Читать книгу Trip Through Your Wires - Sarah Layden - Страница 9

Chapter 2

It was late when they finally arrived at the exchange school that interminably hot August. The bus ride took more than five hours from the Mexico City airport. In the capital the traffic oozed like lava, allowing Carey plenty of time to translate the billboards for ice cream and sex shops and telenovelas. A Plexiglass case housed a bullet-proof statue of an indistinguishable saint, perched on the high stone wall of a bodega. Green Volkswagen bug taxis swarmed the streets. For sale on the sidewalk: reclining, reconditioned automobile seats. Nearly forty minutes after entering the Capital, the bus emerged from the Districto Federal’s perpetual smog cloud, and Andrea Cunningham, the American program director, pointed out they were heading the wrong way.

Cesár had driven south to Cuernavaca before turning west. Outside of the city, he explained, the day was shaping up to be clear and they’d have a good view of the volcanoes. You couldn’t count on that happening again, he told Andrea, who’d been checking her watch. The bus’s broken door hinge squeaked and the door swung open when Cesár rounded a corner. Pairs of American eyes followed the door’s movement.

“Ees OK,” the bus driver told Andrea. She frowned briefly then tried a chipper expression, murmuring about locking the door. Cesár just shook his head. Held his palms up and shrugged.

Later, while the other students were dozing or plugged into music, Carey paid attention when Cesár spoke.

“La mujer,” he said.

Carey looked up and caught his eye in the rearview mirror. He pointed out the window at the mountains while driving one-handed on the curving road. “La mujer dormida.”

The sleeping woman, Carey translated. A rolling stretch of mountain, purple in the dusk against a darkening sky, curved like a woman asleep on her side. An unbreakable, impenetrable mold of breast, a hint of hip, feet. A sleep carved from rock hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Sleeping Woman was the oldest, most constant thing Carey had ever seen.

She did not yet know that the woman had a name, Ixtaccihuatl, or the myth that she was a princess who died from sorrow, falsely believing her lover had died in battle. Carey would learn that when the warrior returned and found the princess dead, he built her a pyramid, watching over her from the twin peak nearby. In the winter, glaciers formed on her breasts. Beneath, buried deep in her core, the molten life of a volcano bided time.

Carey wished for her camera, packed in her luggage below, though she knew the motion of the bus and the lighting and the film speed would blur any attempt to capture something as beautiful as the Sleeping Woman.

A pair of students began singing in Spanish; Carey understood only half the words. When she next looked out the window, the shape in the mountains had disappeared.

Carey’s head ached from altitude changes as the bus bumped and curved up the mountain road. The landscape was worth a little pain. A few students chatted or slept, but Carey sat alone, gaping out the window at the donkey alongside the highway with a man in a cowboy hat, and the eucalyptus brush and alternating green and brown hills. Isolated, crumbling houses dotted scrubby pastures. She’d lived in Indiana since birth, yet she’d never seen anything so rural and remote. The information packet had detailed that students would have email access for the first time in the exchange program’s history. In a place where people still used donkeys as transportation.

Outside the bus window, roadside stands glowed against the darkening sky. Racks of candy and bottled drinks flashed by. A shantytown of tarpapered plywood shacks clung to a patchy hillside. Hovels like she’d seen on evening news programs after war or natural disaster. Third World. Yellow sheets printed with the name “Bardahl” were pasted over some of the structures, the same motor oil logo emblazoned on race cars at the Indy 500. She glimpsed an orange fire with shadowed figures huddled around it between shacks. Nearby, a clothesline held what looked like dirty rags.

Pictures she’d seen of Guanajuato had featured colorful, crowded adobe houses, medieval architecture, churches with gilt altarpieces. Among this rubble and these huts, something close to terror clutched her.

Then they were pulling into town, through the subterranean highway, emerging into the winding, cobbled streets. The students unloaded their bags at Intercambio and shivered in the cool August night. Weak yellow lights in wire cages cast dim shadows on the side of the bus, the suitcases and duffels piled in a small mountain on the curbside. Inside the building, host families waited to claim their students. Teachers looked over the straggly, wilted crop of newcomers. Andrea Cunningham alternately hugged the staff and checked off names on her clipboard.

Conversation in Spanish, glances in Spanish, laughter and body language in Spanish. The building spoke Spanish, with its glowing fire safety signs: “Salida,” “Entrada.” Spain was in the building’s regal stucco and brick façade, in the moss that clung to shady stone.

