pinstripes.

“Is that why you’re drinking tequila?” I say.

His gaze drops to the shotglass in his hand, then returns to me.  I can tell he appreciates my quick observation.  “Me llamo Juan Angel Santelana,” he introduces himself, testing my Spanish.  “Dejame adivinar – Nick Roberts?”

“Si.  El unico Nick Roberts.  Mucho gusto.”  Our handshake is firm but comfortable.  I take the barstool next to him and yawn apologetically.  “Sorry I’m late.”

“No worries, amigo.  I’m just glad you made it here safely.”  Juan swallows his shot with a grimace and motions for two more, one for each of us.  The same bull-necked bartender who’d been such a dilatory asshole to me is suddenly all action and solicitousness.

“Mr. Sedesco didn’t mention that you’re a Budweiser distributor.”

“That’s because I didn’t tell him.  I prefer not to advertise it.  All the kidnappings, you know.  To safe passages.”  He clinks his shotglass against mine, then tips it against his mouth.

“To safe passages,” I echo.  The tequila turns into a trail of fire when I gulp it.  “Are you based in Tijuana?”

“No, I’m out in Tecate.”

“Enemy territory.”  The Tecate brewery is located there.

“That’s why my father was able to buy the distributorship.  It seems to change hands regularly.  My family is actually from Chihuahua, you see.  The distributorships there are never for sale.”

“Beer distributorships are a smart business to get into.  Nobody ever went broke selling people liquor.”

Juan looks vaguely uncomfortable.  Maybe that rule doesn’t apply to the Budweiser distributor in Tecate.

“So you’re from Chihuahua, huh?  I used to drive into Mexico through Chihuahua.  It was kind of a detour, but I didn’t mind losing a couple days.  Carretera 24 is one of my favorite highways in Mexico.”

“Like Route 66 in the States.”  He motions for another reload.  “Where did you drive down from?”

“Iowa.  Ever hear of the place?”

“Iowa, amigo?  You drove to Mexico from Iowa?”  A chortle of sympathetic disbelief.  “I’ve flown up to Missouri a few times, to the world headquarters in St. Louis.  I thought it was a long trip by plane!”

We fall into smalltalk, a conversation that meanders a little more with every round of tequila shots.  I learn that he’s from Chihuahua City, the state capital of Chihuahua, a glorified cowtown on the east side, a played-out silver mining town on the west side.  He learns that I stopped in his hometown to visit the Pancho Villa museum and gape at the legendary bandito’s bullet-riddled Dodge, because I’d been taking a class about the Mexican Revolution at Iowa State.  I learn that he attended college at UNAM – Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the best public university in Mexico – and gained his MBA and English at the University of Texas-El Paso, where he scandalized his family by dating an African-American woman.  He learns that I had a Jewish girlfriend during my sophomore year of college, although my family was more scandalized by the fact that she was a Democrat.  And so on.

Only when we’re half-plastered does Juan finally get down to business.  “Explain to me what you’re doing in Mexico, amigo.”

I recite my elevator pitch – Ph.D. student, flaming hoops of bullshit, me gusta Mexico – while I dig out a UCLA business card.  I pause to scribble my address in Colonia Libertad on the back.  “I’m moving down to Tijuana over the holidays.  Plan is, I’ll spend a year in Mexico doing my dissertation research.”

His plucked eyebrows rise.  “Why didn’t Mr. Sedesco put you in a better neighborhood?”

“He tried.  But I couldn’t afford it.  I’m a starving grad student.”

“And you plan to research…small maquiladoras?”

“Assuming I can find a small maquiladora archive.”  I give him my patented megawatt smile, which is probably even brighter with alcohol.  We’ve finally talked around to the whole basis for our meeting.  “Mr. Sedesco says you own a defunct maquiladora with all its paperwork intact.”

“I do have something like that in my possession.  The papers came with the maquiladora, which came with the property – which is all my family cares about.  Korea Textile S.A.  It’s located in Maquiladora Alley.”

