The Mexican Year

Whoever started to build this tortilleria ran out of money to finish it.  From a distance it looks like a lean-to.  Just three cinderblock walls and an unsecured tarpaper roof that’s sliding off.  The entrance is the missing wall, leading into a small dirt floor covered with the tools of the tortilla-making trade – bags of masa, hand-cranked tortilla former, black-iron griddle heated with a fire of plywood scraps, plastic jugs of water, and a supply of brown paper for bundling up the tortillas.  Everything is portable and toted away after hours.  This is a neighborhood where anything of value is never let out of the owner’s sight.  Even cars are chained to poles at night.

Sitting on an overturned bucket is a Mixtec woman who looks old enough to recall the Spanish conquest.  She chews tobacco like cud while selling me a bag of tortillas.  Her seamed face doesn’t betray any surprise, not even a flicker of curiosity.  Maybe all her customers are sunburned gringos who drive up in trucks with Iowa plates.

I wander back into the afternoon sunshine.  A Tijuana transit bus – just an old converted schoolbus, probably a hand-me-down from the San Diego County United School District – is barreling down the hillside, kicking up a cyclone of dust and scattering feral dogs.  Its hurtling shape misses my parked Ford, which is all I care about.  I climb into the truck and try calling Nooshin again.  Three rings later, I get to leave another brief voicemail.  Heya, howzitgoin, adios.  Maybe she’s finally catching up on all that sleep she wasn’t getting.

Unlike her, Professor Francisco “Frankie” Chavez is answering his phone.  “Happy New Year, champ,” he says with a smoker’s coughing punctuation.  “I was wondering when I’d hear from the department celebrity.  Nick Roberts, living in a war zone.  How does it feel?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Didn’t Hercules tell you?  The university’s general counsel has floated a proposal to ban graduate students from working in the Mexican borderlands.  It’s become too damn dangerous.  Not to you, of course.  To our insurance premiums.”

The Ford’s windows are down, so I lower my voice.  “It would be too damn dangerous if I was running drugs, sure.  But I’m not.  I’m studying maquiladoras.”

“UTEP had a grad student killed last month, and University of Arizona had one nearly kidnapped.”

“Not in Tijuana.”

“In Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros.  But still.  It’s starting to seem like Russian roulette down there, and the university can’t afford a rate hike.”

“Then I’ll sign the mother of all indemnifications.  Problem solved.”

“Yeah, well.  It’s not my funeral.  Or my policy call, for that matter.”

The bag of tortillas is heating up my crotch.  I grab one and toss the rest into the passenger seat.  “Has Hercules said anything about the supplemental grant funding?”

“Of course not.  And I haven’t asked.  I’m not supposed to know about it, remember?  But I can’t imagine it’s looking too good.  All discretionary spending categories are under scrutiny, and some of the non-discretionary ones too.  We even lost our approval to bring in a colonial Caribbeanist.”

“Shit.”  The word comes out in a depressed gust:  sheeeee-it.  Losing a funded requisition is a Big Fucking Deal.  What are the odds that a discretionary $16,000 will get awarded in this hack-and-slash climate?

Frankie coughs again.  “I suppose you’re wondering how the new semester is going?”

“Not really.”

“I’ll tell you anyway.  Let’s see…  Enrique finished another chapter of his dissertation over the holidays.  Marta got an article accepted by Andean Review.”  There’s a leading pause.  “And I’m presenting at the US-Mexico Border Symposium.”

“That big NAFTA thing at San Diego State?”

“You know it.  Consider yourself invited to drive across the border for my session.  It’s even being televised.”

That cracks me up.  “Too bad you’ve got a face for radio.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Go fuck yourself, pal.”  He laughs wistfully.  “It pains me to feed your ego like this, but the department isn’t the same without you.  You and Javier.  We miss Javier’s intellect and we miss your bullshit.”

“The department can always find another bullshit artist like me.  Replacing Javier, that’s going to be tough.”  I consider the tortilla in my hand, losing appetite fast.  “I need to talk to you about something.  And it has to be off the record.  Because it’s guy shit, and guy shit isn’t politically correct.”

“I’m listening.”

“So.  My research assistant.  She’s living with me.  In my spare bedroom.  But, uh…”

Frankie lets the tension build.  “Do you really want to have this conversation?”