In the parking lot, other American students shrieked a non-accented “Hola!” to their new Mexican parents and siblings. The noise bounced off the tile floor and brick walls. Host families held up signs, American names black-markered on flat pieces of cardboard.

Carey’s underarms began to perspire. She wasn’t ready to be claimed. She’d been on the plane and the bus for hours, almost a day, suspended in travel, barely thinking about the year to come. She hadn’t missed her parents. Not for the first leg of her journey, at least. Now she needed to be alone. She wasn’t going to cry, and if she was, no one would see her. There were, she knew from experience, many ways to hide. She stepped to the other side of the bus, blocking herself from the loud scene at the school.

Ben was there. She didn’t know his name yet. But she knew him. The curly brown hair, the green eyes that crinkled at the corners, the long arms that stretched skyward to catch pizza dough. She took a step backwards. She’d engineered this meeting, but hadn’t let herself believe it would actually occur. She and Nicole had made up nicknames. Pizza Guy, then The HPC, which stood for Hot Preppy Catholic, after spotting him in a Trinity Academy soccer sweatshirt. Here he stood, in the parking lot of her Mexican school, without pizza dough, without Trinity gear, fiddling with the metallic flashlight he’d unclipped from his belt. He belonged in the States, in her city. Months later, in her lowest moments, she would wish that he’d stayed there. She could not imagine Mexico without Ben. After, she had to recreate Indianapolis without him.

They’d never spoken. She’d imagined a thousand conversations and even acted out lines alone in the car, but never worked up the nerve. Now she straightened her black T-shirt and her spine and smiled.

“You don’t smoke, do you?” he asked. He stuffed the clip-on flashlight into his pocket and pulled a pop bottle from his green backpack.

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“You’re hiding. That’s a smoker kind of thing to do.”

She bristled, happily. He had tried to guess her. “You wanted to bum a cigarette, didn’t you?” she asked. This forwardness was a surprise. She tended to gravitate to a room’s corners.

“I don’t smoke,” he said.

“And I wasn’t hiding,” she said.

They both smiled. He nodded towards the school building and raised his thick eyebrows. “You getting a host family?”

Surely she would have spotted him if he had been on the bus. Did he recognize her? He spoke familiarly, watched her with interest, but that meant nothing. Everything.

“Of course I am,” she said, cartoon-character fast.

He uncapped the Coke and took a swig. Amused, he idly wiped his mouth.

“Hey,” she said, “can I have some of that?”

He passed the bottle without hesitation. She drank, silencing herself. They stood face to face, closer than they’d ever been. Sweat trickled into her bra. She had an urge to touch his hair. She wanted to mess it up.

But she didn’t. She wouldn’t have. Instead, the sugar rushed straight to her head, and she bent over quickly at the waist as the familiar black danced across her eyes. Sometimes she’d get a head rush after finishing a long run, six or seven miles. Her high school cross country coach claimed she’d get a cramp in her side from doubling over so soon after running. She never listened. She knew her body and what it needed.

When she leaned over, her head struck Ben’s forearm. Their first contact. Blood rushed to her cheeks, her forehead.

“It’s the altitude,” he said. “Happens to everybody. You okay?”

She assured him she was fine. She breathed for a moment before slowly rising, waiting for the black spots to fade. She heard the shuffling of footsteps before she connected them to a person. Mike Gibley, standing before her for the first time, wearing a tight t-shirt that showed off his muscles. Carey remembered her first impression: cocky, unimpressed with her. But she’d been wrong. He was like a bird, feathers puffed out to twice its size, preening. A different creature lived underneath, delicate-boned.

“Who’s she?”

Mike’s first words, both to her and about her. Ben and Mike had been inseparable for three years, when they were paired as roommates in their freshman dorm at Wisconsin. If Ben was singular, unmistakable, Mike was the opposite. He stood out in Mexico: blond hair, pasty mixed-European skin turned ruddy in the sun. A uniform of a T-shirt and khaki shorts, a ball cap. Back in the States, he would’ve been at home in a frat house, at a Dave Matthews concert, driving a used Chevy with the windows rolled down. Too common to notice. After Carey was shipped back to Indianapolis, she saw his plain, indistinguishable features in men on the street, at the store. The clear, close-set blue eyes; a straight nose with a pushed-in end; the small mouth, a thin little line, the slightly fuller lower lip. She searched instead for Ben, someone she could never find. Even when he stood directly in front of her, with Mike asking, Who’s she?

