The Mexican Year

So I’ve gotten in the habit of speedreading Nooshin’s notebooks while she’s taking a protracted leg-shaving shower.  And yeah, I feel guilty about it.  Can’t-stop-myself guilty, like when I was a horny teen raised to believe that masturbation was a passing lane on the highway to hell.

Her notebooks are the only private space she has in this claustrophobic house, where the walls are so thin I can hear the crinkle of a tampon wrapper.  She leaves one notebook out as a decoy, a corner jutting from beneath the pillow on her new twin bed.  Its pages are filled with rambling observations of Tijuana life and ink sketches based on the polaroids that she snaps.  But the other notebook – the juicy notebook – is tucked into the bottom of her backpack, hidden beneath everything piled on top.  How I found it there…

Well, like I said.  I’m feeling can’t-stop-myself guilty.

The juicy notebook’s pages are full of confessional revelations.  Fractured poems of crushing insecurity.  Unsent letters to her sister Nasrin that read like plaintive wails.  And since we’re talking Nooshin here, lists.  Heartfelt lists of things that would’ve made her a better wife, places to visit before she dies, the rollercoaster emotions she’s felt in a single day.

I was kind of relieved, kind of disappointed to discover that my name rarely makes a cameo anywhere in her notebooks.  I’m just a “he” or half of a “we”.  Maybe it’s because she doesn’t think about me very often.  Maybe it’s because she already thinks about me too much.  So nothing takes me by surprise when I flip to the latest page in her juicy notebook and find a poem with “we” and “our” and “he” in it:

Tijuana

the first week we live here there is no electricity
we navigate the dark by flashlight
and use the refrigerator to keep pancake mix away from the mice
water runs rusty in the toilet
if it flushes at all
and I decorate the floor with buckets and pots
when it rains

our first visitor is a dead cat
motionless on the “lawn”
a tiny rectangle of pink and aqua-colored patio pavers
we did rock-scissors-paper to see who’d shovel it
into the garbage can
he cheated
to lose

he can’t make the backdoor light work
even after he replaces the bulb
and the fuse
and the switch
and the socket
and each time
he confronts the fuse box or touches hopefully dead wires
I remind myself that he’s lucky
if no electrician

I’m responsible for the wine rack
a pretentious model of many wooden pieces
that I crowd into form
with carpenter’s glue and muttered pleas
“it’ll be so cool!” he keeps encouraging
although he drinks our wine faster than we can store it
living here

it is my fifth move in as many years
from the house in Terrazas Park where I grew up
to wifely imprisonments across the map
and now this place in Tijuana which
I suspect will be imprinted as a series of residential crises
that unwind like a sitcom arc

I can’t believe this is home
a destination all the other moves never reached
but that’s love for you
maybe

Well, nothing takes me by surprise – until that last part.  And worse, how quickly the bathroom quiets and opens.  I’m a stampede out of her bedroom, almost caught red-handed.

Nooshin emerges with a towel wrapped around her head, which only exaggerates her skyscraper height.  She’s swimming in a too-big hoodie and plaid sweatpants that hang on her legs like drainpipes.  Only her new bunny slippers fit.  Looking down at them she almost runs right into me.  “What’s up?”

I wave a bottle of New Year’s fuel at her.  “Come on.  It’s almost midnight.  Let’s go drink our cheap champagne.”

“It won’t make me sick, will it?”

“Probably,” I sigh.  Her tolerance is measured in sips and vomits.  Proof that she was a good Muslim until she met me, I guess.

We trickle onto the front stoop and sit hip-to-hip in the murk, huddling for warmth.  The breeze makes it feel even colder than 50 degrees.  I pop the plastic cork, letting it fly into the street, and pour champagne into coffee mugs.  The sickly-sweet crap doesn’t even taste like I spent seven bucks on it.  It goes down my throat like alcoholic Gatorade.

Around us the horizon is already lit for the new year.  Mexican kids are setting off bottle rockets and sparklers that flare above the rooflines into the dark sky.  A few blocks away is the glow of Colonia Libertad’s business district, still hung with Christmas lights.  Beyond the dark lip of the border fence is broad daylight, a chain of floodlight towers reaching from the Pacific to the Sierra Nevadas.

Nooshin shivers into me.  “Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?”

