Trip Through Your Wires. Sarah Layden

curitas,” he said, though he usually spoke English with her. She had no bandages, hadn’t even carried a purse. They headed to the stairs, Ben limping with his knee straight.

      They forgot about her portrait, the one he’d promised to shoot, documenting her first time abroad, and the rooftop, that plainest and most significant of landmarks. Ben forgot.

      Even without a picture, she remembered. They were there. They were together. Without the record, the physical artifact, she could only imagine what was real and what had changed. Of course, this photo shoot wasn’t just about him taking her picture. It would be a souvenir better than the stamp on her passport, placing her on his scene.

      Her only proof lived in her memory. They were there together, she reminded herself. It was all she had. A few weeks after that, he’d be gone, erased from this world, as fast and easy as hitting the delete key. She could see her own finger hovering there above the button.

      Chapter 1

      There is little protocol or fanfare for the replacement of a temporary employee by the person she replaced, but in Carey Halpern’s case, it meant a goodbye lunch at a newly-opened Mexican restaurant, because it was nearby and her temporary boss had a coupon.

      She wasn’t being fired, no no no. She would be compensated appropriately, depending on the temp agency’s policy for these sorts of things. It was just that her assignment turned out to be more temporary than originally expected, see?

      She did.

      She was alone, driving from the improperly quotationed Westside “Office” Building where she’d worked for the last four months with an option to renew, option now denied.

      You can take off the rest of the day, too, Senior Vice President Dave Appel had said, Paid, of course. So if you want to drive your car?

      She did.

      The Westside Indianapolis landscape scrolled by, empty big box stores at the anemic mall, burger joints, strip clubs, Burritos as Big as Your Head, and the faded springtime detritus ground into the roadside: McDonald’s cups and Coke cans and cigarette packs, windshield flyers and the occasional disintegrating diaper. This new Earth. This trash landscape.

      Her boss had given directions: It’s called Casa Colmo—you like Mexican, right? Go about a mile past Don’s Guns. She was passing the big signboard now, with the owner’s properly-quoted slogan, “I don’t want to make any money, folks, I just love to sell guns,” which he’d recited on TV throughout Carey’s childhood. The sign depicted a brown cartoon handgun.

      Now that her precarious temp status had been revoked, there remained the question of paying her parents back. She pulled into the parking lot beside Dave Appel’s Taurus and forced herself not to ding it. Not even as a fake accident. Progress.

      She didn’t have to go out to a free lunch. She debated leaving, but where would she go? Home to her parents, with whom she’d been living since she ran out of money and options in Chicago? She’d stranded Nicole without a roommate and the rent was too steep to manage alone. Nicole, back in Indy, had refused Carey’s calls for months. Now she screened and sometimes called back.

      The restaurant’s door was etched glass, an image from another time. Carey touched the hood of her car with her fingertips, as if for support. A Mexican church: one she recognized. One she had been to. The Westside was becoming repopulated in a way that felt like a memory of a dream. One bodega displayed in its window five different flavors of Jumex in colorful cans. The Kroger stocked its shelves with novena candles. “Now Hiring” signs at auto body shops and drive-thrus also read “Se Emplea.” And now this restaurant, showing her a place she’d once been.

      Dave Appel was holding open the door for her, blocking the etching with his stocky body and gray London Fog raincoat. Light perspiration beaded his forehead.

      “There’s our favorite temp!” he said. “Hey. Lunch is on me.” A fact he’d already noted before they left the “Office” building. Where she used to “work.”

      Bob and Sue from accounts were already settled into a booth and crunching complimentary chips. Free on top of free. They were here for the meal, for the camaraderie Dave Appel attempted to cultivate in his team; Carey had worked with them in brief and insignificant ways during her assignment. Collating, faxing, copying. The pair sat in the booth’s interior, against windows where starched café curtains hung, the red, white and green mirroring Mexico’s flag. The thin carpet bore outlines of a manual sweeper. The air was thick with frying tortillas and the overpowering chemical scent of the new carpet.

      “Nice,” Carey said.

      It was 12:06 p.m. They were the only customers.

      “Great news about Felicia,” Bob said around a mouthful of chips, as if Carey weren’t even there. Sue elbowed him. “Sorry,” he said.

      Carey had filled in while Felicia had undergone chemotherapy for breast cancer. Now she was in remission and ready to reclaim her rolling desk chair and plain-paper fax machine. She would wear a headscarf, Dave Appel had told Carey while essentially firing her. The occasional hat. What could Carey say to that?

      “No, it is great news,” Carey said. “I mean, how fantastic that she’s better now. Really awesome.”

      Dave Appel, a man Carey scarcely knew, eyed her. In the months of working as his office assistant (the term “secretary,” he’d told her, was demeaning), she hadn’t learned how to read his gaze: there was hunger there, or longing, or maybe he needed new glasses. Perhaps he was searching for Felicia in her face and gestures and expressions and wardrobe, and always coming up short. Carey instinctively knew “really awesome” was not a phrase Felicia would have uttered, and Carey’s skirt, a wool blend that both looked and felt lumpy, was not an item Felicia would have worn. She stuck to “tailored business casual,” Dave Appel once confided, miming air quotes, and was a “real team player.” The phrases stuck in her mind. The lumpy skirt had been a mistake. But since she’d spent the money, she made herself wear it. “Not the most flattering,” her mother had said. “But once you get a job you actually care about, maybe you’ll start caring about your appearance.”

      The hostess, a young woman with dark hair hanging loose down her back, brought menus to the table. “Gracias,” Carey said by rote, her accent perfect. The woman smiled and bowed, then gave the workers standing around the bar—all men—a look that said Get to Work. They moved into various nonessential tasks: rearranging salt and pepper shakers, re-wiping spotless surfaces, straightening a chair.

      “Muy bueno,” Dave Appel said to Carey. “Mucho talent. You’ll get a new job-o in no time.”

      Bob snickered, but Dave Appel wasn’t making fun. He was making an effort. “Trabajo,” Carey murmured. “Job is trabajo.”

      Their waiter stood before them with a pad of paper and a pen, grinning broadly. His ears stuck out like butterfly wings. His features identified him as the hostess’s kin.

      “Ready?” was all he said. Ray-deee?

      They ordered specials by number, and their burritos and tamales and plates of tacos appeared in ten minutes. The waiter brought the items on a large tray, and another waiter carried pitchers of water and pop to refill their empty glasses. His floppy dark hair fell over his dark eyes, drawing attention to them.

      “Gracias,” Carey said, trying for eye contact. Both men only nodded and smiled and walked back to the bar to join the rest of the underworked staff. The one with the hair glanced back at Carey, but only for a moment.

      Sue took a bite of refried beans and moaned. “I’m not on a diet today. It’s settled.”

      “You should think about our company Wellness Plan,” Dave Appel said. “Never diet again!”

      On two televisions fixed above the bar, the local newscast played, the volume low. The Pacers were in the playoffs. Something menacing about manure lagoons. The murder rate was lower than last year at this time. And speaking of murder, the