“Some girl,” Ben said. “She stole my Coke.”

Ben said some girl like a compliment. An event had happened, a ping, as if Ben were a violin and a string had snapped loose. Mike crossed his thick arms over his chest. I know Ben better than anyone, he would tell Carey months later, staking claim. He and Ben had studied at Intercambio the year before. At Wisconsin, they spent years sitting across from each other in the dining hall and the Lucky Pub, where the waitress would bring two tall mugs of beer before their coats were off.

The caffeine went to Carey’s head. She smiled at both men: Ben, a familiar stranger, his flicker of interest like a permission slip. Stocky, hesitant Mike, always waiting for her next move. For the first time, she could do what she wanted. Going away to Millerton College in Dayton was not independence, as it turned out, but disguised responsibility. A dorm, followed by a perpetually dirty apartment. Comfortable, safe, boring. But the plane and bus had somehow delivered her not to a destination, but to another version of herself.

Adrenaline signaled in her hair follicles. A light sweat beaded on the small of her back. In her memory of this moment, Ben and Mike were frozen like characters on a screen. As if she’d hit the pause button on a movie, lingering over them, comparing them.

Her control over the situation was illusory. There was no movie on pause, no remote control. Ben never stuck in one place, and Mike moved behind the scenes in ways she could not see.

Still. She’d made a choice. The green backpack dangled from Ben’s shoulder, and Carey reached to unzip the front pouch. He let her. She put the half-drunk bottle back into his bag and zipped it closed.

“Now I’m unstealing it,” Carey said.

Ben smiled widely. A dimple pierced each cheek. Mike reached out a hand as if to ask, Where’s mine? Ben ignored him and patted the pocket where he’d stashed the flashlight. He stretched and yawned, bored, and the mood quickly changed. Carey’s damp shirt chilled her.

They could hear but not see the throng of people on the other side of the bus. Ben waved dismissively in the direction of the noise. “A host family, that’s good for your first year,” he said. “After that, you need freedom. Me and Mike live in the dorms.”

He spoke as casually as if it were summer camp. She’d rarely heard his voice before—Thanks, can I get change—and never directed to her. She studied up close the clarity and darkness of his green eyes, a half-smile underneath a slightly crooked nose, muscle and sinew visible beneath a white cotton T-shirt. A couple blackheads on the side of his nose. His expression bordered on a smirk. He wasn’t mocking her. She thrilled at the possibility that he might recognize her. Still. She wanted to be new.

She’d ordered pizza slices from Prisanti’s before, and he was always in the back, behind the glass, tossing. Showing off. His hands twisting a beige blob of flour and yeast into long ropes. Flattening a ball of dough into a circle and flinging it into the air. He had behind-the-back moves like a basketball player, though he only played soccer (“A cardinal sin in Indiana,” he told her later, “especially if you’re six-two.”) Despite his skills, at times he stretched the pizza dough so thin that a hole would tear. He might wad the circle into a ball and start over, but usually, he’d launch the torn dough upwards to the ceiling, where it stuck for a few minutes, then fell. Without looking up, he’d catch the sticky mess in one hand. Crowds gathered to watch the Pizza Guy at Prisanti’s. He grinned at their applause, always looking over their heads into the distance. She’d stood there, too, wrestling with the competing desires of wanting to be noticed and wanting to be obscured. The longer he went without seeing her, the longer she could look.

Andrea Cunningham still called out names. Ben placed a palm on the side of the bus for balance and adjusted his sneaker’s crinkled tongue. He glanced at her mouth, licked his lips. “I bet your family’s looking for you,” he said.

The bus blocked the school, its fluorescent lights, her host family, the start of her exchange program. She would rather have stayed in the dark with Ben. But she had been dismissed.

“Right,” she said.

He waggled his fingers at her, walking backwards. One of the Mexican teachers approached Mike with a stack of envelopes, and Mike drifted off without saying goodbye. He watched her from the corner of one eye, the way he would for the next seven months. Longer.

She took a deep breath, waiting a beat. When she followed Ben’s path, he’d disappeared, swallowed by the crowd.

Andrea Cunningham consulted her roster, wiping her pink face with her polo sleeve. Her khaki pants looked permanently wrinkled.

“Halpern, Carey? There you are.”

