The Tortilla Curtain

by T. C. Boyle

  “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.

  Delaney’s car and Kyra arrived at the same instant, and as the attendant jumped out to collect his tip, Kyra took hold of his arm. “Whose car is that?” she demanded, indicating the green Jeep. “The one with the dog in it.”

  The attendant’s face drew in on itself; his eyes flashed on the Jeep and then came back to Kyra. “Doan know,” he said. “This,” pointing from the Acura to Delaney, “him.” He held up the ticket stub to show her.

  “I know that,” Kyra said, raising her voice in exasperation. “What I want to know is whose car is that”—pointing again—“because they’re breaking the law locking a dog in like that. The animal could die of heat exhaustion, you understand?”

  He didn’t understand. “Doan know,” he repeated, and broke away from her to snatch the stub from the man in the painted tie and dash across the lot.

  “Hey!” Kyra shouted, the furrow Delaney knew so well cut like a scar between her furious eyes. “Come back here! I’m talking to you!”

  Three men emerged from the restaurant in a burst of laughter, fumbling for their sunglasses; a fourth man stood in the doorway behind them, patting down his pockets for the parking stub. “Honey, Kyra,” Delaney coaxed, catching at her arm, “calm down, we’ll ask in the restaurant—” But she was already on her way, brushing past the knot of men with her shoulders held rigid, purse and briefcase forgotten, while the new Acura softly purred at the curb, door flung open wide, keys in the ignition. It took him a moment to reach in for the keys, scoop up her purse and briefcase and dodge back into the restaurant.

  Kyra was standing in the front room, sizzling in the light through the window, the smell of curry hanging like a pall over the place, clapping her hands like an athletic coach. “Excuse me,” she called out, “excuse me!” Conversations died. Waiters froze. The maître d’ looked up miserably from his stand behind the potted palm at the front door, ready for anything. “Does anybody here own a green Jeep? License plate number 8VJ237X?”

  No one responded. The waiters began to move. The maître d’ relaxed.

  “Well somebody must own it,” Kyra insisted, appealing to the crowd. “It’s parked in the lot out back with a dog locked in it—an Afghan.” People had turned away from her; conversations resumed. She clapped her hands again. “Are you listening to me?” she demanded, and Delaney saw the maitre d’s face change all over again. “An Afghan? Does anybody here own an Afghan?”

  Delaney was at her side now. “Kyra,” he said softly, “come on. It must be somebody else. We’ll ask outside again.”

  She came, reluctantly, muttering under her breath—“I can’t believe these people, can you imagine somebody being so stupid, so unaware?” —and for a moment Delaney forgot about the miserable morning, the new car, the theft and the Mexican and his growing sense of confusion and vulnerability: she was glorious in her outrage, a saint, a crusader. This was what mattered. Principles. Right and wrong, an issue as clear-cut as the on/off switch on the TV. In that instant, the cloud was dispelled, and he felt a kind of elation that floated on the wings of the beer and made him feel that everything would ultimately work out for the best.

  As soon as they passed back through the door and into the glare of the lot, the feeling was gone, killed in the cradle: the green Jeep was there, at the door, and the man who’d been patting down his pockets for the ticket stub was handing the attendant a folded-up bill. Kyra was on him like a bird of prey.

  “Are you the one?” she cried, snatching at the door handle.

  The man was of medium height, a little bit of a paunch, long blondish hair swept back in a graying ponytail, blue metallic discs for sunglasses. He wore a tiny diamond stud in his left ear. “Excuse me?” he said, and Delaney could see the dog panting behind him in the passenger’s seat.

  “Do you know you locked that poor animal in the car, in this heat—?”

  The man stood there, looking from Kyra to Delaney and back again. The attendant had vanished from sight. “So what of it?” the man said.

  “What of it?” Kyra threw the words back at him in astonishment. “Don’t you know you could’ve killed the poor animal? Don’t you care?”

  “Kyra,” Delaney said.

  She threw him a furious look and turned back on the man with the ponytail. “They could take the dog away from you, are you aware of that? Animal Control, by law, can break into any vehicle with a pet locked in it and—”

  Something happened to the man’s face beneath the dead blue discs of his glasses. His jaw set. His lip curled. “Why don’t you just fuck off, lady,” he said finally, and he stood there rigid as a statue, holding his ground.

  “Now wait a minute,” Delaney said, stepping forward, the purse and bri
efcase still clutched in his arms.

