T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

_7__

DELANEY WAS IN A HURRY. HE'D BEEN COOKING DOWN his marinara sauce since two and the mussels were already in the pot and steaming when he discovered that there was no pasta in the house. The table was set, the salad tossed, Kyra due home any minute, Jordan transfixed by his video game, the pasta water boiling. But no pasta. He decided to take a chance, ten minutes down the road, ten minutes back up: Jordan would be okay. “Jordan,” he called, poking his head in the door of the boy's room, “I'm going down to Gitello's for some pasta. Your mother'll be here any minute. If there's an emergency, go next door to the Cherrystones'. Selda's home. I just talked to her. Okay?”

The back of the boy's head was reedy and pale, the seed pod of some exotic wildflower buffeted by the video winds, a twitch here, a shoulder shrug there, the forward dip of unbroken, inviolable concentration.

“Okay?” Delaney repeated. “Or do you want to come with me? You can come if you want.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what? Are you coming or staying?”

There was a pause during which Delaney adjusted to the room's dim artificial light, the light of a cell or dungeon, and felt the fierce unyielding grip of the little gray screen. The shades were down and the rapid-fire blasts and detonations of the game were the only sounds, relieved at intervals by a canned jingle. He thought then of the house burning down with Jordan in it, Jordan aflame and barely aware of it-ten minutes down the road, ten minutes back up-and realized he couldn't leave him even for a second, even with Selda right next door and the mussels getting tough and the water boiling and Kyra due home. The kid was six years old and the world was full of nasty surprises-look what had happened to the dog in their own backyard. What was he thinking?

Jordan never even turned his head. “Stay,” he murmured.

“You can't stay.”

“I don't want to go.”

“You have to go.”

“Mom'll be home in a minute.”

“Get in the car.”

No traffic coming down the hill at this hour-it was nearly six-and Delaney made it in eight minutes, despite having to sit behind two cars at the gate that had gone up this afternoon to keep the riffraff out of the Elysian Groves of Arroyo Blanco Estates. The parking lot was crowded though, commuters with strained looks shaking the stiffness out of their joints as they lurched from their cars and staggered through the door in search of the six-pack, the prechopped salad (just add the premixed dressing) and the quart of no-fat milfla _Zip, bang, zing-zing-zing.__ “Uh-uh.”

And then Delaney was in full flight, springing up off his toes-and what else did they need: milk? bread? coffee? — his shoulders hunched defensively as he sought the gaps between the massed flesh and dilatory carts of his fellow shoppers. He had the pasta tucked under his arm-perciatelli, imported, in the blue-and-yellow box-and two baguettes, a wedge of Romano, a gallon of milk and a jar of roasted peppers clutched to his chest, when he ran into Jack Jardine. He'd been thinking about the horned lizard he'd seen on his afternoon hike (or horned toad, as most people erroneously called it) and its wonderful adaptation of ejecting blood from its eye sockets when threatened, and he was right on top of Jack before he noticed him.

It was an awkward moment. Not only because Delaney was practically jogging down the aisle and almost blundered into him, but because of what had happened at the meeting a week and a half ago. Looking back on it, Delaney had a nagging suspicion that he'd made a fool of himself. “Jack,” he breathed, and he could feel his face going through all the permutations before settling on an exculpatory smile.

Jack was cocked back on one hip, his jacket buttoned, tie crisp, a plastic handbasket dangling from his fingertips. Two bottles of Merlot were laid neatly in the basket, their necks protruding from one end. He looked good, as usual, in a pale double-breasted suit that set off his tan and picked up the color of his tight blond beard. “Delaney,” he said, leaning forward to reach for a jar of marinated artichoke hearts, his own smile lordly and bemused. He set the jar in his basket and straightened up. “You were pretty exercised the other night,” he observed, showing his teeth now, the full rich jury-mesmerizing grin. “You even took me by surprise.”

“I guess I got carried away.”

“No, no: you were right. Absolutely. It's just that you know as well as I do what our neighbors are like-if you don't keep to the agenda you've got chaos, pure and simple. And the gate thing is important, probably the single most important agendum we've taken up in my two years as president.”

For a moment Delaney saw the phantom car again, creeping down Piñon Drive with its speakers thumping like the pulse of some monstrous heart. He blinked to drive the image away. “You really think so? To me, I say it's unnecessary-and, I don't know, irresponsible somehow.”

Jack gave him a quizzical look. “Irresponsible?”

Delaney shifted his burden, milk from the right hand to the left, baguettes under the arm, pasta to his chest. “I don't know. I lean more to the position that we live in a democracy, like the guy in the shorts said at the meeting… I mean, we all have a stake in things, and locking yourself away from the rest of society, how can you justify that?”

“Safety. Self-protection. Prudence. You lock your car, don't you? Your front door?” A cluck of the tongue, a shift from one hip to the other, blue eyes, solid as stone. “Delaney, believe me, I know how you feel. You heard Jack Cherrystone speak to the issue, and nobody's credentials can touch Jack's as far as being liberal is concerned, but this society isn't what it was-and it won't be until we get control of the borders.”

The borders. Delaney took an involuntary step backwards, all those dark disordered faces rising up from the streetcorners and freeway on-ramps to mob his brain, all of them crying out their human wants through mouths full of rotten teeth. “That's racist, Jack, and you know it.”

“Not in the least-it's a question of national sovereignty. Did you know that the U. S. accepted more immigrants last year than all the other countries of the world _combined__-and that half of them settled in California? And that's _legal__ immigrants, people with skills, money, education. The ones coming in through the Tortilla Curtain down there, those are the ones that are killing us. They're peasants, my friend. No education, no resources, no skills-all they've got to offer is a strong back, and the irony is we need fewer and fewer strong backs every day because we've got robotics and computers and farm machinery that can do the labor of a hundred men at a fraction of the cost.” He dropped his hand in dismissal. “It's old news.”

Delaney set the milk down on the floor. He was in a hurry, dinner on the stove, Jordan in the car, Kyra about to walk in the door, but in the heat of the moment he forgot all about it. “I can't believe you,” he said, and he couldn't seem to control his free arm, waving it in an expanding loop. “Do you realize what you're saying? Immigrants are the lifeblood of this country-we're a nation of immigrants-and neither of us would be standing here today if it wasn't.”

“Clichés. There's a point of saturation. Besides which, the Jardines fought in the Revolutionary War-you could hardly call us immigrants.”

“Everybody's an immigrant from somewhere. My grandfather came over from Bremen and my grandmother was Irish-does that make me any less a citizen than the Jardines?”

A woman with frosted hair and a face drawn tight as a drumskin ducked between them for a jar of olives. Jack worked a little grit into his voice: “That's not the point. Times have changed, my friend. Radically. Do you have any idea what these people are costing us, and not just in terms of crime; but in real tax dollars for social services? No? Well, you ought to. You must have seen that thing in the Times a couple weeks ago, about the San Diego study?”