I’m letting the tension build myself.  “I haven’t decided yet,” I say after a while.

A grim chuckle is filling my ear.  “You’re just living the dream, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Okay, fine.  We won’t have this conversation.”

“Frankie…” I say pointlessly.

“What are you after, my permission?”  A lighter clicks, then he sucks at a cigarette.  “Wise up about this shit, chief.  You know what happens if you get sideways with the academic code of conduct.  So don’t pork the hired help, alright?  Keep it professional.”

“But – ”

“But nothing,” Frankie cuts me off.  “You don’t keep it professional, you make yourself vulnerable to anybody who wants to fuck with you.  One complaint from her – or Hercules, or even me – and you’d be in the crosshairs of every political agenda on campus.  A white male coercing sex from his minority female employee, who might even qualify as physically disabled because of her eye thing?  The university could sell tickets to that disciplinary hearing.”

And that’s how the call ends, with me staring at the cellphone in dismay, a cold tortilla in my hand.  Keep it professional?  That’s what I’ve been doing ever since I met Nooshin on Avenida Revolucion last year.  I’m pretty fucking sick of keeping it professional.  But even if I wanted to risk my shot at a Ph.D., I need to consider who I’d be risking it for.  Nooshin is still married to a green card Iranian who used her as a punching bag, and she’s pining for her psycho controlling family, and she may have zilch interest in anybody who doesn’t believe in the Quran.

I haven’t been able to sleep since I plunged into the frigid Pacific, provoking Nick to save me again.  It was the culmination of our first fight.  I keep reliving that afternoon at the beach – the argument with Nasrin, my overwhelming frustration at Nick’s aloofness, the angry tenderness of his blanketed embrace and commands to “Never do anything like that again!”  Those memories replay in my mind, looping faster and faster, until I’m a million shades of desperately awake.

Now my sleep deprivation is so bad that I’m past exhaustion and into a weird state of heightened consciousness.  2 AM and all the usual sensory boundaries just seem…gone.  I can feel every tooth in my jaw, and hear individual helicopter blades whirling far beyond the border fence, and see through my eyelids as if I don’t even have any.  At first the hypersensitivity is unspeakably cool, then unnerving when the effect doesn’t go away, and finally terrifying.

I hope to remedy my condition by paging through one of Nick’s thick tomes about academic this or that.  Maybe a dose of severe boredom will help me calm down and fall asleep.  But walking out of my bedroom on bare feet that feel every molecule of the concrete floor, I discover the living room is lit with monochromatic flickers.  I’m surprised to find Nick wrapped mummy-like in blankets on his bed – our couch, during daylight hours – and watching Casablanca.  Dubbed.  Humphrey Bogart is speaking in a laughably ultramacho voice.  The sound is so intense I can almost taste it.

Nick is surprised to see me too.  I probably look pretty spooky, since I’m seeing every pore in his skin.  “Still can’t sleep?” he asks.

Eons lapse between the time I think of saying “yeah” and the vibration that passes up my throat and through my opening mouth.

“Same here,” he sighs.  The reflective pools of his eyes return to the TV screen.  “I’m not over how you just plunged into the ocean like that.  You really pissed me off with that stunt.”  But his timbre is haunted, not angry.

I watch a strangely disembodied hand reach down to the hairy leg jutting out from beneath the blankets.  It’s a muscle memory from my fantasies.  The hand glides along the bony ridge of Nick’s shin, blazing with warmth, following it to the knob of his knee –

“Uh, Nooshin?  What are you doing?”

I’m in flight without understanding how or even why, my body a streaming buzz of sensations.  I feel air batter my face as I move through it too quickly.  Then the bedroom door is slamming behind me, a painful thunderclap, and I’m submerging beneath the sheets, trying to drown in stuffy darkness, searching for a place where desire can’t reach.

“Are you sure this is the first call you want to make with your new cellphone?”

Nooshin glances over from the passenger seat of my truck.  A headscarf is tied loosely around her beaming face.  There’s an open Telcel box in her lap.  Finally – a replacement for her crappy pre-paid cellphone.  Plastic shrink wrap has been plundered, the manual already tossed aside.  Her long fingers tap excitedly at the new phone.  “I would call you, but you’re sitting right across from me.”

