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.

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.

“Hey,” says Nick behind the wheel.  “You’re too quiet.  What’s going on in that head of yours?”  The warmth in his voice wraps me like a blanket.

“You really want to know?”  I still can’t believe anyone, let alone a boy, wants to know what I’m thinking.  “Really really?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

“Well, I was just wondering if Saman will be happier without me.”

“You think about him a lot?”  The tone is casual.  Deceptively casual.

I’m getting used to the way Nick’s brain works.  There’s no such thing as an innocent question with him.  He always chases an angle of some kind.  He’s probably wondering if I’m projecting emotions onto him that I wanted to experience with my husband.

“I hardly think about Saman at all,” I admit.  “In fact, I spend more time thinking about how I don’t think about him, than actually thinking about him.”  I replay the sentence in my mind and laugh a little.  “I’m not sure that made sense.”

“Hang on,” Nick warns, giving me a millisecond to brace myself.  His arms are a sudden jerk in my direction, darting around a line of idling cars, shooting through a red light and the gap in traffic underneath it.  I’m pressed back into my seat, then slammed forward into the seatbelt as he skids to a stop against the curb.  “Got it!”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s referring to our parking space, a prime piece of curb on Avenida Revolucion.  It takes me another moment to realize our parking space is actually double supergood prime – like, right in front of El Fez, the Moroccan restaurant I picked for dinner.

We scramble through the downpour and splash across the sidewalk and barge into the restaurant, breathless and grinning.  The layout is baffling – we find ourselves stuck in front of a display case of Moroccan antiques with a drawn velvet curtain behind it.  A Mexican hostess pushes through the curtain, drawn by the delicate chiming of a door-mounted bell.  She grabs a couple menus and leads us toward a murky corner of the entryway…

…which turns out to be a narrow stairway of nightmarish oak.  The dark stairs lead almost straight up, turning every tenth tread or so, until we emerge onto the second floor.  El Fez’s dining room is notable for two reasons – it’s ridiculously cramped, only big enough for seven tables, and the walls are paneled with mirrors to make the space seem larger.  Nick and I are infinite, reflected in one wall to the other and back again, an endless loop of receding portraits.

Our waiter is a Moroccan man.  The English he speaks to Nick isn’t much better than the Spanish he speaks to me.  Nick gets a kick out of the linguistic juxtaposition, only interjecting to remind me to order my Diet Coke sin hielo – without ice.

“Por supuesto” – of course – I say to Nick, then turn to the waiter with a worldly sigh.  “Sin hielo, por favor.”  Ice cubes are just as risky as any other form of water in Mexico.

After the waiter retreats I consider my reflection in the mirrored wall.  “Why does the waiter think I’m Mexican?  I’m wearing a hijab, duh.  And he’s Moroccan, so he should know what that means.  Do you think I look Mexican?”

Across the table reflection-Nick grins.  “A foreigner might think you look Mexican, but a Mexican never would.”

“Why’s that?” I ask, turning back to him.

He tries to say something, but nothing comes out.  His mouth opens, then closes again.  And stays closed.  His icy blue stare is becoming more intent every moment, as if we’re the only two people left alive in a horror movie.

“Huh?”  I don’t know what else to say.

“Because of your features,” he finally mutters.  “Your features aren’t nortena or Mesoamerican Indian or anything.  Not to somebody who knows.  Like your cheekbones, the way your cheekbones, uh…”  His voice trails off into silence and he averts his gaze.

It takes me a million years to muster the strength to speak.  “I know I’m not easy to look at.  This eye…”

Nick is transformed with fury.  His eyes turn into slivers aimed away, his jaw clenches so tight I can almost hear it crack.  “You’re beautiful, Nooshin.  Fucking beautiful.”

I blink at him.  Dumbstruck.  Hope fluttering in my flat chest.

But then I realize he’s probably just saying the right thing at the right time, without really meaning it.  He has a gift for that.  Trust me, I know.  I’ve seen him in action before.

The only reason I might be wrong is what happens next.  Still not looking at me, he folds his arms across his chest – across his heart – in defensive KEEP OUT body language.  Pushing me away.  Maybe that’s how you know you matter to Nick.  When he distances you, rather than making you feel close and intimate.

