Trip Through Your Wires. Sarah Layden

      “Well, what’s left?” Gwen asked. “I’ll be that.”

      “That’s OK,” Carey said. “There’s not enough money in the bank.”

      If Gwen was hurt, she didn’t show it. She got up, kissed Carey on top of the head, and went to pour a drink. She returned briefly, sipping her red wine and watching Carey’s game, before going to bed.

      Monopoly was a game Carey had mastered. She knew when to buy, when to sell. How to collect and accrue property, which she hoarded. She was less skilled at the real games of negotiation. All around her in the auditorium, students greeted each other and clustered around the most boisterous, those who bubbled continuously as fountains. Loners like Carey sat watching, waiting to make a move.

      A man in a guyabera and khaki shorts walked to the lectern. The crowd quieted. Ben was seated in the third row, the unmistakable hair and white t-shirt; Mike was next to him. The day before, at a picnic for new students, she revealed she was from Indianapolis. “We’ll have to compare notes,” Ben said, disappointingly casual. He didn’t ask about her high school, or if she hung out at Oakview Mall. He asked nothing. Andrea Cunningham approached Ben, and they huddled into a private conversation. She and Mike, cast off, discussed Guanajuato. “I’ll show you around, if you want,” he said. “We both can. Me and Ben.”

      Now she raised a hand and waved. Mike acknowledged her with a nod of the head and leaned in to speak to Ben. He was Ben’s shadow, sidekick, sentry. Ben swiveled and scanned the crowd for a moment before turning back without seeing her. He appeared, briefly, to be picking his nose, which she decided was charming. Already, she’d blithely absolved him of mortal flaws.

      “Bienvenidos,” the man on stage was saying. “That means ‘welcome.’ Which hopefully you already know, if you’re here.”

      A nervous collective laugh rose.

      Don Hernando, the head of La Universidad Intercambio, was Mexican by birth, a rarity among the faculty. He loved his beautiful university. He loved his city, so tranquil, so filled with history.

      “We’re a friendly people in Mexico,” he said. “Count on that. But if someone gets too friendly, come to me. If not me, talk to any teacher. Entienden?”

      Did they understand? A collective nod: they understood. He added that Intercambio did not advocate dating, cross-culturally or within the program.

      “It’s more complicated here,” Don Hernando said. “You are busy navigating the streets and the language. La cultura Mexicana. Focus on learning. You won’t get lost.”

      He switched entirely to Spanish, about walking in pairs, avoiding the food and beverages sold on the street, taking studies seriously, the famous Mummy Museum. Her ears perked up when he mentioned the discoteca and cafés, and described which were acceptable and which were not.

      After, Carey stood on the short stone steps, letting the sun toast her face and bare shoulders. Intercambio was in the mountains, less muggy than Mexico City. You could get away with a tank top until the undercut of cool breezes cancelled out the sun.

      Eyes closed, she enjoyed the alternating warm and cool feeling on her skin, her face turned towards the sun like a flower. Most of the other students were leaving for lunch or heading to a class or milling around the building’s entryway. Maybe if she spent lunch studying her dictionary, she’d avoid insulting her host family today. Maybe she could explore the park across the street for running trails.

      Years of high school and college Spanish, a lengthy application process, and still she felt unprepared. Make this experience yours, her father had said. Study hard, learn something new.

      “There she is.” Mike’s voice. He was often the one to pick her out, to find her, his blue eyes quick and roving, then still as a deer’s when she looked back. She kept her eyes closed a beat longer, holding on to the sun and the feeling of waiting. She wanted to be found, just not by Mike. When she opened her eyes, Ben and Mike flanked her.

      “Ready?” Ben asked, as if they’d planned a date. “Come on.”

      He and Mike grabbed her arms and led her down to the sidewalk in the direction of town. She laughed at first. American girls, for all their independence, learn a particular brand of giggling acquiescence. When Ben and Mike had marched her several yards without releasing their grip, Carey dragged her feet. Ben and Mike, each half a foot taller than her, stopped. They let go. Her arms still held the red imprints of their fingers. Carey asked where they were going, but she didn’t get an answer.

      “Indianapolites have to stick together,” Ben said.

      Mike laughed and his blond hair fell across his forehead. “Is that a word? Don’t discriminate against a brother from Milwaukee.”

      “You’re honorary,” Ben said. “As long as you stop referring to yourself as ‘a brother.’ Uncool, white boy.”

      For the briefest flash, Mike’s face betrayed his vulnerability. Carey saw it clearly. His availability. His frank, open gaze. His intelligence and aloneness. Mike was plain and obvious as a freckle. At Ben’s words, hurt came across his face in a blink, disappearing just as quickly. Even in joking, Ben worked Mike’s feelings and reactions.

      Ben had that effect on people, Carey included. A small price to pay. His presence made them bigger, louder, street-smart, wise. Walking downtown became an event. People were drawn to him, as to a carnival barker or a celebrity in dark glasses. The possibility of being with him meant the possibility of being someone different. Why else do we seek the company of strangers, but for a foothold, a boost up to the window of our own lives? We search for advantages, a balcony view. We climb all over people to learn what they can tell us about ourselves.

      They resumed walking, this time without touching her. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, believing it less and less. “I have class in twenty minutes.”

      Ben and Mike shared a look that contained a whole conversation in a glance. She knew only that it was about her. Ben smiled an in-charge smile, wolfish and dreamy.

      “No you don’t,” he said.

      “Yes I do.” She reached into her shoulder bag for her schedule.

      Mike waved a hand dismissively, and Ben encircled Carey’s wrist with his thumb and middle finger, lifting her hand from the bag. His callused palms grazed her skin.

      “You don’t,” Ben said. “We’re teaching class today.”

      Chapter 3

      Liberated from her pattern of work, home, sleep, repeat, Carey now understood how limited her looping path of the Circle City had been. She’d missed major changes. Indianapolis, solid predictable Midwest mid-sized burgers and fries, morphed daily into a different city. More alien than Mexico had been when she’d first arrived.

      Free mornings sans time clock, she lingered over the newspaper, examining numbers on immigration figures and photos illustrating the “new diversity”: at the bus stop, uniformed Hispanic women in either the tight black pants associated with food service or looser, gray custodian’s jumpsuits. Dark-skinned men in tri-colored jerseys kicked soccer balls in the park. Legs short and quick, black cleats still clumped with Mexican soil.

      Hispanic executives who’d been at their companies for years were now featured in profiles. Caucasian female news anchors carefully enunciated Sink-Oh Day My-Oh, wrapping their lipsticked mouths around names like Gutierrez and Almogordo. In broadcast school, they had painstakingly mastered the Midwestern non-accent, only to land squarely in the Midwest, where they now learned to pronounce Spanish. Everyone loved Maria Cortez on Channel Two—bilingual, lovely Maria, quick to translate rapid-fire Spanish.

      But TV was one thing. In Walmart, you could sense the wariness over the unfamiliar Spanish chatter. Cagey Americans, unaware that they were just as loose-mouthed in English. Just as quick to a bargain, fingering a cheap sweater on a rack, convincing a daughter that it didn’t really look