“Nah.  I never got in the habit.  My family doesn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions.  We’re supposed to be perfect year-round.  What about you?”

She tucks her knees under her chin.  “Well, I came up with this huge list…”

I swig my champagne and settle in, yawning.  Nooshin is big on lists.

“…but mostly it boils down to this – I’m not going to disappoint you.”

I wait for more, but there isn’t any.  “You’re not going to disappoint me,” I say in bafflement.

“I promise I won’t.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Like, I’m going to become fluent in Spanish.  I’m going to learn all this stuff that you take for granted, stuff about Mexico.  I’m going to digitize the entire archive and help you with other projects.”  She sips her champagne and coughs.  “You’ll be glad you met me, Nick Roberts.”

The words are transfixing.  I’m already glad I met her.  Too goddamn glad, considering the collateral turmoil.  Nooshin has changed my life like a natural disaster.  I was a grad student mercenary until we met, a couple miles west of here on Avenida Revolucion.  Now it’s two months later and I’m living in Tijuana with her, even though she’s still married to a guy I only know from her photo album and that broken nose.  I need a Nick-to-Nick talk.  Dude, what the fuck?

“I thought this was going to be the worst year of my life, the way it was ending up.  Leaving Saman – and my family disowning me for it, you know?  I was so afraid of being all alone.  But then I met you.”  Her smile is a shy glimmer in the dark.

“Yeah, well…”

“Well what?”

“I could say the same thing, you know.  I figured the best thing about this year would be finishing my coursework, and passing my orals, and getting the fuck out of UCLA.  But then I met you.”  My voice trails off into a chain of firecrackers, hissing and popping in the street.

The coffee mug in my hand clinks. “Aide shoma mobarak,” she says, and empties out the rest of her champagne onto the pavers.  “That means Happy New Year in Farsi, if you were wondering.”

“Feliz Año Nuevo is how you say it in Spanish.”

“Rappy Roo Rear!  In Scooby Doo speak.”

I nudge her with a shoulder, laughing.  “That’s got to be the worst Scooby Doo voice I’ve ever heard.”

“I warned you I’m no good at voices, didn’t I?”  She glances over at me, her crooked eye flashing more white on one side than the other.  “I’ll remember this New Year’s for as long as I live.”  A sentiment that could’ve been sarcastic, a cutting remark like Phoebe would make, or my sister Wendy if she went off her happy pills, but coming from Nooshin it’s genuine.  She wants to treasure this memory as long as she can.  I wonder if she knows I feel the same way.

To be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting with Nooshin the roommate.  Okay, I’ll be more honest – I was fucking clueless.  Last roomie I had was freshman year at Iowa State and he was an inveterate slob.  Bryce, his name was.  Thanks to him I used to find skidmarked tighty whities on the floor, crushed beer cans in the dirty laundry, and used condoms everywhere.  No wonder a neat freak like me has avoided entanglements ever since, even if they’re just of the mundane domestic variety.  But Nooshin got under my skin, into my head, through my ribcage.  I figured I could make something work with her, find an equitable division of labor, even if she was a slob too.

What I didn’t foresee is that she’d just take over the household.  First she arranged the kitchen and tried to clean the uncleanable bathroom.  Then she progressed to the laundry and everything associated with meals – food prep and cooking and washing the dirty dishes.  Now she’s wearing a rut in the road between here and Wal-Mart, surprising me with a list of our domestic needs and the cost breakdown required to pay for them.

I stand in the unfinished doorway between living room and kitchen, staring at the neat columns running down the page.  Meanwhile Nooshin sits at the kitchen table, her ad hoc office.  “I’ve been setting up house every year for five years,” she smiles breezily, as if that explains everything.  And maybe it does.

The very first item on the list – beds, twin (2).

“Beds,” I say.

“Beds,” she echoes.

“Okay.  I agree with you there.”  So does my back.  My sleeping bag lifestyle is killing my spinal column.  There’s a hell of a difference between sleeping on dirt in a tent and sleeping on concrete in a house.  And god knows that futon is due for replacement.  “But I can’t get a twin.  I need a double.  I’m so used to that piece of crap futon.”

“Double-sized for you, then.  I’m cool with a twin.”  Nooshin laughs into her lap, a wistful sound.  “It’s probably going to be a long time before I sleep in a double bed again.”