  The man regarded him calmly. The dog had begun to whine. “Fuck you too, Jack,” the man said, and then he very slowly, very deliberately, eased himself into the car, shut the door and rolled up the window. The locks clicked. Delaney pulled Kyra aside and the Jeep was gone, a belligerent cloud of exhaust left hanging in its place.

  Kyra was trembling. So was Delaney. He hadn’t been in a fight since high school, and for good reason—he’d lost that one, badly, and the humiliation of it still stung him. “I can’t believe—” Kyra said.

  “Me either.”

  “They should lock people like that up.”

  “I don’t know why everybody has to be so, so”—he was searching for the right word—“so nasty all the time.”

  “Urban life,” Kyra said, and there was a depth of bitterness to the pronouncement that surprised him. He wanted to say something more, wanted to pursue it, have another beer, a cup of coffee, anything, but she glanced at her watch and gave out a gasp. “My god,” she said, snatching the purse and briefcase back from him, “I’ve got to run.” He watched her hurry up the sidewalk and disappear round the corner at the front of the building, and all the gloom and anger came up on him again.

  What next? he thought, sinking wearily into the car seat. He hadn’t sat there half a second before some moron was honking behind him, and he jerked the car angrily out into the street, ignoring the manufacturer’s warnings, and roared up Ventura Boulevard for the canyon road.

  He was in a rage, and he tried to calm himself. It seemed he was always in a rage lately—he, Delaney Mossbacher, the Pilgrim of Topanga Creek—he who led the least stressful existence of anybody on earth besides maybe a handful of Tibetan lamas. He had a loving wife, a great stepson, his parents had left him enough money so he didn’t have any worries there, and he spent most of his time doing what he really wanted to do: write and think and experience nature. So what was the problem? What had gone wrong? Nothing, he told himself, accelerating round a car trying to make an illegal U-turn, nothing at all. And then it came to him: the day was shot anyway, so why not go straight out into the hills? If that didn’t calm him, nothing would.

  It was barely two. He could go out to Stunt Road and hike up in the hills above the ocean—he wouldn’t have to be back until five for Jordan, and they could go out to eat. He turned west on Mulholland and followed it to where the houses began to fall away and the stark naked hills rose up out of the chaparral, and he cranked down the windows to let the heat and fragrance of the countryside wash over him. For once, he’d have to do without his daypack—he always carried a smaller satchel with sunscreen and bottled water no matter where he went, even if it was only to the supermarket or the Acura dealer, and he glanced over at it on the slick new spotless seat beside him. If he went home for his things he’d have to deal with the fence people—somebody new, somebody Kyra had got through the office—and he just wasn’t in the mood for any more hassles today.

  When he got there, to the place where the trail crossed the road and a narrow dirt parking strip loomed up on the left, he cut across the blacktop and eased the car in: no sense in scratching it the first day. There were no other cars—that was a good sign: he’d have the trail to himself—and he stepped out into the grip of the heat that radiated off the hills with all the intensity of a good stacked split-log fire. The heat didn’t bother him, not today. It was good just to be away from all that smog, confusion and sheer—he came back to the word—nastiness. The way the guy had just said “fuck you” to his wife, when he was in the wrong and anybody could see it. And Kenny Grissom. The hordes of the poor and downtrodden. Jack. The theft.

  It was then that he stood back and looked at the car for the first time, really looked at it. Brand new. Not a scratch on it. Not a dent or ding. He thought: Maybe I should go down into Tarzana to the car wash and have it waxed, to protect it, just in case. And then he thought: No, I’m here, I’ll hike. He smeared his face with sunblock, tucked the bottle of mineral water down his shirt and started off up the trail.

  He didn’t get far. He kept thinking about that new car—forty miles on it and four and a half thousand dollars on top of the insurance—and how vulnerable it was sitting there beside the road. Sure, this wasn’t as busy as the canyon road, but if they’d got the first car, what was to stop them from getting this one too? The fact that it was quieter out here just played into their hands, didn’t it? Fewer people to see the crime, as if anybody would do anything about it anyway. And any car parked here guaranteed that the owner would be away from it for hours.

  Suddenly, without thinking, he sank into the brush no more than a hundred yards from the road. He could see the car glittering in the sunlight through the stalks and branches of the vegetation that lined the trail. He was being paranoiac, that was all—you couldn’t hold on to everything, could you? He knew that, but for the moment he didn’t care. He was just going to sit here, sit here through the afternoon, hidden in the bushes, sit here and watch.