Following the highway signs that say PLAYAS – beaches – I can only groan.  Calling the same family that supports a forcible reconciliation with Saman?  She got up on the dumbass side of the bed today.  “Think about it, Nooshin.  If your family really wanted to talk to you, they would’ve called you on your old phone.  You’re supposed to be dead to them, remember?”

“I wanted to get the black version,” she says breezily, pinning the silver rectangle to her ear.  “But black in Spanish is negro, and I felt weird about buying a negro phone, so – ”  She breaks off with an apologetic gesture.  “Um, hey?  Nasrin?  It’s your sis.  This is my new number in Tijuana.”

I steer the Ford into a parking lot that snakes along the side of the road.  We’ve arrived at a beach of grayish kelp-dotted sand.  Beyond it the Pacific is a million broken mirrors.  A rust-red cargo ship struggles across it in the general direction of Japan.  Towering thunderheads hang on the horizon like artillery bursts.

“No I haven’t talked to him.  I’ll never talk to him again.  I’m divorcing him, Nasrin!”  Nooshin pauses, a stricken look on her face.  “What?  How can you say that?  You think I deserved to get my stupid nose broken?”  Another pause.  “That’s so not fair.  You leave Nick out of this.  He’s the only one who supported me!”  The conversation devolves into angry back-and-forth Farsi for a while.  Then she lets the cellphone drop and bursts into tears.  Immediately it begins ringing in her small fist.

Time for me to say something emotionally pitch-perfect.  But I can only manage a fake-cheerful “We’re here!”  Oh well.  At least it’s better than I told you so, which is what’s actually going through my mind.  The faint tang of saltwater floods the truck when I open my door.

Nooshin starts crying harder.  She’s trying not to – I see her ribcage strain as she tries to choke off the sobs – but it doesn’t work.

“Wow.  Look at that incredible view.”

More sobbing.

“Fucking A.”  I reach into the back for our beach gear.  “You stay here and cry your eyes out.  I’m going for a walk on the beach.”

She joins me reluctantly, still sniffling a little.  We leave a meandering line of footprints in the sand.  Tanners on beach towels are crowded behind anything that serves as a windbreak.  Families orbit around grills, their shirt sleeves and pant legs rolled up.  Teen soldiers in ill-fitting fatigues patrol back and forth, M-16s slung over their shoulders, defenders of a country you couldn’t give away.

We arrive at the ocean’s edge.  A few idiots are swimming in the 57 degree water.  The wind flecks me with salt spray and blows Nooshin’s headscarf loose, turning her into a medusa of thick whirling locks.

“What’s a nadadora?” she asks.

“Huh?”  I’m busy drop-kicking shells into the surf.

“Those kids that just went by, I heard them call me a nadadora.  Except I thought a nadadora was a swimmer.  I’m not even wearing a swimsuit.”  And she isn’t.  Her hoodie sweatshirt is riding up on her waist, revealing a slash of caramel skin puckered with her navel.  Drainpipe jeans fall in long scarecrow lines.  One of her Nikes is untied and trailing its shoelace.

“Nadadora is slang for skinny.  Like, even skinnier than flaca.”

Nooshin twists around, watching the kids stroll down the beach.  “I don’t think they were calling me skinny.  Does nadadora mean anything else?”  She turns back to me, her right eye jerking with suspicion.  “It can mean something worse than skinny, can’t it?”

Sure it can.  It can also mean boobless, which is what the kids were actually laughing about.  Nooshin is flatter than the pubescent girls in the group.  But I’m not telling her that.  “Let’s walk down the beach a ways.”

I make smalltalk to distract her, explaining that this beach extends all the way down the coast to Rosarito, 10 miles away.  That’s called the “suburban” beach, which I describe from memory – timeshares staring down from the coastal highway, parking lots choked with California license plates, tourists snapping tons of pictures.  Not my kind of place, since I’d rather avoid my fellow Americans than put up with them.   That’s why we’re at the “city” beach.  Just follow the border fence west.  You can’t miss it.