I’m not touching that one.  Instead I ask, “Box springs or no box springs?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“What?”

“Nick, we are not sleeping on just plain mattresses.”  To emphasize her resistance, she brushes back the veil of her bangs, pinning them behind her ears.  Her eyes remind me of twin cups of cappucino, dark and steaming, until the right orb ruins the effect by drifting toward the sink.  “Is that your idea of an upgrade?  Moving up from a sleeping bag to a mattress on the floor?”

“Look, I’m just throwing it out there.  We’d save – ”

“You know what?  Go ahead, save yourself 50 bucks or whatever.  I’m getting a box spring like a civilized person.”

I look back down at the list, where my gaze snags on the next item.  “Tupperware?  I brought a bunch of tupperware.”

“The ones you brought are just the little kind, for leftovers.  We need the bigger kinds that can hold packages and even boxes.  Like, for cereal and pasta and sugar and…”  She glances around at the kitchen cabinets, voice trailing off, overwhelmed.  “Well, for everything, really.”

“Tupperware containers for everything?  Why do we need tupperware containers for everything?”

“Duh.  Because there isn’t enough room in the fridge to protect everything from the mice.”

I’m a farmboy with zero tolerance for rodents.  “Forget the tupperware.  Mousetraps and rat poison, that’s what we need.”

Nooshin pushes back from the table and walks over to a cabinet, producing a box of graham crackers shredded open at the bottom.  Crumbs dribble out of the box when she holds it up.  “See?  If stuff like this was in a tupperware container the mice couldn’t even smell it, let alone chew through to it.”

A compelling demonstration, but I only give her the satisfaction of a shrug.  A little ways down the list I stop again.  “Water purifier?”

“Just for our drinking water.  It must be cheaper than bottled water.”

For a while there’s nothing but the sound of her fingernails scratching at a stain on her jeans.

“Throw rugs?” I ask in dismay.  “Posters?”

“Now you’re in the non-essential part of the list.  See the heading?  I think we should decorate a little.  Make this place feel more like a home.  Don’t you?”

My response is a derisive snort.  Then – “Hey!  You put a wine rack on here.”

Nooshin’s tone is becoming increasingly defensive.  “I know, I know.  We don’t really need one.  We can just leave the bottles on the floor.”  My wine bottles look like dusty artillery shells lined up against the kitchen floorboards – or where the floorboards would be, if this house had any.  “I just thought it would be nice to – ”

“No, I like it.  I think a wine rack is a great idea.”  I tack on a reassuring grin to emphasize that I’m not being sarcastic.  I’ve always wanted to be the kind of guy who has a wine rack.

She notices that I’m folding my arms across my chest, the list dangling from a hand.  Her face turns hopeful and hopeless at the same time.  “So?  What do you think?  I know the list is kind of long, but…”  She tries to lighten the mood, forcing a grin.  “Anything I missed?”

“Actually, yeah.  Mirrors.  There are no mirrors on this list.”  I’m watching her thoughtfully, focused on the way she wears her bangs pulled down, an inky wall against the world – hiding that crooked wandering eye, but also her steep cheekbones, sharp tapering jaw line, lips fuller than the rest of her.  Hiding her beauty.

Nooshin breaks my scrutiny by looking away.  Downward, really.  Toward the bare concrete floor.  “I don’t need a mirror.  I already know what I look like,” she says in a voice that makes something crack and heave inside me, because she doesn’t really know what she looks like.  She doesn’t know at all.

This postage stamp of a house is shot through with sunbeams and dust particles when I emerge from the bathroom, putting away the improvised toilet plunger I built out of coat hangers.  Across the street a racing-striped minivan is engorging a family of Mexicans dressed in their holiday best.  They mill across their hardpan lawn, occasionally casting a curious glance at the rustbucket Ford Explorer with Iowa plates, their new American neighbors.  In the distance a church bell is tolling the hour, one solemn gong.  You might presume they’re headed for mass like good little papists, but I happen to know they converted to Mormonism a couple years ago, apparently in hopes of securing an interest-free loan to start an auto repair shop.  The shit you learn from gossipy storekeepers.

