T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

The broad face cracked open, the salesman's laugh rang out, and Delaney imagined how thoroughly sick of that laugh the other salesmen must have been, not to mention the secretaries, the service manager and Kenny Grissom's wife, if he had one. He was sick of it himself. But he signed the papers and he got his car and after Kenny handed him the keys, slapped him on the back and told him the story of the woman who'd wrecked two brand-new cars just driving out of the lot, Delaney sat there for a long while, getting used to the seats and new-car smell and the subtle difference between this model and the one he was familiar with. Little things, but they annoyed him out of all proportion. He sat there, running sweat, grimly reading through the owner's manual, though he was late for his lunch date with Kyra. Finally, he put the car in gear and eased it out onto the road, taking surface streets all the way, careful to vary speeds and keep it under fifty, as the manual advised.

He drove twice round the block past the Indian restaurant in Woodland Hills, where they'd agreed to meet, but there was no parking at this hour: lunch was big business. The valet parking attendant was Mexican, of course-Hispanic, Latino, whatever-and Delaney sat there in his new car with thirty-eight miles on the odometer, seat belt fastened, hand on the wheel, until the driver behind him hit his horn and the attendant-he was a kid, eighteen, nineteen, black shining anxious eyes-said, “Sir?” And then Delaney was standing there in the sun, his shirt soaked through, another morning wasted, and the tires chirped and his new car shot round the corner of the building and out of sight. There were no personalized license plates this time, just a random configuration of letters and numbers. He didn't even know his own plate number. He was losing control. A beer, he thought, stepping into the dark coolness of the restaurant through the rear door, just one. To celebrate.

The place was crowded, businesspeople perched over plates of _tandoori__ chicken, housewives gossiping over delicate cups of Darjeeling tea and coffee, waiters in a flurry, voices riding up and down the scale. Kyra was sitting at a table near the front window, her back to him, her hair massed over the crown of her head like pale white feathers. A Perrier stood on the table before her, a flap of _nan__ bread, a crystal dish of lime pickle and mango chutney. She was bent over a sheaf of papers, working.

“What kept you?” she said as he slid into the chair across from her. “Any problems?”

“No,” he murmured, trying to catch the waiter's attention. “I just had to drive slow, that's all-you know, till it's broken in.”

“You did get the price we agreed on? They didn't try anything cute at the last minute-?” She looked up from her papers, fixing him with an intent stare. A band of sunlight cut across her face, driving the color from her eyes till they were nearly translucent.

He shook his head. “No surprises. Everything's okay.”

“Well, where is it? Can I see it?” She glanced at her watch. “I have to run at one-thirty. I'm closing that place in Arroyo Blanco-on Dolorosa? — and then, since I'll be so close, I want to stop in and see that there're no screwups with the fence company…”

They'd got a variance from the Arroyo Blanco Zoning Committee on the fence height in their backyard, as a direct result of what had befallen poor Sacheverell, and they were adding two feet to the chain-link fence. Kyra hadn't let Osbert out of her sight since the attack, insisting on walking him herself before and after work, and the cat had been strictly confined to the house. Once the fence was completed, things could go back to normal. Or so they hoped.

“I left the car out back,” he said, “with the parking attendant.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe after lunch, if you still…” He trailed off. What he wanted to tell her was how angry he was, how he hadn't wanted a new car-the old one barely had twenty thousand miles on it-how he felt depressed, disheartened, as if his luck had turned bad and he was sinking into an imperceptible hole that deepened centimeter by centimeter each hour of each day. There'd been a moment there, handing over the keys to the young Latino, when he felt a deep shameful stab of racist resentment-did they _all__ have to be Mexican? — that went against everything he'd believed in all his life. He wanted to tell her about that, that above all else, but he couldn't.

“I'm out front,” she said, and they both looked out the window to where Kyra's midnight-blue Lexus sat secure at the curb.

The waiter appeared then, a pudgy balding man who spoke in the chirping singsong accent of the Subcontinent. Delaney ordered a beer-“To celebrate my new car,” he explained sourly to Kyra's lifted eyebrows-and asked for a menu.

“Certainly, sir,” the waiter barked, and his eyes seemed to jump round in their sockets, “but the lady has-”

“I've already ordered,” Kyra said, cutting him off and laying a hand on Delaney's arm. “You were late and I've got to run. I just got us a veggie curry and a bite of salad, and some _samosas__ to start.”

That was fine, but Delaney felt irritated. It wasn't lunch-at this point he didn't care what he ate-it was the occasion. He wasn't materialistic, not really, and he never bought anything on impulse, but when he did make a major purchase he felt good about it, good about himself, the future of the country and the state of the world. That was the American way. Buy something. Feel good. But he didn't feel good, not at all. He felt like a victim.

Kyra hurried him through the meal and he drank the beer-one of those oversized Indian beers-too quickly, so that he felt a little woozy with the blast of the sun in the parking lot. He handed the ticket to one of the slim young sprinting Mexicans in shiny red vests and glanced up at the roof of the restaurant, where a string of starlings stared hopefully back at him. “I'll just take a quick look,” Kyra said, pinching her purse under one arm and leaning forward to leaf through the papers in her briefcase, “and then I've got to run.”

It was then that they heard the dog barking, a muffled hoarse percussive sound that seemed to be emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once. Barking. It was a curiosity. Delaney idly scanned the windows of the apartment building that rose up squarely just beyond the line of parked cars, expecting to see a dog up there somewhere, and then he glanced behind him at an empty strip of pavement, begonias in pots, a couple emerging from the rear of the restaurant. A car went noisily up the street. Kyra looked up from her briefcase, cocked her head, listening. “Do you hear a dog somewhere?”

“Aw, the poor thing,” a woman's voice breathed behind them and Kyra turned long enough to see where the woman was pointing: two-thirds of the way down the line of cars Was a green Jeep Cherokee, the window barely cracked and the black snout of an Afghan pressed to the opening. They could see the jaws fitfully working, the paw raised to the window. Two more percussive barks trailed off into a whine. It was all Kyra needed.

Purse and briefcase dropped like stones and she was off across the lot, hammering at the pavement with the spikes of her heels, her stride fierce with outrage and self-righteousness. Delaney watched numbly as she stalked up to the Jeep's door and tried the handle. He could see the frustration in the set of her shoulders as she tugged savagely at it, once, twice, and then whirled round and came marching back across the lot, a dangerous look on her face.

“It's a crime,” the woman behind him said and Delaney felt compelled to give her a quick look of acknowledgment. The man beside her-natty dresser, a wide painted tie standing out at an angle from his throat-looked impatiently round for one of the attendants, the parking stub clutched in his hand.