The whole Alarcón family waited inside to greet her. Tall, thin Lupe and her husband, the shorter, muscular Hector. Their teenage daughter, Alicia, with her skinny arms and legs, her puppy gaze. And Bartolo. Lupe’s son from her first marriage, four years older than Carey, pockmarked and moody.

Carey’s face felt dirty from traveling. Her mother told her constantly, “You could use some lipstick,” but it had been hours since Carey had applied makeup. Her cheeks ached from smiling at the Alarcón family. But she continued to grin, nod, and shake her head. She tried to answer their questions, her stilted Spanish childlike.

Hector drove. Carey was wedged in back between Lupe on the right and Bartolo on the left. Fifteen-year-old Alicia sat up front and contorted her skinny body to better see Carey. She peppered her with questions. How many brothers and sisters did she have? What about a boyfriend? What’s Nueva York like?

Carey answered her new teenage sister in Spanish, increasing in pitch and volume to convey meaning she couldn’t find in words. She was an only child. No boyfriend. She’d never been to New York. Her life, to her own ears, sounded dull as cardboard. She wanted to tell them, ‘I used to have a boyfriend—just not right now,’ which was true. Or, ‘I’ve been thinking about going to New York,’ when in reality Chicago unmoored her. But her mind swam with the unanticipated difficulty of speaking Spanish, a language she’d studied throughout high school and college.

“Mija, calmate,” Hector warned Alicia. He’d barely said hello back at the school; Lupe had hugged her. Spiky black hairs poked from the back of his neck, which was thick as a wrestler’s. He was younger than his wife by a decade. His forearm muscles flexed when he gripped the steering wheel.

“Why not?” Alicia asked Carey.

“I don’t know,” Carey said. “New York’s far from where I live.”

“No,” Alicia said, impatient. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

Hector cleared his throat. His eyes found Lupe’s in the rearview mirror. He drove quickly and moved the little white sedan from lane to lane without looking, as if the cars would know to get out of the way, and they did. A rosary of black plastic beads dangled from the rearview mirror, constantly swaying.

Lupe brushed her daughter’s shoulder with her long fingers. On her left hand she wore a thin gold band and diamond ring, and on her right, another diamond, pear-shaped.

“What?” Alicia protested. “It’s a compliment. Es guapa.”

Carey smiled at Lupe to assure her it was fine, then tried to catch Bartolo’s eye. But his eyes were fixed on his lap, where his hands rested. Long, nimble fingers. He turned away. Yes, she was pretty, Alicia. No one challenged that point.

They passed through yellow-lit streets, a mix of brick and pavement, the park in the center of town with its Indian laurels and wrought-iron benches and cobblestone paths. Clustered groups wandered the plaza, ice cream in hand. The faces were brown, the clothes bright, the laughter loud. Someone strummed a guitar. Beyond the plaza were a few illuminated alleyways, wide-slab stone steps curving up a hill. Two blocks from a sixteenth-century church, an electronics store advertised a sale.

“Is this a good place to go running?” Carey asked Hector, and immediately his thick neck swiveled back and forth.

“Nunca por la noche.” Never at night.

“Claro,” she said, miffed. She knew to avoid certain potential physical threats—a dark alley or park, going home with a stranger after last call—the security system of being female. She had not yet discovered how closely Mexico guarded its women. And her host father could not provide the protection Carey really needed: a shield for her vulnerable heart and mind. At twenty-one, she wore little emotional armor.

The flashing neon of the bodegas and cafés dizzied her as they drove. In the car windows their faces reflected, half-lit and glowing: Bartolo’s cola-colored skin pocked with acne scars made deeper by the dark, Carey’s face white and pink with blank thoughts of tomorrow and the day after that. Possibility, the unknown, the wide expanse of who she might be in a place that did not know her. But she knew Ben, and he appeared in her versions of the coming year. She remembered seeing him once in the mall, wearing a Nirvana T-shirt. She’d gone to MusicTown and bought a CD, the one with the baby swimming underwater, even though she wasn’t a fan and failed to become one. Looking for clues, filling in the blanks of Ben’s life.