“Hey Nooshin, come out here!  I’ve got something to show you!”  Then I catch myself and start laughing.  “Well, not show you.  It’s still kind of smelly in there.  Just listen.”  I lean into the bathroom and slap the toilet handle.  Water rushes and gurgles and finally dies into leaky quiet.

The bedroom door opens a crack.  Her right eye peeks at me, the dark iris slowly drifting away.  “You fixed it?”

“Hell yeah.  The toilet is officially working again!”

“Yaayyy.”  The exclamation barely reaches my ears, it’s so unenthusiastic.  The door closes again.

“You ready to go?”

“I still can’t decide what to wear.”  Nooshin’s voice is a muffled groan of frustration.  “God, maybe I should just stay here.”

“Fuck that.  You’re coming with me.”  I never figured her for the type of woman who obsesses over clothing, but apparently she does.  “Ready or not.  Which is it?”

Hinges creak behind me.  “How does this look?”

Nooshin is frowning down at her floral-print shirtdress, a pattern of sunflowers on a soft yellow background.  The top three buttons are open, revealing her sharp clavicles and the white scoop of a tanktop underneath.  I follow the line of buttons to a shirttail hem, then bony knees and thin calves and finally a pair of brown lug-soled boots that make her even taller than me.  The effect is ruggedly delicate, if that makes any sense.

“What do you think?” she asks, raising her gaze shyly.  “Be honest.”

“I liked you better with that big honking bandage on your nose.”

“Nick!  This is serious.  I need you to tell me what you really think.”

“I think you should stop fishing for compliments and get your ass in the truck already.”  I refuse to believe a girl can be this clueless that she’s beautiful.

Driving around Colonia Libertad, I toss her an oversized map of Tijuana and give her a crash course in the vitals of navigation.  How she can fix her position by triangulating from local landmarks – the runty skyscrapers of downtown, antennae-studded Miraval Hill, dead towering smokestacks in the nearby industrial park.  Where she can catch the express bus to the tourist district, or a reputable taxi.  What roads to follow to the San Isidro and Otay Mesa border crossings.

“You mean…”  Nooshin’s face lights up in her cowled hijab thing.  “I’ll get to drive your truck?”

“Not fucking likely.  This is Mexico, last time I checked.  But you’ll need to know a cab driver is taking you in the right direction.”

“Oh.  Right.”  She jots another note on the map spread across her lap.

Next I loop around General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport, named after an interim president who died in corruptacular retirement in La Jolla, California.  The airport looks more municipal than international, just a couple stubby runways lined with rusting aluminum hangars.  The control tower is whitewashed and decorated with the next best thing to a Nativity display – a Nativity banner.  Adjoining it is a single-story terminal about the size of a tour bus.

I slow down – unnaturally slow, for my lead foot – so we can watch jets scream over American airspace and scrape the border fence as they land.  Nooshin is enthralled by the spectacle of gigantic aircraft shoehorning into the minuscule runways.  Until she realizes we could die a horrible flaming death if a 747 trips over the fence and pancakes into our house.

Back in our neighborhood I cruise the asphalt streets first, then the gravel ones, pointing through the dirty windshield at places she is – and isn’t – allowed to go.  When she asks, I readily admit the distinction is arbitrary.  I’ve already made the rounds of these places, introducing myself to shopkeepers and clerks and waitrons, feeling them out.  If I got the wrong vibe, any sense that they might try to take advantage of Nooshin’s unfamiliarity with the language and culture and currency, then wham – I put them on my blacklist.

I’m worried her reaction will be hostile, bristling with resentment at being told what to do and what not to do.  God knows my female colleagues at UCLA would scream bloody murder – even if they’d never been south of Beverly Hills, let alone south of the border.  But Nooshin just blinks in surprise, glancing around at the storefronts and open-air stalls and sidewalk vendors selling crap out of carts.  “You talked to all of them?  Thinking of me?”

“Well, uh…yeah.  Partly thinking of you, at least.”

Nooshin aims a lopsided grin across the cab at me.  Beside the still-purplish bridge of her nose those dark eyes are narrowing – in appraisal, in validation, in something like amusement – and I get the eerie sensation that she’s reading me like a comic book.

“And here we finally are,” I announce, executing a sharp pedestrian-scattering turn into the parking lot of Wal-Mart, the new consumer epicenter of Colonia Libertad and anchor tenant for an attached strip mall of glassy American-style stores.