Dinner is several courses of yummy food and even better conversation.  He’s full of fascinating anecdotes, like his story about the history of Tijuana.  All the land was deeded to a Mexican family in 1862 by President Benito Juarez, but the family never did anything with their title.  So squatters moved onto the land, then more squatters, and even more squatters, until by the turn of the 20th century Tijuana was a city with a bigger population than San Diego.  Meanwhile a private corporation bought the family’s title and filed a lawsuit seeking ownership of everything on the land.  No one thought the lawsuit had a prayer of succeeding – how could you take away an entire city from its people and businesses and government and give it to a private corporation? – but that’s exactly what happened in 1963, when the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the corporation owned all 26,000 acres of Tijuana.  The astonished Mexican government was forced to buy off the corporation by creating the very first maquiladora zone on empty land east of Tijuana, exempting any industries built there from Mexican taxes and labor laws.  And so the maquiladora system was born.  Nick concludes with his favorite motto, always punctuated with a can-you-even-believe-it? laugh – “Only in Mexico, man.”

The thing I love most about our conversations?  Nick is nothing like Saman and my male in-laws, shooing the women from the room when it’s time to discuss business or politics, treating me like an idiot just because they have a framed MBA diploma on their wall and I don’t.  All they ever do is talk at me.  Nick talks with me.  The girl with only a high school degree, when he’s almost a Ph.D.  But somehow I don’t feel self-conscious at all.  He makes it totally cool to ask “What do you mean?” or “Why is that significant?” or whatever stupid question pops into my head.  It must be all his practice as a TA dealing with students not much younger than me.

Afterwards we meander in the direction of the border, dashing from one sheltering overhang to the next – dripping trees, shadowy building porticos, the garish canopies which advertise strip club entryways – while the rain turns Avenida Revolucion into a ribbon of oil.  We don’t really have a destination, just a list of clubs I made in my list-making fashion.  Nick wants to go someplace “Mexican”, his code for avoiding American tourists.  He’s okay sharing a sidewalk with them, but that’s about where it ends.

Eventually we arrive at Las Pulgas, which looks like a really ugly office building but is actually the discoteca with the largest dance floor in Tijuana.  In fact, it’s so large that boxing matches are held there and televised worldwide.  Including tonight.  “You want to check it out?” Nick asks, cocking an eyebrow at me.

No, I don’t want to check it out.  I hate boxing.  Hate hate hate it.  Overhearing me, the sharkskin-suited doorman glides over to inform us that tonight’s fight has been moved to a smaller venue because of slow ticket sales.  Instead there’s a supercool dj crew from Mexico City.  That’s exactly how he says it – “supercool dj crew from Mexico City”.  I’m instantly sold, but Nick ushers me into the club frowning in disapproval.

“We don’t…have to…go here,” I say in bursts over my shoulder, navigating past a tattooed bouncer who’s frisking for weapons to the cashier inside, a young kid with no chin and a straggly mustache.

Nick opens his wallet, colorful with the greens of American dollars and the blues, yellows and pinks of Mexican pesos.  “Nah, I’m cool with this.  I just wish they had a local dj instead.  I like nortec way better than that eurotrash shit they mix in Mexico City.”

“Don’t even get me started, senor,” the cashier agrees, handing back the change with a what-can-you-do? face.

“What’s nortec?” I ask as we slip through the doors and into the club.

“Nortec stands for norteno techno.  A local mix of electronica and narcocorridos – you know what narcocorridos are?”  When I shake my head, he continues, “They’re ballads about druglords and gang bangers.  Kind of like hardcore American thug rap, at least in terms of material.  The actual songs are traditional ranchero music with accordions and horns and everything.  So blend that with electronica and you get nortec.”

I try to ask him something about narcocorridos, but my question is lost in the swelling beats.  We’ve reached the edge of the dance floor, a half-empty sea of Mexicans dancing shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.  I can look clear across the vast space to the elevated stage, where colored floodlights pulse on a bank of djs manning turntables.  Sometimes it’s cool being this tall.

A palm settles against the small of my back, gently steering me through the crowd.  Nick’s hand, seeping warmth.  The demure intimacy of his touch is sexier than any of the near-copulation happening on the dance floor.

We head for the bar, only visible as flashes of polished aluminum in the crowd.  Above it the entire wall is hung with gigantic video screens that flicker and pulse in a rhythmic montage of images.  The only one that lingers on my memory is a close-up shot of Gwen Stefani belting it out, practically committing fellatio on a microphone.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Nick yells in my ear.  “A BEER?”

“OKAY,” I yell back.

He gets a bartender’s attention and points at the banner overhead – Bud Lite, the beer of the month – then makes a fist with two fingers extended.  I’m struck by his ingenuity.  If it was me ordering, I’d probably shout at the bartender until my vocal cords bled.

We find a column to lean against and drink our beers, tipping back the bottles so they turn into kaleidoscopes in the lights.  I’m stealing glances at his profile out of the corner of my eye.  I like him better this way, bareheaded, even if his bald spot shines whenever a spotlight rakes across it.