  The waves washed over her, back and forth through the speakers, wearing the corners smooth, buffing her like a shell, mother-of-pearl, and by the time the seagulls chimed in with their eerie faraway cries, she’d forgotten all about the green Jeep, the jerk with the ponytail and his poor pathetic dog. She was going to have to stop in at the office for a minute, and then it was up the hill to Arroyo Blanco to congratulate the Kaufmans on their new home and hand-deliver her little housewarming present—a fifty-dollar gift certificate for two at Emilio’s and a pair of tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Most realtors wouldn’t have bothered, but that was what set Kyra apart, and she knew it. The little things, the courtesies and reminders, the birthday cards and the inexpensive but tasteful gifts meant more than a hundred open houses. Goodwill, that’s what counted. She’d tried to explain it time and again to Delaney, but he had no head for business, and that was just as well—no reason to have two marketing geniuses in the house. But she knew that people in her area changed their place of residence once every 3.7 years, and that they had cousins, children, parents and old college roommates who needed housing too. And when the time came to list their property, they would go to Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher, the empress of goodwill.

  She was in and out of the office, and then she realized she was going to need gas to get up the canyon and then cross back over the hill to the place she was showing at four in Monte Nido. The station she liked, where they still had old-fashioned service and only charged you thirty-five cents a gallon more for it, was at the corner of Ventura and Fallbrook, so she’d have to backtrack past the restaurant—but she still had plenty of time. The Kaufmans weren’t expecting her till two-forty-five, and that would still leave her fifteen minutes or so to stop home and check up on the fence people.

  She was right on schedule, but she was destined to be late, though she didn’t yet realize it, as she pulled out of the gas station, heading east. For Kyra, this stretch of Ventura Boulevard was among the most familiar stretches of road in the world, and because it was her business she kept a sharp eye out for change—restaurants closing, stores opening, condos going up—but it was still capable of surprising her. As it did now. Two blocks up, at Shoup, she noticed a group of men gathered round the 7-Eleven parking lot. They were Mexicans, looking for work. They’d started appearing along here about two years back, but there’d never been more than a handful of them. Now there must have been fifty or more, clustered in groups just off the parking lot and stretched in a ragged line all the way back to where the road snaked under the freeway overpass. This was a new development, which warranted checking up on, and she swung impulsively into the parking lot, nearly running down a pair of short dark men stationed at the entrance. The men didn’t look alarmed, only hopeful.

  This was not a good situation. There were too many of them here and that was the sort of thing that scared buyers away from the area. Not that this stretch of the boulevard—single- and double-story older commercial buildings—was
exactly her cup of tea, but there were homes five blocks from here that would go for four and five hundred thousand even now. She pulled into a space in front of the store and found an excuse to go in—she could use a package of gum, a Diet Coke maybe. None of the men dared approach her in the lot—the 7-Eleven manager would have seen to that—but they all watched her as she stepped out of the car, and their eyes were wistful, proud, indifferent. They’d take on another look if she crossed the lot.

  There were two women behind the counter, both Asian, both young. They smiled at Kyra when she came in the door, kept smiling as she went back to the cooler, selected her Diet Coke and made her way back to the counter. They smiled as she selected her gum. “Find everything?” the shorter of the two asked.

  “Yes,” Kyra said. “Thank you.” And this gave her her opening. “There seem to be a lot of men out there on the sidewalk—more than usual, no?”

  The shorter girl—she seemed to be in charge—shrugged. “No more, no less.”

  “Bad for business, no?” Kyra said, falling into the rhythm of the girl’s fractured English.

  Another shrug. “Not bad, not good.”

  Kyra thanked her and stepped back out into the heat. She was about to slip into the air-conditioned envelope of the car and be on her way, when she suddenly swung round and crossed the lot to where the men were gathered. Now the looks were different—all the men stared at her, some boldly, some furtively. If this were Tijuana they’d be grabbing for her, making lewd comments, jeering and whistling, but here they didn’t dare, here they wanted to be conspicuous only to the right people, the people who needed cheap labor for the day, the afternoon, the hour. She imagined them trading apocryphal stories of the beautiful gringa who selected the best-built man for a special kind of work, and tried to keep a neutral look on her face.