There’s an explosion in the passenger seat.  “Nick, look – it’s a Wal-Mart!  I didn’t know they had Wal-Marts here.  And over there, that store must be, like, the Mexican version of Old Navy, and – hey, is that a video store?”  She whirls around and grabs my right bicep in both hands, squeezing my arm in excitement.  “It is!  We can rent videos, Nick!  Videos!”  A rueful laugh.  “Now all we need is electricity.”

“This is the one place in our neighborhood where you’ll be okay at any store.  They’ll give you the right change, and they take plastic too.  But best of all…”  I extricate my arm from her grasp and use it to point due east, out Nooshin’s window at a receding avenue.  “Two blocks that way is our house.  You can walk here anytime you want.  During daylight, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoes happily, too distracted to gripe about the no-Nooshin-at-night rule.  “So what are we waiting for?  Let’s go check it out!”  And she slides out of the Explorer, bubbly with delight, an unrecognizable version of the girl who showed up at my place on Noche Buena.

I trail after Nooshin’s billowing shirtdress, admiring the flashes of thigh whenever the wind catches it right.  I assume her cheerfulness is due to the prospect of shopping, that familiar and reassuring chick-ritual.  But then she glances over a sunflower-patterned shoulder at me and halts, a hand outstretched to hold mine – “Nick, come on!” – and time seems to stop for a moment, until she catches herself reaching and hurriedly uses the hand to brush away her bangs, whirling like a storm cloud around her shy embarrassed smile.

My studio apartment feels as roomy as it did four years ago.  Almost as roomy, anyway.  The otherwise pristine emptiness is ruined by a last furnishing – my futon – left behind for Nooshin’s use.  I stand over it critically.  Does it have a future with me in Tijuana or not?  I know what Phoebe would say.  Trash it.  She hated sleeping on my futon even more than she hated fucking on it.  The futon really is a piece of crap.  Just a rickety pine frame with a discount mattress on top.  But what can you expect from a starving undergrad who became an even-more-starving grad?

The toilet flushes.

Nooshin emerges from the bathroom.  She’s wearing her sunglasses and that cowled hijab thing that makes her look like a Sith lord.  But no bandage across her nose.  Its bridge remains fat and purple.

“Don’t look.  It’s still gross,” she says, walking over to a little corner of habitation – her suitcase and backpack.

I watch her squat down and paw through her belongings.  She wears the same Old Navy hoodie I remember from Avenida Revolucion, the same stovepipe jeans, the same Nikes.  I’ve finally met somebody more impoverished than me.  But that’s not what my libido notices.  It’s focused on Nooshin’s bony ass, which looks like an upside-down heart from this angle.  My dick is getting hard – and pinned in the wrong direction.  Shit.  Not good.  I quickly reach into my pants and reorient it.

“You hungry for lunch?” I ask, all cool-like.

“Nah.  Not really.  That was a big breakfast, you know?  I’ll probably be good until dinner.”  She’s lying.  She wolfed down the Egg McMuffin I bought her – peeling off the Canadian bacon first – and then pretended to be full.

“I know a great taco joint.  Just a few blocks away.  We can walk it.  They’ve got a fish taco you have to taste to believe.”

She straightens up…up…up…until she’s sunglasses-level with me, a few dollar bills clutched in her hand.  “I’ve got some money for lunch.  I’ll buy you something.”

“Forget it.  I’ll buy both of us something.  You can owe me.”

“Not this time.”

“Yes this time.”

“Nick.  Please.”

“No.”

Nooshin’s full lips compress into a thin line.  She wheels off.  “You have to let me pay.”

“As soon as you’re cashing a paycheck from the University of California Regents.”

“But I thought Hercules said the funding wouldn’t be released until sometime in January.”

My grin becomes false.  Hercules told me the supplemental grant funding would hit in January or February – if it hit at all.  This is the worst economic crisis the State of California and its university system has ever faced.  32% tuition increases for students, 10% pay cuts for faculty.  When a living legend like Hercules doubts his ability to get something done, it’s bad news.  Very bad news.

But I don’t say that to Nooshin.  “So you pay me back sometime in January.  I’ll float you until then.  I’ve got enough money.”