Half a beer later, I’m drunk enough to let Nick grab my wrist and lead me onto the dance floor, where we find plenty of open space.  He twists to the beat effortlessly.  I shift my weight from one dress boot to the other and flail my arms in the air, trying to copy a girl nearby who’s dancing like something out of a music video.

Mexicans are checking us out.  We tower over most of them, an uncommonly tall gringo and a downright freakishly tall gringa.  Most glances are fleeting, but I start to notice a pattern of repeat glances from women – mexicanas eying Nick like red meat.  He’s a beguiling combination of looks and American citizenship.  One of them dances closer to him…closer…closer.  I deflect her with a nasty hip.  Oops.

And just like that, it’s later.

Way later.

I must’ve had too much to drink, because I’m sprawled across the front seat, woozy, my head in Nick’s lap.  Overhead his left arm grasps the steering wheel.  His right arm drapes warmly down my shape, palm resting on my hip.

“Nick,” I murmur, and feel him move below my cheek.  His lap shifting.  Stiffening.  And that’s when I decide to pretend I’m asleep and ignorant.

I glance up at Nick, one hip cocked and wrinkling his brow in curiosity.  He’s taking in the craft materials scattered across the kitchen table – fabric swatches of different patterns and textures, piping and ribbon, white glue, glitter.  I have a scissors in my hand, trimming a miniature stovepipe hat out of black felt.  “I’m making something,” I say in bumbling evasion, willing him out of the kitchen.  Leave me alone, leave me alone…

“You’re making a…snowman?”  Before I can block him, he reaches down and snatches my fabric-and-tagboard creation.  It falls open on ribboned hinges, revealing a blank interior.  “What is this?  A Christmas card?”

“Yeah,” I admit.

“It’s not Christmas anymore.”

“I know that.”

“So…why are you making a Christmas card?”

“Well, I wanted to give you a Christmas card all along.  Because the only Christmas card you got was from Phoebe, and it was basically a form letter from her company.  But then my life kind of fell apart and I got distracted and forgot about it.  Until today, when I saw Wal-Mart had Christmas cards on clearance.  I couldn’t find any I liked, so I’m making you one instead.”

“I thought Muslims didn’t celebrate Christmas.”

“Right.  It’s a Christian thing.  But I think it’s okay if I give you a Christmas card.”  I snatch the card back.  “Now you have to pretend you didn’t see this, so I can finish it.”

“Nooshball,” Nick laughs, rolling his eyes for dramatic effect.  He strides into the living room and flops on the couch.  The TV clicks to life.

I focus on finishing the snowman card.  It lies open on the kitchen table, splayed into six joined circles of white tagboard.  I stare at the interior blankness.  What do I write?

Suddenly I’m not even sure about Merry Christmas anymore.  Do atheists believe in Christmas?  I should’ve asked Nick if he does.  Oh well.  I’ll just stick to something safe, like Season’s Greetings and Happy New Year.

I scribble out the words in a gold glitter pen, but when I’m done they sit there like cold impersonal things.  I need to close with something touching and appreciative.

I try a few different sentiments, writing them invisibly with my fingernail.  Nothing seems right. Sincerely yours, Nooshin sounds like a business letter, and Warmest regards, Nooshin isn’t much better.  Always yours, Nooshin makes me sound like I’m stalking him to the grave.  And Love, Nooshin or combinations of my name and big loopy hearts are even worse, the perfect way to send a guy like Nick fleeing.  But Your friend, Nooshin isn’t right either, because maybe, just maybe, we can be more than friends someday.

I wish I’d been allowed to date before I got married.  If I had some experience trading notes with boys, I’d probably know exactly what to write.

Resigned to getting it wrong no matter what I do, I pick up the glitter pen and write Thanks for being my buddy, Nooshin.

At least I’m pleased with the outside.  The tagboard snowman turned out cute – black felt stovepipe hat, plaid shred of a scarf, orphaned buttons trickling down his front.  My voice tries to run away when I go into the living room and offer the card to Nick.  “Here.  I made you something for Christmas.  Better late than never, I hope.”

He admires the card long enough to make me blush.  “Wow.  This is really cool.  I especially like the way you did his arms like they’re twigs – that’s pipe cleaner, right?”  Then he flips it open, the snowman pivoting on velvet ribbon bindings.  A smirk twists his handsome face.  “I’m your buddy, huh?”

I try to reach down and close the card.  “You can look at the outside some more if you want.”

“Oh no.  I think I’m going to read the inside again.  Because I’m your ‘buddy’.”  He says it making little quotation marks with his fingers, laughing at me.

“Nick…”

“Your best bud?  Or just one buddy among many?”