There are two maquiladora zones in Tijuana – “Maquiladora Alley” which runs east along the border fence, and “Maquiladora Valley” which runs southeast through a narrowing slot in the Tecate Mountains.  Maquiladora Valley is served by the Tijuana-Tecate railroad line, so it resembles a twisting snake of heavy industries and petrochemical plants.  Maquiladora Alley is only served by road, so the factories are smaller and focus on products that can be shipped by semi, like clothes.

“The maquiladora lost its operating permit a couple years ago,” Juan continues, “but it wasn’t closed and sold to my family until this summer.  Everything of value was removed by the former owners, including the file cabinets.  All the papers are in cardboard boxes now.”

“And it’s all intact?  I’m surprised squatters didn’t get into the property and burn the papers for light and heat.”  A tidbit I’ve gleaned from Sedesco.  Homeless Mexicans often squat in abandoned maquiladoras, exploiting the shelter and leftover combustibles.  That’s why his search for an archive quickly narrowed to this Budweiser distributor.

Juan shrugs indifferently.  “The whole building is mostly intact.  It’s kind of a shame, because we’re razing the property to build a tank farm.”

“I really need to see those papers.  Do I have your permission to enter the property?”

“No, amigo.  I don’t grant you permission.  It might be dangerous to me if a gringo was seen sniffing around on his own.  But I’m willing to escort you as my visitor.  After I buy you breakfast tomorrow morning.”  He lets the invitation dangle like bait, then adds, “Another round?”

“What the hell,” I sigh.

We return to smalltalk while the bull-necked bartender reloads us, again and again.  The futbol match ends, a nightly newscast begins.  Our conversation is fragmented by interruptions from his fellow distributors, slurring goodnights on their way upstairs.  I’m feeling no pain, not even my legs when I lurch to my hiking boots.  I fan comically at my ass, trying and mostly failing to grab my wallet.

Juan beats me to it, tossing a wad of multicolored Mexican money on the bar.  He rises unsteadily to his cowboy boots.  “Where are you staying?”

Maybe that’s a pickup line, maybe it isn’t.  At this point I don’t give a flying fuck.  I’m too preoccupied with the alarming tilt of the room.  “Uh, I’m just going to crash in the back of my truck…”

“You stay with me.  In my room.  No no no, I insist!”  A fastidious man, he notices his pantscuff is askew.  He bends down to fix it – and loses his balance, head-butting the bar.  “Mierda!” – shit! – he groans, straightening back up again.

Somehow we manage to stumble to the elevator, a glassy ride up the open interior of the hotel.  Both of us turn away from the rising view before we get sick.  The hallway carpeting is so plush it feels like we’re wading.  Past a decorative table topped with a spray of fabric flowers is his room.  He fumbles with the cardkey for a million years – upside down? backwards? is the lock turning green yet? – before ushering me into a surprisingly small suite.

Surprisingly small, because there’s only a single queen-sized bed.

I stand there a little dumbfounded, about as sharp as a baguette, reeling from god knows how many shots of tequila.  My gaze swims around the room, searching for a pull-out sleeper loveseat, or some kind of fold-up cot, or just spare blankets I can spread on the floor.  Meanwhile Juan is stripping down to his tighty whities and sliding into bed, taking one side, his hairy back turned toward the middle.  “Buenas noches,” he mumbles, and starts snoring like an earthquake happening over and over.

I gingerly settle myself on the absolute edge of the other side, mirroring his sleeping position.  The future is collapsing into a bleak coin toss – either I’ll wake up with a dick in my ass, or I’ll choke on alcoholic vomit and never wake up at all.  I’m trying to decide which is worse when I pass out.

Marriage was just a word to me when Saman first became a picture in my hands.  I was 18 years old and prohibited from dating because I was Muslim.  While my American friends were gossiping about prom and boyfriends and putting out, I was getting married.  My family was out of their heads with happiness, and I envisioned a future of movie star close-ups and soft-focus kisses and swelling soundtracks, and all the awkward pointlessness of my teenage years aligned into a certainty with a man’s name.