She leans over the sink, staring out the kitchenette window at Koreatown.  For a really long time.  Without speaking.

“What?” I ask.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but…”  Her shoulder blades rise and fall in the hoodie.  “It’s hopeless, Nick.  You have to give me a job, and drive me around, and buy me food.  All because I’m hopeless.”  Her hands tighten on the sink edge.  “You’ll end up resenting me.  You’ll end up hating me.  The same way my family does.”

I take a deep breath.  “Remember what you told me?”

“When?”

“When we first met.  On Avenida Revolucion.”

“I’m not sure…”

“You pointed at your eye and told me ‘God made me this way.’  Do you think God made you to be hopeless?  To be resented and hated?”

Nooshin turns around, accusing in her Sith lord cowl.  “Nick.  You’re so insincere.  You don’t even believe in God.”

“We’re not talking me here.  We’re talking you.  And you believe in God.  Right?”

“Yeah.  I do.”

“A god who allows your husband to beat you up?”

She hesitates.  “No, but the Quran – ”

“Nooshin.”

“What?”

“Do you deserve your broken nose?  Was it willed by God?”

“No.”

“And your family, treating you the way they did yesterday.  Do you deserve that?”

“Well, no.  At least, I don’t think so.”

I confront her across a small apartment that brings us closer than we intend.  “Look, I don’t know anything about being a Muslim.  I’m just your friend.  I signed up for this.  But me and God agree that you’re not hopeless and you don’t deserve this shit.”

“I know you’re just saying that.  But I’m going to pretend you really mean it, because it’s sweet.”  A tear spills from underneath her sunglasses.  Then another.  She tugs her hoodie sleeve over a hand and wipes her cheeks.  “I need a plan.  For getting out of this mess, I mean.  A better plan than just try harder.”  The tears are coming faster now.  “Like, I can only stay here until the end of the month.  So that means I need to find a new place by the new year.  And I don’t have any money.  Do I sell my plasma or something?  Is there some hotline I can call for help?”

“You need a plan to get a plan.”

“What do you mean?” she sniffles.

“It’s something we used to say back on the farm.  When the problem cascade got out of hand.  The combine was down, the crop was too wet to harvest, the corn futures were for shit anyway.  I’ve totally lost you, huh?”

Nooshin nods.

I wander over to the other window and look down on my Ford Explorer from a third-story angle.  I’ve been paranoid about its security ever since I returned from Thanksgiving and found the tires slashed, the quarter panels defaced with spraypaint.  I wonder if my truck will be any safer in Tijuana, where a dozen people get killed on a bad day.

Behind me a small voice says, “I guess I just go back to my parents.  I don’t really have any other options.  Maybe that’s what you were trying to tell me.  But I’m going to stay here as long as I can.”

“Shit.”  The word hangs against the glass.  I stare through it at La-La Land, a seemingly endless expanse of wealth slouching through hazy sunshine toward the Pacific.  Drive past the Han Kook Supermarket – the western boundary of Koreatown – and you’re in the high cotton of Wilshire Country Club, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, UCLA, Bel Air.  Nooshin comes from the opposite direction.  Inland, past downtown and into the hand-to-mouth grit of East LA.  I saw Terrazas Park for myself yesterday, and it wasn’t pretty.  Of course, neither are my new digs in Colonia Libertad.

“You don’t need to stay here with me.  You should go back to Tijuana and get on with your research.  Just call me when the funding is released.”  Nooshin pads into the bathroom, rips off some toilet paper, and blows her nose.  “Ouch.”

“Shit shit shit,” I say, briefly fogging the glass.

“You know, this is scintillating entertainment, watching you swear at the window.  But I’d rather do something else.  Call me crazy.”

“Me llamas loca.”

It takes her a beat to get it.  “Ha ha.”

I begin to pace the room, clomping despite the carpet.  “You can’t go back to your parents.   After what I saw yesterday that’s fuckingly obvious.”

Now some real mirth from her.  “Nick.  I don’t think that’s a word.  What you said right before obvious.”

“Don’t interrupt me.  I’m trying to get on a roll here.”

“Sorry.”

“And you can only stay here until the end of the month.  And you have no money to stay someplace else, at least not until I get the funding and you can start digitizing the archive.  So – what?”