“At least I didn’t call you my bro or dawg or something.”  Now he’s got me giggling too.  “Seriously, what was I supposed to call you?”

The labeling dilemma plunges him into silence.  The obvious answer – we’re friends, nothing more and nothing less – doesn’t escape his pursed lips.  Eventually he considers my card again, a scrutiny with emotions vying beneath it.  My heart begins to soar – he’s going to say something truthful and maybe even romantic, I just know it! – but then Nick retreats behind that evasive and lopsided grin.  “Just don’t call me late for dinner.”

I rise from the makeshift couch – Nick’s new queen-sized bed, which we pile with pillows – and glide through this cramped house on bare feet.  It only takes a couple strides in any direction to visit every room.  The bedroom, where I sleep.  The tiny bathroom with a new shower curtain and an old reflective tile above the sink.  The kitchen with its door and barred window onto the alley.  And then back to the living room, where the bed leaves only a narrow periphery for movement.

Mostly I’m checking the buckets and pots and tupperware containers that dot the cement floor, plop-plop-plopping with drips.  I don’t want them to overflow.  Some of the leaks are so bad the containers fill up fast.  But I’m also trying to make sure no creepy crawlies – scorpions, in particular – are sneaking inside to avoid the rain.  I’ve already killed one scorpion the way Nick showed me, by stabbing it through the carapace with a long-handled barbecue fork.

No excitement this time.  Not even a container that needs emptying.  But I keep the fork with me, just in case.

My side of the couch is neatly made and stacked with a backrest of pillows.  Nick’s side of the couch is a disaster area of kicked-off sheets and pillows strewn about and him in the middle of it, lying on his back with the covers tangled around his legs, his eyes pinched shut in twitchy sleep.  The temperature is 60 degrees and he’s only wearing a pair of plain white boxer shorts.  Fever is burning him up.  Whatever he ate yesterday made him sick, or maybe it’s the H1N1 flu.

I slide gently onto the bed, careful not to wake him.  His limbs shiver, then still.  Perspiration beads his forehead.  I reach over to the muscular curve of his shoulder, hovering my palm above the bare skin, feeling heat rise off him in waves.

Holding my breath, I hover my palm further across his body, tracing the well-built chest that puts mine to shame, wondering what it would be like to touch him, to feel his heart beating.

I’ve never seen a man’s body like this before, so naked and unmoving.  I’m fascinated by his skin tone, a chalky white that pinkens in some places and is almost translucent in others.  Growing up Nasrin always thought white boys were yucky because they were “Crisco-colored”.  That made them more intriguing to me.

My eyes slide farther down Nick’s body, toward the flat taper of his waist, where a hairy loveline leads from the whorl of his navel into his boxer shorts.  I’m gripped by an insane temptation, my hand beginning to glide down to – yikes, what am I doing?  I return my hand to the swell of his left pectoral, hovering oh-so-close to the burning skin, feeling him radiate up my arm and into my body.

I wave my hand back and forth over Nick’s chest, pretending that I’m stroking its taut curves and feeling the little pink nipples.  Warily I glance up at his face, which is softer in sleep.  Almost delicate.  His jaw line isn’t such a hard clenched angle, his pointy nose and chin seem blunted.  Then I blush and look away, because he’s too pretty to stare at for long.

Sometimes at night I masturbate slowly thinking of him.  Never about the act itself, or anything sexual at all.  Instead I just fantasize that he’s talking with me, touching my hand lightly, telling me I’m beautiful and I make him happy.  I never rub myself hard or fast enough to climax, in fact I try to avoid it.  All I want is to drift beneath the covers in secret waves of contentment.

“Nooshin…”  His eyelids flutter.

Omigod!  I swallow a shriek of surprise and roll back onto my side of the bed, groping blindly for the remote, I’m just watching TV here, that’s all.

Oh crap.  My groping hand closed around the wrong hard shape.  I’m pointing the scorpion-stabbing fork at the TV, not the remote control!  Hurriedly I lay the fork aside and fumble around for the remote.  My heart is pounding so loud I’m sure he can hear it.

“Can you…get me…some water?” Nick pants.  His voice is whisper-soft with exhaustion.

“Sure!” I almost scream.  “Be right back!”

And then I flee the living room, tripping over a pot handle and sloshing water everywhere, and the leaks in the kitchen have gotten so bad it’s almost raining indoors, and I think I see a malevolent shadow retreat under the refrigerator, and now I wish I was holding that stupid fork instead of the remote, and that’s when it hits me – I should probably be overwhelmed and crying, on the verge of suicide or going back to my husband or something, but instead I just feel alive, really spectacularly alive.