I toe aside kelp to spread our makeshift beach towel, just an old blanket, while Nooshin watches a dog fight gulls for god only knows what.  Then we settle ourselves, her sitting Indian-style, me lying propped on an elbow.  Nearby an old lady is seeping out of her one-piece and reading a novel with a lurid cover.  Little kids – her grandchildren, probably – are building sandcastles.  Their voices carry on the wind, a blur of Spanish with English words like SpongeBob and Batman thrown in.

I lay back and settle my Kangol hat on my face.  The sunshine seeps into my clothes, slowly toasting me.  My arm hairs stir in the cool gusts off the ocean.  From the other side of the blanket I hear a sob, then another.  I clench in irritation.  “Why did you want to call your sister anyway?”

“I feel so alone here, that’s why.”  The sobs are quickening.  “I miss my family, especially Nasrin.  I even…”

“You even what?”

“Maybe you won’t understand this, but – I even miss Saman, sometimes.”

That revelation sinks in like groundwater contamination.  “Listen to yourself, for chrissake.  You miss the shitbag who broke your nose and tried to drag you back to Kansas City?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”  Nooshin sniffles wetly into her arm.  “I must not be a very good person.  Otherwise I wouldn’t be in this position.  I wouldn’t be hurting the people I love.  My husband has lost his family’s respect and maybe even his green card for all I know, and my parents are screwed because they have to repay the mahr, and I’m not even allowed to talk to my niece and nephew anymore.  Oh god, it’s all my fault…”

“Nothing that’s happening right now is your fault!  You stayed in your marriage for five years, which is about four years and 364 days longer than anybody else would’ve stayed married to Saman.  You even went back to him and tried to work things out.  And the way your family is treating you, don’t even get me fucking started…”  I blow a calming breath into my hat.  “Take it from me, Nooshin.  There are two things that make family bearable – time and distance.”

“But it’s different for you!  You don’t need people the way I need people.  The way most people need people.”

Another of her laser-guided observations.  I bristle, accused of lacking the full spectrum of human emotion.  “Well, that was your New Year’s resolution, right?  To be more like me.”

She snatches the hat off my face and peers down at me in tear-stained anger.  “I know what it’s like to be you, Nick Roberts.  I can see for myself.  You act all buddy-buddy with everyone, but you don’t have a single real friend.  You break up with Phoebe after four years together and you don’t even miss her.  You never call your family, not even on Christmas or New Year’s.  Now you’re alone in a foreign country where no one knows you, and you can’t stand the thought of bumping into a fellow American because it would ruin your isolation.  That’s what it’s like to be you.”  She rolls away, onto her haunches.

I struggle onto an elbow, feeling sand shift beneath the blanket.  “I’m not alone, Nooshin.  I’m here with you.  And, shit…what do you want me to say?”

“What do you want to say?”

“Argh!  What is it with you today?  Are you premenstrual?”

“You’ll never know what it’s like to need someone like I need you.”

Nooshin bounces to her feet.  Her boy-butt snaps back and forth with furious strides.  She marches through a spread-out line of elderly fisherman tending to their poles and the occasional dark wriggling shape.  I expect her to stop when she reaches the curling line of surf, but she just keeps going – into the ocean fully-clothed, deeper and deeper, until the waves knock her over.  When she surfaces again, shivering like a drowned junkie, I’m already knee-deep in the Pacific and holding open the blanket for her and yelling motivational shit like “Get out of the water this fucking instant!”

Nick is always striking up conversations with people, going out of his way to introduce himself to friendly and sometimes not-so-friendly faces, like shop clerks and curious prying neighbors and soldier-cops with M-16s slung over their shoulders.  Also muchachitas, which drives me crazy – especially when they flirt with him, grrr!  Although I know pretty girls constitute a certain percentage of the population.  How could he avoid them, really?

Anyway, I’m not thinking about that right now.  I’m thinking about the mud-streaked pickup truck that rolled up and down this gravel street several times before coming to a stop in front of our house, where Nick went out to meet it.  He’s still there now, folded at the waist so he can lean into the passenger window.  The pose does dangerous things to the butt of his worn jeans and my heart rate.

Then he straightens up and sticks a thumb and forefinger into his mouth and whistles piercingly, like he’s calling a dog.  Except he isn’t calling all the wet mangy feral dogs in the neighborhood.  He’s looking back at the house, at the barred front window where I linger.  Calling me.