At the house, Lupe apologized again for keeping Carey up—You must be tired, but we’re so excited you’re here. Tall, elegant Lupe wore a yellow shift dress and flat sandals and a patterned scarf tied around her neck, like a timeless movie star. Her face was deeply creased around the eyes but still beautiful. Young Alicia carried a version of her mother inside her, velvety eyes and lush mouth waiting to upstage the baby-fat cheeks and large ears. Back home, a girl like Alicia would’ve drawn knowing glances from the women who lingered in her mother’s gift shop. “Oh, she’ll be trouble someday,” they would say. “A real heartbreaker.” Carey knew because they’d spoken the same words about her, loud enough for her to hear. A compliment that held you in place: Pretty someday. Not now.

Lupe led the tour. The kitchen smelled faintly of rotted fruit, though it was clean, with fresh mop tracks still drying on the tile floor. The open windows had no screens. Flies buzzed around the sink drain and the metal garbage can. Gross, Carey thought, trying hard not to wrinkle her nose. She immediately felt guilty when Lupe opened her arms wide and said, Mi cocina es su cocina. Her kitchen and food, offered up to a woman she’d met a half-hour before.

“Tienes hambre ahorita?” Lupe asked. Carey was hungry. On the road Cesár had pulled over to a buffet restaurant where he had playfully sparred with the young male waiter who led the group to their tables. He knew someone at each stop; he likely had been paid to stop. But that was several hours before, and she’d only picked at the unidentifiable stews of thick red and green sauces, meats marbled with fat. What would Lupe offer? She didn’t want to risk offending her host mother. Carey shook her head and stifled a yawn. “No, gracias.”

“What do Americans think about Mexicans?” Hector wanted to know. It was the one thing he’d asked her all night.

“I don’t know,” she said in Spanish, which really meant she needed to think about it. She tilted her head, as if a script might be waiting on the ceiling. “That Mexicans are, what’s the right word, more relaxed? Because of the siesta?”

Alicia giggled. Lupe busied herself with the tea tray, and Bartolo pursed his lips as if to keep from speaking. Hector grunted and headed to the stairs, muttering about a program on TV. Carey flushed, knowing she’d said the wrong thing, and called after his retreating form, “Buenos noches.” The others ignored him.

Bartolo remained with the women in the living room, seated on the arm of a pink rosette chintz chair covered in plastic. Clearly their good furniture. But it was the kind of piece her mother laughed at when they drove by discount furniture storefronts. At Finer Things, Gwen Halpern sold a few end tables and lamps, not furniture; still, she’d point at the gaudy couches and particle-board kitchen tables and ask, Should I order that for next season?

Carey tried to smile at the expectant faces around her. She felt a pang for her father, who had checked her plane ticket three times and asked if she’d packed running shoes. Make this experience yours, he’d said. She even missed her mother’s appraising eye, constantly evaluating Carey: You could use some lipstick. At least Carey knew how to talk to them.

“Give her the present,” Lupe said to Bartolo. She and her son shared the same eyes, a deep brown, long fringe of lashes, symmetrically oval. They fit Lupe perfectly and had landed her modeling jobs when she was younger. On Bartolo, the eyes softened the rough appearance of his face. He presented her with an oblong white box, tied with a red ribbon like a valentine.

“Open it!” Alicia exclaimed, before Bartolo had even given her the gift.

“Un regalo para tí,” Bartolo said.

She thanked him and carefully pulled at one end of the bow and removed the lid. Inside, on a bed of white cotton, was a dime-sized St. Christopher medallion, thin as a communion wafer, on a delicate silver chain.

“This is lovely,” she said, and he smiled.

“It’s from the store,” Alicia said. “He works in his papa’s jewelry store.”

Bartolo’s smile left his face, returning to its neutral mask. Lupe murmured indistinguishable words and crossed herself. Carey understood Bartolo’s father was dead. She barely knew her host family and could feel their sorrow. Not quite as if the pain were her own.

How little she understood pain at that point. Bartolo and Lupe’s sadness floated from them into the air, nested in the corners near the ceiling, blended into the gold-fleck pattern of the wallpaper.

“Would you put it on me?” she asked Bartolo, holding out the necklace’s clasp and hook. She knew instinctively this was the right question, though she’d never received jewelry from anyone but her parents. The necklace was a gift from the whole family, even Hector, who watched TV upstairs, the sound filtering through the ceiling. But it was clear Bartolo picked, bought, and wrapped the medallion.

He silently took the ends of the necklace in each hand, and reached around her from the front. “Tu pelo,” he said, and she lifted up her hair. He fastened the necklace. His aftershave smelled like spiced pears. He held his breath, his face flushing a purplish red, and Carey tried not to stare at his scars. He stepped back, making room between them.