She’s giggling.  “You made the f-bomb an adverb.  The adverbial f-bomb.”

I fight an urge to laugh, then another urge to crush her in my arms.  “Look, you don’t have to go back to your parents.  That’s not your only option.  You can stay with me.  In Tijuana.”

Her mouth hangs open.  Then snaps shut again.  Her throat moves, swallowing shock.  “Nick, I – I…oh god.  You’re going to make me cry again.”  She reaches into the bathroom for more toilet paper.

“Stay with me.  At least until I’ve got the funding and you’re making money, okay?  Then you’ll have options again.  You’ll be in a position to do whatever you want.”

“I can’t accept.  It’s so not fair to you.  I’ve already been such a burden!”  The waterworks are back.  She discards a wet wad of toilet paper and reaches for more.

I step closer.  Behind the smoky tint of her sunglasses I can see her right eye jerking in its socket.  “Too bad, dude.  I’m not leaving without you.”

“You…you have to.”  Nooshin winces as she blots her cheeks, which swell into her broken nose.  “Ouch.”

“Give me that.”  I take away the toilet paper and do it for her.  I’m close enough to smell the Egg McMuffin on her breath.  She’s never looked so kissable before, and my libido is running with the throttle wide open.  But that isn’t why I’m doing this.  Okay, okay.  Not the only reason.

It’s Christmas Eve – Noche Buena in Mexico.  Tijuana is sloshing with amped-up religiosity, Catholicism stoned on pagan throwbacks.  Nativity displays that would spawn ACLU lawsuits north of the border are everywhere – on government building lawns, in bus stations, at schools – and all with empty mangers, waiting for the Baby Jeebus to be added today.  Partygoers break pinatas with seven streamers, one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins or the seven tribes of the Nahua, depending on who you believe.  Mobs of people ebb and flow through the streets, snarling traffic as they follow a costumed donkey-riding Mary led by a dude dressed as Joseph.  Churches bulge with parishioners supplicating themselves into a frenzy at the feet of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus’ mom with an ethnic makeover.  Native nochebuena flowers – called poinsettias in America after 19th-century U.S. Ambassador Joel Poinsett – are crowding horizontal spaces in every lobby and home, adding Christmas cheer and reminding the world that the Aztecs’ favorite color was blood red.

But none of that shit is keeping me awake.  Another Christmastime ritual is – the mass crossing of the border.  A couple hours before midnight and I’m watching through the barred front window as ghostly figures drift down the street toward la frontera.  They eddy against the rusting steel panels that cover the vulnerable chain link fence underneath, a teeming mass of shadow-people bursting toward the day-bright hills on the other side.  Their mass crossing is fueled by two idiotic beliefs – that the Border Patrol only fields a skeleton force during the holidays, and anybody making it to America today will receive a Christmas gift of citizenship tomorrow.  In reality the Border Patrol fields more agents, not less, and anybody caught today will wind up right back in Tijuana tomorrow.  Pressed against the glass I can feel the vibrations of a helicopter, thropping the night air overhead, probing the darkness on this side of the border fence with a beam of glaring light.  But the real noise comes from the humvees crashing up and down the hills, a mad orchestra of revving engines and grinding gearboxes and the occasional honking horn.

Headlights creep down the street, washing over small clots of would-be Americans.  A flashlight is aimed out the driver’s window, jumping from one house to the next.  I figure it’s a cop or cabbie trying to find their way, since there are never streetlights on a gravel road like this.  I take a step back from the window and prepare to settle myself into the sleeping bag again – until the flashlight hovers on my house and the vehicle pulls onto the front lawn, mistaking the pavers for a driveway.  With no drapes I’m forced to squint into the headlights, raising my arm into a bar of shade across my eyes.  I glimpse a shadow moving through the glare to the front door.

The knocking starts urgent and just gets worse.  “Nick?  Nick?!?  It’s me, Nooshin!”

What the hell?  I grab the long weight of my D-cell Maglite, half-flashlight half-club, and open the door prepared to use it either way.

“Nick…”  The gangly silhouette sags in relief.