At first I just hang in the window.  He can’t really be calling me, can he?  Then he repeats the whistle, even louder this time.  I quickly put on a hijab and stumble out the front door, confused, a little bit angry.

“Hey Nooshin!” Nick shouts.  “Get three beers, would you?”  His face is perfectly composed beneath his Kangol hat, but tension leaks into his voice.

I don’t know why I’m doing it, but I hurry inside and retrieve three fire-engine red cans of Tecate from the fridge, then hurry back outside again.

Trotting across the pavers I see the pickup’s windshield is opaque with mud except for the clean arcs scraped by the wipers.  Inside the cab are three silhouettes that seem to be tracking me.  When I reach Nick’s hip and peer through the glass, I realize –

“Thanks chica!” he says breezily, taking the cans and passing them over an elbow – a spiderweb tattooed elbow – into the open window.

The guy wedged against the passenger door is chatting with Nick in Spanish.  He’s gaunt and goateed and wearing a checker-pattern bandana tied around his shaved head.  His frequent laughs are punctuated with a flash of uneven tobacco-stained teeth.  He looks Nick’s age, maybe a little older.  He says something like “Tecate, que bueno” and hands the remaining cans to his left, deeper into the cab.

Taking up the rest of the interior are two other guys, both younger.  Way younger, in the case of the boy in the middle.  He’s a teenager – 15 or 16, tops – and trying to grow a beard but mostly failing.  Acne dots his upper cheeks and forehead, giving the impression of freckles.  He wears a ratty old Los Angeles Raiders t-shirt.  He isn’t old enough to drink even in Mexico, but he takes one can of beer and passes the other to the driver.

The guy behind the steering wheel makes my skin crawl.  And not just because his wifebeater can barely contain his obesity, which pours out in flabby brown rolls.  Something is wrong with his eyes.  They’re like paving stones set in his skull, dark and flat and lifeless.  Luckily he doesn’t bother making much eye contact with me, or I’d probably freak out.  Instead his fat head looks past me, scanning the neighborhood.

Nick gives me a general introduction – mostly in English, to my surprise.  “Hey vatos,” he says, slang for ‘dudes’.  “I want you to meet Nooshin, the lady of the house.”

“Heya Nooshin.”  The older guy is grinning at me over his spiderweb elbow.  “I dig your eye, hyna.  Your evil eye.”  He twists around to glance at his companions.  “El ojo malo, no?”  Behind him they swill from their cans and look bored.

“Mucho gusto” – pleased to meet you – I say in the direction of his elbow, the running board, my Nikes.

“You speak Spanish?”

“She’s learning,” Nick jumps in.  “Ay te watcho, vato” – watch yourself, dude – he says, backing away from the pickup truck and taking me with him.

Together we retreat to the house.  Behind us their engine revs to life, accompanied by the boot-stomping polka beat of norteno music.  Shocks groan as the pickup lurches into motion, splashing through potholes scattered like little lakes across the road.

“What was that all about?” I ask, when the taillights turn the corner onto Colonia Libertad’s main drag and disappear out of sight.

Nick pauses too long.  “Nothing.”

“Come on.  What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he sighs.  He swoops the Kangol hat off his head and rubs the bald spot underneath, a nervous gesture.

I move closer to him, hovering uncertainly.  “Is something wrong?”

“They’re cholos.  Gang bangers.  Just checking us out, but still…”

“I guessed that much,” I say in my bravest voice.  “Is this, like, gang territory or something?”

“Hell if I know.”  Nick makes a visible effort to relax and clamp the hat back on his head.  “A couple Americans living way the fuck out here?  They were probably sent to find out if we’re DEA or worth robbing or something.”  He forces a laugh.  A very hollow laugh.

I can’t even manage a smile.  I struggle through Frontera every day, hoping Tijuana’s newspaper will help me improve my Spanish.  I don’t comprehend much from the articles yet, but I’m painfully aware of all the headlines and photos devoted to the ongoing drug wars.  Bodies turning up in the desert.  Outraged statements from the American attaché, threatening shock and awe if any more undercover DEA agents are killed.  That world seems impossibly far away from the touristy glitz of Avenida Revolucion, and not quite as far away but still safely distant from this little neighborhood crammed against the border fence – but maybe it’s a lot closer than we think.