“It is for luck,” he said.

When she smiled and nodded, he said it once more: “For luck.”

Carey touched the necklace at her throat when she reached the auditorium entrance on the first day of class. La Universidad Intercambio was once a private high school that now accommodated college exchange students. The program attracted more than 100 students from across the United States. In the auditorium, a brief flash of middle school who-will-I-sit-with anxiety entered her mind, and she willed it to disappear. So it did.

She surreptitiously searched for Ben. The seats were filling quickly, so she slid into a plush red aisle chair near the back. She looked up “relaxed” in her Spanish-English dictionary. Clearly, she’d said something wrong when Hector asked what Americans thought of Mexicans. She hadn’t said relajado or tranquilo, two of the words listed, and her heart sank. She paged to the back for the Spanish word, flojo. Lazy, read the entry. Flojo also could mean weak, a poor worker. Hector had risen early to work at the bank, and Lupe left an hour later for her part-time job at a women’s clothing shop. Carey wanted to cry; instead she distracted herself with pulling a spiral notebook and black pen from her shoulder bag. She placed them on her lap. She’d spent fifteen minutes that morning arranging her hair in a haphazard-looking twist. She touched it to make sure it was still intentionally out-of-place.

She’d slept lightly the night before, not only because of her uneasiness regarding Hector and vocabulary. Alicia kept her up for an extra hour in their shared bedroom. For all her teenage posturing, Alicia remained a young girl. Her bed held more than a dozen stuffed animals.

“I have always wanted a sister,” Alicia had whispered across the darkened room to Carey.

“Me, too,” Carey said, though she was just being polite. She loved being an only child: the attention and parental fussing, and also the way she was left alone. Her parents protected and cocooned Carey, unintentionally isolating her, teaching her how to isolate herself. Her bedroom and private bath were upstairs, the master bedroom downstairs. She loved her space, and they loved knowing where she was. Which made the Mexico trip something of a surprise.

As she had campaigned, the trip took on qualities of a dare: perhaps she and her parents both wished to cancel the nonrefundable tickets. Even if the thought was fleeting, no one would admit to it. Instead, they over-planned. They fought over embassy advisories, concerns about drinking water, even the proper suitcase and clothing. But the arguments fizzled easily enough. The Halperns wanted to be open-minded, despite their many misgivings about sending their daughter to a third-world country. Carey was shoving herself out of the nest.

Growing up, she spent most of her time with her parents. The Halpern trio went to dinner and concerts, like peers. Once Carey reached college, they’d let her order wine at restaurants, even though she was not yet twenty-one. But sometimes she felt like a party-crasher. When they went out to dinner and she was too old for a babysitter, she made up games that only needed one player, or would fill the roles of both competitors in a game of checkers. Once, they had returned from a party to find twelve-year-old Carey playing a four-person Monopoly tournament by herself.

“I’ll be the boot,” Gwen had offered, slipping off her black kitten heels. Brian smiled, distracted, before going into his study. Even when he wasn’t working, he was working. Billing hours.

“Mom, I’m already the boot,” Carey had said. Her eyes were fixed on the board filled with game pieces, red and green plastic buildings. An empire.

“Well, what’s left?” Gwen asked. “I’ll be that.”

“That’s OK,” Carey said. “There’s not enough money in the bank.”

If Gwen was hurt, she didn’t show it. She got up, kissed Carey on top of the head, and went to pour a drink. She returned briefly, sipping her red wine and watching Carey’s game, before going to bed.

Monopoly was a game Carey had mastered. She knew when to buy, when to sell. How to collect and accrue property, which she hoarded. She was less skilled at the real games of negotiation. All around her in the auditorium, students greeted each other and clustered around the most boisterous, those who bubbled continuously as fountains. Loners like Carey sat watching, waiting to make a move.

A man in a guyabera and khaki shorts walked to the lectern. The crowd quieted. Ben was seated in the third row, the unmistakable hair and white t-shirt; Mike was next to him. The day before, at a picnic for new students, she revealed she was from Indianapolis. “We’ll have to compare notes,” Ben said, disappointingly casual. He didn’t ask about her high school, or if she hung out at Oakview Mall. He asked nothing. Andrea Cunningham approached Ben, and they huddled into a private conversation. She and Mike, cast off, discussed Guanajuato. “I’ll show you around, if you want,” he said. “We both can. Me and Ben.”