I didn’t know what to expect, marrying Saman.  At first I felt like a girl transformed into a woman, glowing with maturity, having sex.  Then I stepped into a scene from my childhood, playing house with dolls only for real.  After years of domesticity I began to think marriage is a partnership, like two socks that always come out of the washer and dryer together, never losing one another despite countless launderings.

I never imagined I’d feel so utterly alone, more distant from my husband than the stars.  I never anticipated running away like I did.  And I definitely didn’t expect this – standing behind his recliner in the bluish flickering glow of the television, digging my fingers into the hairy flesh of his shoulders, massaging away the tension of his hard day.

“How does that feel?” I ask after a while, when my forearms begin to cramp.

“Mmmm,” Saman says.  His thumb moves on the outstretched remote and the channel changes, from an Iranian newscast to some kind of televised poker game.  “Keep going.”

“In Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus there’s this – ”

“You and your self-help books,” he interrupts dismissively.

I keep going with my fingers and my conversation.  “ – there’s this chapter about how men and women have different ideas of contribution to a relationship.  Men think in big singular terms, women think in little multiple ones.  Like, a man might think supporting her is worth 50 points and then he’s done.  But to a woman bringing home a paycheck is only 1 point.  To her everything he does is only 1 point.  A paycheck, flowers, taking out the garbage.  1 point.  So a man needs to do lots of little things to make a woman happy.”

“That is the most stupid thing I have ever heard.”  There’s another click from beneath Saman’s thumb.  The TV jumps to a football game.  Giants in body armor move in regimented ways – separating from each other, huddling, lining up – then break into chaos again.  “Americans are funny, calling this game football and the real football soccer.”  It’s the same comment he’s made to me a million times.

“Can I have my phone back?” I sigh.  “I’d like to talk to my family more often.”

“You can talk to them anytime you want.  On my phone.”

“But that means I can only talk to them when you’re here.”

“Exactly.  You must regain my trust.  Then you can have your phone back.”  He flips to an animal show about penguins.  His shoulders bob impatiently beneath my flagging massage.  “Keep going.”

“My arms are getting tired.  Can I take a break?”

“I said keep going!”

His explosion startles me back into vigor.  I dig my fingers into the hairy flesh, pain flaring up my arms.

“Like that, yes.  Mmmm.”

For a while we’re locked in our relative positions.  Saman tires of the animal show and flips back to the football game.  I try to lose myself in the vivid hues radiating from the screen – unnaturally green fields, stark uniform colors, referees in black and white.

“My mother is coming for a visit,” he says after a while.

“What?” I almost shriek.

“I thought you might like some company.”  There’s a smugness to his tone.  Company – yeah, right.  She’s going to watch me when he can’t.

“You don’t know what your mother is like when you’re not here.  All she does is nag me.  About my cooking, even my cleaning.  And especially about starting a family.”  I approximate her nasally Farsi.  “Een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad?” – When are you going to give Saman a son?

“She nags me as well.”  He reaches back to pat one of my forearms, which has gone so numb I can barely feel his touch.  “We are married five years now.  Our families are impatient for children.”  His voice softens.  “That is your real problem, Nooshin.  A wife without children is unhappy.  She only has her husband to live for.  You will be happy when we have children.”

I think of the birth control pills I tip into my palm every morning.  The mechanistic act I endure almost every night.  My belly swelling with new life, his and mine.  Trying to nurse a baby with this flat useless chest.  Then trying to nurse another, and maybe another.  Raising a family in his itinerant shadow.  The forever with him – and my mother-in-law, and the rest of his family.  The forever and ever and ever.

“I want you to stop taking your pills.” Saman tilts back to look at me.  Upside-down his pockmarked face is a stranger’s.  “Yes?”

“Maybe,” I finally say, and the word meant to be an evasion feels more like a bottomless collapse, a girl free-falling inside herself.