The Archivo Municipal del Ciudad de Tijuana – city archive of Tijuana – is a forgotten rancho-style annex at the back of the municipal offices.  It languishes beneath an overhanging Spanish tile roof and arabesque parapet, besieged by a courtyard torn into moonscape.  Construction equipment and gouged piles of muddy clay are advancing relentlessly.  All the beautiful hand-painted tiles that used to pave the annex’s entrance have already been torn up and heaped.  The stunted orange tree and carved oak planters full of begonias are next.  Soon even the whitewashed stucco walls may go.  The  metal cornerstone plaque with 1-9-2-9 in giant bronze digits isn’t much protection in a border city that doesn’t remember yesterday.

At the other end of the courtyard is a gaping hole in the ground, where the foundation for the new municipal building rises like a skeletal arm of concrete and rebar.  It’s going to be 12 stories tall, the security guard told me proudly.  10 stories more than “La Hacienda”, his nickname for the annex that time left behind.  Hard to imagine a starker contrast between the old Tijuana and the new one.  I could be staring across the ruins of this courtyard at any burgeoning metropolis in the world.  Des Moines, even.  Skyscrapers and construction cranes look the same everywhere.

After a while I turn my back on the new Tijuana and return to the annex.  The comfortable shadows make it hard to read the plat maps of the maquiladora zone that I’ve been studying.  They curl into paper tubes on the rusting government-surplus tables.  My chair is a matching relic, at least 50 years old, all metal and black vinyl.  Just your standard non-adjustable, non-swiveling torture rack.  Through the barred window I can see the back alley and my Ford Explorer parked illegally but “con permiso” – with permission – of the security guard.

I settle into the unforgiving chair and lean toward the bad light and peer at the plat map for a while.  The faint blue lines elude my focus, which keeps drifting.  To the supplemental grant – an extra $16,000 in funding – that I’m supposed to get for preservation of the Korea Textile maquiladora archive.  To Nooshin, my new roommate and so-far-unpaid research assistant.  To Hercules back at UCLA, settling into the new semester and going straight to the dean for the funding release.  It’s time to connect the dots.

My cellphone has been as mute as the items holding down the other corners of the plat map – a stapler, a bulky old calculator, a fragment of tile from the courtyard.  Now I use it to dial Hercules’ office.

“Mr. Roberts.”  His voice is a gravelly rumble in my ear.  I can picture him sitting ramrod-straight in his leather captain’s chair, a chiseled profile of mahogany, frowning.  “I hope you’re not calling to hound me about the funding release.”

“Happy New Year to you too, Professor.  I’m kicking ass down here.  I’ve already reviewed the municipal taxation records for the Korea Textile maquiladora, and right now I’m looking at plat maps of the maquiladora zones in the Archivo Municipal del Ciudad de Tijuana.”

“That’s great news.”  He says it through gritted teeth, since he’s made zilch progress on his side.

I pile on.  “I also put Nooshin’s paperwork through for the university’s approval.  You know, so I can hire her as my research assistant.  Did you see it yet?”

“There’s a couple hundred unread emails in my inbox.  It’s probably in there somewhere.”  The gravelly rumble speeds into a landslide.  “I might as well tell you now.  The supplemental is in bigger trouble than just the funding.  Concern has been expressed about the liability associated with projects in the Mexican borderlands.”

“Concern has been expressed?  About liability?”

“Tijuana is a dangerous place, as I’m sure you’ve heard.  The State Department has issued a safety advisory telling Americans to avoid the area, the U.S. military won’t allow its personnel to cross the border.  Now even the State of California is banning its employees from travel to Baja California.  The general counsel is worried that if anything happens to you while you’re a registered student, the university could be held liable.”

“What are you telling me, exactly?  That some asshole with a law degree decides what I can and can’t research in Mexico?”

“Not what you can research, Mr. Roberts.  Where.”

“How am I supposed to do my field research – if I’m not in the field?!?”  The cellphone vibrates against my ear.  I’m getting a text message from Nooshin:  need u.  “Look, I don’t have time for this right now.  Just don’t screw me over.  Alright?”

He hangs up so abruptly that I startle in my torture-rack chair.  Sweat is leaking from my armpits despite the coolness of the annex.  My hand trembles a little when I replace the cellphone on the plat map’s curling corner.  Four years of sucking up to Professor Emeritus Hercules Gutierrez and he can still scare the shit out of me with mere silence.

