Trip Through Your Wires. Sarah Layden

against thin cotton. “The kids will smell it.”

      Carey paused briefly, looking up at the sky, which was largely blocked by a Hooters billboard. Carey dropped her barely-smoked cigarette on the ground, stamping her heel.

      “You didn’t have to do that,” Nicole said, softening. “But thanks.”

      “I aim to please,” Carey said.

      “You do, don’t you.” Nicole studied her. “What’s the deal with work?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I mean, you’re not there today, and you’re wearing jeans.” Nicole flipped her braid over one shoulder, waiting. She might’ve looked at her watch. She might’ve been scratching her wrist.

      “I got let go,” Carey said.

      “Carey, no.” Nicole sounded sympathetic but not surprised. “What’ll you do now?”

      “I don’t know, get another job?”

      “You don’t have to be so sarcastic. Can you take me back to work? Bob dropped me here. My car’s in the shop.”

      Carey unlocked the car and they got in. The interior smelled of smoke, less pungent than the inside of McAlestar’s bar. Bob’s bar.

      “You quit smoking for Bob,” Carey said. “And Derek. Your men don’t smoke.”

      Nicole’s blue eyes gleamed. “Can’t I quit for me? Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

      Carey knew that the more she asked the less forthcoming Nicole would be. A characteristic they shared.

      “Nope,” Carey said, shifting into gear and driving north on High School Road. In her peripheral vision, Nicole smiled her Cheshire cat smile. They were back in synch. One of those rare instances when the action and the talk line up perfectly on a screen.

      •

      They passed the vacant strip mall where the chain grocery store used to be. Tenants had fled once the store relocated to the Northside. At one end of the plaza, a small white banner hung over the door of the old frozen yogurt shop. It read “Bienvenido a Nuestra Tienda.” Colorful canned goods were stacked in the windows.

      Years earlier, Carey’s mother had complained about the influx of Hispanic immigrants on the West side. “They can keep their restaurants,” she’d say, “as long as I’ve got the toehold in potpourri. Ladies who lunch pay out the nose for that stuff.” Some months before Carey’s study-abroad program in Mexico, she overheard her mother on the phone: “Maybe I should compete with them. Expand into a drive-thru. You want beans with that?” Her laughter pealed throughout the kitchen. Carey was certain that whichever friend was on the other end of the line was agreeing with her mother.

      Carey tried to explain that the comments were inappropriate, but her mother claimed she was joking. Carey, a sociology major and Spanish minor, politely refrained from mentioning that Gwen Halpern was also a lady who lunched.

      Now Carey pointed to the small Mexican grocery. “Looks new. Have you been?”

      “Can’t you get that stuff at Kroger?” Nicole asked. “And cheaper?”

      A mile later, the new strip mall appeared from nowhere. The flat buildings sprouted and sprawled, prolific as mushrooms.

      Casa Colmo had gotten a new sign since her lunch days before. Now red-and-green chile peppers flanked the letters. Last time, she hadn’t noticed the cardboard sign in the window: Se Emplea. Now Hiring.

      The shifting, weak sunlight highlighted the glass door’s floor-to-ceiling etching.

      “You could work there.”

      Carey had already turned on her blinker. Not because of Nicole’s suggestion. The etched glass drew her as if her car’s alignment had gone bad.

      “I was kidding,” Nicole said.

      “No, it’s a good idea.”

      “I have to get back to work.”

      “I’ll just be a minute. In and out. I promise.”

      Nicole muttered an indecipherable complaint and pulled out her cell phone. Carey still didn’t have—or need—a cell phone.

      The restaurant door’s wooden handle was smooth beneath her palm; she lingered over it. She could say the door was locked. She could appease Nicole and say she’d come back later. Somehow her hand moved of its own volition, the door opened, and she walked inside to a wave of fried tortillas, the upbeat trill of Tejano music. At a long table in the center of the room, ten or so Latinos folded new, laminated menus. They were laughing, speaking loudly. Only one woman sat at the table: the same woman from Carey’s last visit, holding court. Her long, blue-black hair fell across the shoulders of her tight red T-shirt. The men were teasing her, and she shook her head. “Tell them to stop, Juan,” she said in Spanish, turning to the waiter who had to be her brother. The almond-shaped eyes gave them away.

      The mood was far cheerier than the other day, when Ben’s passport was featured on the noon news. Now, the musical words, the scent of tortillas emanating from the kitchen—Carey inhaled it all. This place four miles from her house was not just a Mexican restaurant. Somehow she continued to enter new versions of a city she thought she knew.

      Strangely, she felt homesick.

      The man with the dark hair falling in his eyes noticed Carey standing at the door. He nudged the man next to him, signaling a chain reaction of quiet around the table.

      “Buenos tardes,” the floppy-haired man said in Spanish. He averted his eyes. The others just stared.

      Carey said, “You’re hiring? Quiero trabajar.”

      Spanglish. A few of the men snickered. The woman, perhaps a few years older than Carey, assessed her, and Carey became conscious of her jeans—stained on one thigh from a dollop of chicken salad at lunch—and her pilled black sweater. Her brown hair, shoulder-length and quickly blown dry, probably needed brushing. These things always occurred to her too late.

      “Ha trabajado en un restaurante?” the woman asked.

      “No, but you need someone who speaks English,” she said in slow Spanish. “Hardly anyone in this city speaks Spanish.”

      Immediately she blushed. Of course, Mexicans in Indianapolis spoke Spanish. The city had a consulate, Maria Cortez at six and eleven. This table full of gaping men in front of her.

      The woman crossed the room. She was a few inches shorter than Carey. She held out her hand. “Elena Morales,” she said, without any accent. “I speak English.”

      Carey introduced herself, unsure of which language to choose.

      “The church on the door—is it in Guanajuato?” Carey asked.

      Elena appraised her. “Yes, the town of Dolores Hidalgo. Our home.”

      “I love that place,” Carey said. “One of the most beautiful spots in Mexico.”

      A flexible truth. She’d visited Dolores Hidalgo, a small town about an hour away from the city of Guanajuato, on a day trip with other students. At its center, Dolores Hidalgo had a lovely, colonial square, the magnificent church, and streets of shops selling pottery, clothing and trinkets. Tourism was its main industry. But the outlying lanes showed disrepair, the vegetable stands measly and swarmed with flies. The outskirts were rough farming areas, covered with nopales and rocky hillsides. She’d been examining the tables of ceramics and skeleton puppets when a man had called from across the street: Guera, I follow you. Guera meant blond but also meant white. He mirrored her for a full block, never crossing over. But he could’ve.

      Now she used Dolores Hidalgo like a bargaining chip. So she’d been there a day, when she was twenty-one. So she hadn’t loved it. These were small matters.

      Elena’s mouth softened into something like a smile.