Now she raised a hand and waved. Mike acknowledged her with a nod of the head and leaned in to speak to Ben. He was Ben’s shadow, sidekick, sentry. Ben swiveled and scanned the crowd for a moment before turning back without seeing her. He appeared, briefly, to be picking his nose, which she decided was charming. Already, she’d blithely absolved him of mortal flaws.

“Bienvenidos,” the man on stage was saying. “That means ‘welcome.’ Which hopefully you already know, if you’re here.”

A nervous collective laugh rose.

Don Hernando, the head of La Universidad Intercambio, was Mexican by birth, a rarity among the faculty. He loved his beautiful university. He loved his city, so tranquil, so filled with history.

“We’re a friendly people in Mexico,” he said. “Count on that. But if someone gets too friendly, come to me. If not me, talk to any teacher. Entienden?”

Did they understand? A collective nod: they understood. He added that Intercambio did not advocate dating, cross-culturally or within the program.

“It’s more complicated here,” Don Hernando said. “You are busy navigating the streets and the language. La cultura Mexicana. Focus on learning. You won’t get lost.”

He switched entirely to Spanish, about walking in pairs, avoiding the food and beverages sold on the street, taking studies seriously, the famous Mummy Museum. Her ears perked up when he mentioned the discoteca and cafés, and described which were acceptable and which were not.

After, Carey stood on the short stone steps, letting the sun toast her face and bare shoulders. Intercambio was in the mountains, less muggy than Mexico City. You could get away with a tank top until the undercut of cool breezes cancelled out the sun.

Eyes closed, she enjoyed the alternating warm and cool feeling on her skin, her face turned towards the sun like a flower. Most of the other students were leaving for lunch or heading to a class or milling around the building’s entryway. Maybe if she spent lunch studying her dictionary, she’d avoid insulting her host family today. Maybe she could explore the park across the street for running trails.

Years of high school and college Spanish, a lengthy application process, and still she felt unprepared. Make this experience yours, her father had said. Study hard, learn something new.

“There she is.” Mike’s voice. He was often the one to pick her out, to find her, his blue eyes quick and roving, then still as a deer’s when she looked back. She kept her eyes closed a beat longer, holding on to the sun and the feeling of waiting. She wanted to be found, just not by Mike. When she opened her eyes, Ben and Mike flanked her.

“Ready?” Ben asked, as if they’d planned a date. “Come on.”

He and Mike grabbed her arms and led her down to the sidewalk in the direction of town. She laughed at first. American girls, for all their independence, learn a particular brand of giggling acquiescence. When Ben and Mike had marched her several yards without releasing their grip, Carey dragged her feet. Ben and Mike, each half a foot taller than her, stopped. They let go. Her arms still held the red imprints of their fingers. Carey asked where they were going, but she didn’t get an answer.

“Indianapolites have to stick together,” Ben said.

Mike laughed and his blond hair fell across his forehead. “Is that a word? Don’t discriminate against a brother from Milwaukee.”

“You’re honorary,” Ben said. “As long as you stop referring to yourself as ‘a brother.’ Uncool, white boy.”

For the briefest flash, Mike’s face betrayed his vulnerability. Carey saw it clearly. His availability. His frank, open gaze. His intelligence and aloneness. Mike was plain and obvious as a freckle. At Ben’s words, hurt came across his face in a blink, disappearing just as quickly. Even in joking, Ben worked Mike’s feelings and reactions.

Ben had that effect on people, Carey included. A small price to pay. His presence made them bigger, louder, street-smart, wise. Walking downtown became an event. People were drawn to him, as to a carnival barker or a celebrity in dark glasses. The possibility of being with him meant the possibility of being someone different. Why else do we seek the company of strangers, but for a foothold, a boost up to the window of our own lives? We search for advantages, a balcony view. We climb all over people to learn what they can tell us about ourselves.

They resumed walking, this time without touching her. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, believing it less and less. “I have class in twenty minutes.”

Ben and Mike shared a look that contained a whole conversation in a glance. She knew only that it was about her. Ben smiled an in-charge smile, wolfish and dreamy.

“No you don’t,” he said.

“Yes I do.” She reached into her shoulder bag for her schedule.

Mike waved a hand dismissively, and Ben encircled Carey’s wrist with his thumb and middle finger, lifting her hand from the bag. His callused palms grazed her skin.

“You don’t,” Ben said. “We’re teaching class today.”