T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

_“Buenos,”__ the men mumbled, and then one of them, a man Cándido recognized from the exchange, spoke up. “We don't know. It was like that”-a jerk of the head-“when we got here.”

“Looks closed,” the man beside him put in.

“Yeah,” the first man said, and his voice was lifeless, “looks like the _gabachos__ don't want us here anymore.” He dropped the stub of his cigarette in the street, shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don't give a shit,” he said. “I'm going to stand right here till somebody hires me-it's a free country, isn't it?”

“Sure,” Cándido said, and the way he was feeling he couldn't hold back the sarcasm, “-as long as you're a _gringo.__ But us, we better look out.”

It was then that Candelario Pérez's familiar white pickup separated itself from the chain of commuter cars and nosed into the post office parking lot, wheeling up so close to them they had to take an involuntary step back to avoid the inconvenience of having their toes crushed. He was alone, and his face was so heavy he couldn't seem to lift it out of the car. All four of them crowded round the driver's window. “What's going on?” the first man demanded, and they all joined in, Cándido too.

“It's closed, over, _terminado.”__ Candelario Pérez spoke with an exhausted voice, and it was apparent he'd been overusing it, wasting it on deaf ears, on useless argument and pointless remonstrance. He waited a moment before going on, the _whoosh-whoosh-whoosh__ of the commuters' cars as steady as the beat of the waves on a beach. “It was the man that donated the property. He took it back. They don't want us here, that's the long and short of it. And I'll tell you something, a word of advice”-another pause-“if you don't have a green card you better make yourself scarce. La Migra's going to make a sweep here this morning. And tomorrow morning too.” The dead black eyes sank in on themselves like the eyes of an iguana and he lifted a thumbnail to his front teeth to dislodge a bit of food stuck there. He shrugged. “And probably the day after that.”

Cándido felt his jaws clench. What were they going to do now? If there was no work here anymore and _La Migra__ to make sure of it, he and America would have to leave-either that or starve to death. That meant they'd have to go into the city, down to Santa Monica or Venice, or up over the canyon and into the Valley. That meant living on the streets, exposing America to the obscenity of the handout, the filth, the dumpsters out back of the supermarkets. And they were so close-another couple weeks of steady work and they could have had their apartment, could have established themselves, could have looked for work like human beings, riding the bus in freshly laundered clothes, seeking out the back rooms and sweatshops where nobody cared if you éreáared if yhad documents or not. From there, in a year or two, they could have applied for their green cards-or maybe there would be another amnesty, who could tell? But now it was over. Now there was no more safe haven, no more camp in the woods. Now it was the streets.

In a daze, Cándido drifted away from the group gathered round the pickup, the weight of the news like a stone crushing his chest. Why not kill himself now and get it over with? He couldn't go back to Mexico, a country with forty percent unemployment and a million people a year entering the labor force, a country that was corrupt and bankrupt and so pinched by inflation that the farmers were burning their crops and nobody but the rich had enough to eat. He couldn't go back to his aunt, couldn't live off her again, butt of the entire village, couldn't face América's parents when he gave her back to them like some precious heirloom he'd borrowed and sullied. And he had a son coming, _un hijo,__ the son he'd been yearning for since the day he'd met Resurrección, and what legacy did he have to leave him? Three hundred and twenty dollars in a peanut butter jar? A house of sticks even the prehistoric Indians would have rejected? A broken-down father who couldn't feed himself, let alone his family?

He staggered past the post office, his feet like lead, past the storefronts, the bright windows, the cars lined up like ciphers of the wealth that bloomed all around him, unattainable as the moon. And what was it all about? Work, that was all. The right to work, to have a job, earn your daily bread and a roof over your head. He was a criminal for daring to want it, daring to risk everything for the basic human necessities, and now even those were to be denied him. It stank. It did. These people, these _norteamericanos:__ what gave them the right to all the riches of the world? He looked round him at the bustle in the lot of the Italian market, white faces, high heels, business suits, the, greedy eyes and ravenous mouths. They lived in their glass palaces, with their gates and fences and security systems, they left half-eaten lobsters and beefsteaks on their plates when the rest of the world was starving, spent enough to feed and clothe a whole country on their exercise equipment, their swimming pools and tennis courts and jogging shoes, and all of them, even the poorest, had two cars. Where was the justice in that?

Angry, frustrated, his face twisted into an expression that would have terrified him if he'd caught sight of himself in one of the windows he passed, Cándido shambled aimlessly through the lot. What should he do? Buy a sack of food and hole up in the canyon for a week until the Immigration lost interest and moved on? Risk hitchhiking the ten miles up into the Valley and stand on a streetcorner in the faint hope of work? Or should he just die on the spot and save the gringos the embarrassment of having to look at him? He was on his second circuit of the lot, drifting past the ranks of cars without purpose or direction, muttering to himself and refusing to look away from the startled eyes that swooped at him in alarm, when he came upon the blue-black Lexus sitting at the curb with the windows rolled down.

He was moving still, moving past it, but he couldn't help noticing the lady's purse on the passenger seat and the black leather briefcase wedged in beside it. What was in that purse-checks, cash, house keys, a little wallet with pictures and more cash? Hundreds of dollars maybe. Hundreds. Enough to take him and América right out of the woods and into an apartment in Canoga Park, enough to solve all his problems in a single stroke. And the briefcase? He imagined it crammed full of bills like in the movies, neat stacks of them bound with little strips of bank paper. To the owner of a car like that a few hundred dollars was nothing, like pennies to an ordinary person. They could just go juáould just to the bank and get more, call their insurance company, flash a credit card. But to Cándido it was the world, and in that moment he figured the world owed him something.

No one was watching him. He glanced right, left, swung round on his heels and strolled past the car again. The blood was like fire in his veins. He thought his head would explode with the pressure in his temples. _There it is, you idiot,__ he told himself, _take it. Take it now. Quick!__

And he might have, suspended in the moment between conception and action, all his glands discharging their complicated loads, but for the woman with the pale blond hair and see-through eyes making straight for him with a styrofoam cup clutched in her white, white hand. He froze. Stood there paralyzed in front of her car while she hid her eyes behind a pair of sunglasses, her heels clicking on the pavement, her skirt as tight as any whore's. She came right for him, and before he could move aside, before he could protest his innocence or fade back into invisibility, he felt the touch of her hand and his fingers closing involuntarily on the coins.

Her touch annihilated him. He'd never been more ashamed in his life, not when he was a drunk in the streets, not when Teófilo Aguadulce took his wife from him and threw him down in the square with the whole village looking on. He hung his head. Let his arms drop to his sides. He stood rooted to the spot for what seemed like hours after she'd ducked into the car, backed out of the lot and vanished, and only then did he open his hand on the two quarters and the dime that clung there as if they'd been seared into the flesh.