I play the beam over Nooshin in shock.  It looks like she was in a fight – and got her ass kicked.  Her hair is a wild tangle spilling out of her headscarf and sweatshirt hood.  Through it I can see a broken nose, fat and purplish across the bridge.  The discolored swelling reaches across her cheeks and up to her eyes, puffing them into exhausted slits.  Her upper lip and chin are angry red skin, irritated with wiping, and her sweatshirt is caked with dried snot and blood on the sleeves.  My business card with the address on the back is clutched in her bony hands, the left one adorned with a too-tight gold band.  The leg of her jeans is ripped open from the knee down, flapping like a singular bell-bottom, and that sock is stained pink on the outside.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I finally manage to say.

“Yeah,” she sighs.  “I look pretty bad, huh?”

“Like you fell down the stairs a couple times.  Come on in.”  I pivot on a bare heel, flashing the Maglite around the living room, and guide her over to the papasan chair.  “Here.  Let me help you with that.”

Nooshin untangles from her purse with difficulty and collapses into the padded wicker shell of the chair.  Watching my flashlight beam dash into the bathroom and then the kitchen, she makes a sympathetic noise.  “I’m sorry you don’t have electricity yet.”

“Me too.  Remind me never to move to Mexico during Christmas again.”  I’m back with a first aid kit and towel dampened in bottled water, bending over her and gently blotting at her broken nose.  Her eyelids flicker and close in my Maglite’s frizzy wide-angle light.  She could pass for dead if it wasn’t for the little bubble of blood in one nostril, pulsing with every breath.  Something feral and murderous uncoils inside me.  “Who did this to you?  Saman?”

The name makes her flinch.

“You need to call 911 and sic the cops on that motherfucker – ”

“No,” she interrupts.  Then with more force, “No!”

“Nooshin, listen to me.  Your husband should go to jail for what he did to you.  If you file a police report – ”

“Nooo…”  It’s a trapped moan.

I touch the plain gold band that pinches her ring finger.  “Is this from him too?”

She thrashes miserably, trying to yank the ring off.

“Whoa.  Just relax, okay?  We can get it off later.”  I shift down to her calf, disinfecting and band-aiding the crusty zig-zag laceration.  “I’ll take you to a clinic later.  Broken noses usually heal on their own, but better safe than sorry, right?”  Then I play the Maglite over her purse, partially unzipped and spilling things like an antique Polaroid camera onto the cement floor.  “You’re traveling light.”

A single disconsolate sob pierces the darkness, and me with it.  “He’s waiting to take me back to Kansas City.  My family is on his side.”

“I suppose all your stuff is still at my place.”  I put the beam on Nooshin.

“Yeah.  My suitcase, anyway.  My phone is at my parents’ house.  And the rest of my money.  The money I had with me, I spent it all on the bus down here, and the border cab, oh god…”

“You took one of the cabs right at the border, huh?  They’re expensive as hell.”  I prop the Maglite on the floor, aiming it toward the tiny bedroom.  Then I unroll the spare mattress pad and sleeping bag.

“What am I supposed to do, Nick?”  Her voice is going high and stricken.  “I don’t even have a single dollar!”

“Can you tone it down a little?  You’re freaking me out.”  It’s true.  The white-hot urge to hurt Saman the way he hurt her has been eclipsed by emotional shards, cutting through me so fast I can’t even tell what they are.  I take a deep breath and scoop up the flashlight and start digging through a Hefty bag of clothes.  “You take the bedroom.  Here’s some of my clothes to sleep in.”  I toss her sweatpants and a retro-style Atari t-shirt.

In the circle of fuzzy light she’s standing up and hugging the clothes to her chest.  Tear-tracks are glistening on her cheeks.  Her crooked eye is wandering toward the Pacific.  “What do I do, Nick?”

“Don’t worry about it now.  We’ll get this sorted out in the morning.”  All the emotional shards within me are collapsing into something foreign and tender.  I war with myself, trying to regain my icy distance.  “As far as money goes, I’ve got some.  So don’t worry about it right now, okay?”

Her bruised and puffy face is arriving at a new conclusion about me, and desire – a tentative, awkward desire – is part of that conclusion.  Nooshin rushes past the flashlight’s glow, wrapping me in a pathetically grateful hug.  Matted hair brushes my face.  Her scent is sweat and grime.  At first I vacillate, still pointing the Maglite at the empty papasan chair.  Then I hug her back.  She feels breakable in my grasp, barely held together and trembling like a palsied calf.