I walk through shelving racks for the plat maps until I reach the little office in the back.  It’s the brightest part of the annex, lit by fluorescent overheads that dangle from coat hangers.  What I see gives me heartburn.  Cardboard cartons are stacked haphazardly, their contents pillaged.  Plat maps are everywhere – spilling off the cubbyhole desk, kicked aside on the floor, peeking out from beneath the photocopier.  In the middle of the chaos, the city archive’s director…and Nooshin, scowling at him from within her headscarf.

The Director of the City Archive of Tijuana is a sinecure if there ever was one.  Nobody gets the job if they’re not connected – to a political family, to a drug cartel, to god only knows what.  Nothing actually needs to be directed in the archive.  The director just collects a paycheck and passes out business cards at parties and attends conferences in exotic locales on the city’s dime.  The only work that happens is when a couple people like me and Nooshin show up.  Then the director is required to play cop, since nobody in their right mind would leave two foreign nationals alone with the history of Mexico’s largest border city.

The current titleholder is a dude named Marco.  He’s a pudgy half-Italian with dual citizenship who dresses like a wannabe executive.  Sweat rings are forming beneath the suitcoat he refuses to remove.  His tie has been yanked looser and looser, until it’s dangling below his collar and wildly askew.  A mess of oily hair crouches on his fat head.  He startles behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.  “Dios mio!  I didn’t hear you come in.  I’m just having a smoke.  You want one, senor?”

“I told him he shouldn’t smoke,” Nooshin says crossly, kneeling on the floor and gathering plat maps.

I ignore Marco’s outstretched pack of Camel Lights.  “She’s right.  No smoking allowed.  If there’s a fire and Tijuana’s history burns to the ground, we’re all going to prison.”

“What?  No!  I was only doing it to relax.  Smoking helps me relax, senor.”  He grinds out the offending cigarette, then wipes his perspiring face with a suitcoat sleeve.  “I’ll smoke outside next time.”

I take deep breaths until the urge to murder him passes.  “Looks like you’re having some trouble back here.”

“It’s hard to tell which plat maps are which, senor.  The labels, they don’t make much sense.  I should know the labeling scheme, since I’m the director, but…”  Marco laughs raggedly, as if he’s on the verge of hysteria.  “But I have to open all the maps in a container to make sure I’ve got the right one.  Even then I’m not sure.”  A hand flutters at the photocopier.  “I try to photocopy the maps for you, but they keep slipping out.  I can’t fit a whole map in the photocopier anyway.  They’re too big.”

“You just need to tape them down like this.  See?”  Nooshin is demonstrating with dexterous fingers.

The simplicity of her solution only makes Marco sweat even more.  No Mexican male likes to be shown up.  Especially not by a gringa.  And especially not in front of a gringo.

I raise my palms to distract him.  “You know what?  We really appreciate your help, but this work is below the Director of the City Archive.  The director should be supervising, not getting his hands dirty.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes.  Yes!  That’s an excellent point.  I completely agree, senor.”  His shoulders sag in relief.  He’s off the hook now.  Brightening already, Marco glances around at the tsunami of plat maps.  “Will you be able to clean up this mess?”

“Uh, yeah.  No problem.  We’ll take care of it.  You just…supervise.”

“Very good.”  Reflexively he starts to reach into his suitcoat for a cigarette, then stops himself.

Cleaning up the mess takes a long time.  Shadows lengthen across the cardboard boxes and rolled-up maps and photocopier.  Outside the construction equipment groans and clanks, then fall into silence.  Jovial voices echo across the courtyard as workers knock off early.  This is Mexico, after all.

Eventually the security guard strolls through the gloom and into the pool of fluorescent lighting.  He wears a faded uniform and holstered revolver.  An unlit cigarillo twitches in one corner of his bushy mustache.  He nods at me and Nooshin in polite boredom.  Marco only warrants a look of naked disdain.  It’s obvious who really runs this archive.  Directors come and go, but the security guard has been patrolling these shelves his whole life.  He makes a show of checking the plastic watch on his hairy wrist.  The order is implicit but unmistakable.  Time to lock up and go home, people.