The Tortilla Curtain

thing, but this was something else altogether. And what was in the satchel and why had he been crossing the Cherrystones' lawn when the Cherrystones weren't at home?
    “I want to know what you think you're doing here,” Delaney demanded, eyeing the satchel and imagining the Cherrystones' silverware in there, their VCR, Selda's jewelry. “This is private property. You don't belong here.”
    The man looked right through him. He was bored. Delaney was nothing, a minor annoyance, a gnat buzzing round his face.
    “I'm talking to you,” Delaney said, and before he could think, he had hold of the man's forearm, just above the wrist.
    The tan eyes looked down at Delaney's hand, then up into his face. There was nothing in those eyes but contempt. With a sudden violent jerk, the man whipped his arm free, gathered himself up and spat scornfully between Delaney's feet. “I got these flies,” he said, and he was almost shouting it.
    Delaney was riding the crest of the moment, trembling, angry, ready for anything. The man was a thief, a liar, the stinking occupant of a stinking sleeping bag in the state forest, a trespasser, a polluter, a Mexican. “Don't give me that shit!” Delaney roared. “I'm calling the police. I know what you're doing up here, I know who you are, you're not fooling anybody.” Delaney looked round him for support, for a car, a child on a bike, Todd Sweet, anyone, but the street was deserted.
    The Mexican's expression had changed. The mocking grin was gone now, replaced by something harder, infinitely harder. He's got a knife, Delaney thought, a gun, and he went cold all over when the man reached into the satchel, so keyed up he was ready to spring at him, tackle him, fight to the death... but then he was staring into a flat white sheet of Xerox paper crawling with print. “Flies,” the man spat at him. “I deliver these flies.”
    Delaney took a step back, so devastated he couldn't speak--what was happening to him, what was he becoming?--and the man shoved the flier into his hand and stalked away across the lawn. He watched, stupefied, as the Mexican headed up the street, carrying his shoulders with rage and indignation, watched as he strode up to Delaney's own house and inserted a flier in the slit between the screen door and the white wooden doorframe. Then, finally, Delaney looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand. A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE ARROYO BLANCO ESTATES PROPERTY OWNERS' ASSOCIATION, it read in block letters across the top. And then, beneath it: “I urge all of you to attend Wednesday's meeting on an issue vital to the security and well-being of us all...”

The Tortilla Curtain

7
    THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES WERE NOTHING. AMéRICA never asked herself what she was doing sitting on that concrete wall out front of the post office building in Canoga Park, never gave it a thought. She was exhausted, her feet ached, she felt hot and sleepy and a little nauseous, and she just sat there in a kind of trance and let the rich stew of the city simmer around her. It was amazing, all this life. The sidewalks weren't crowded, not in the way she'd expected, not like in the market in Cuernavaca or even Tepoztlán, but there was a steady flow of people going about their business as if it were the most natural thing in the world to live here. People were walking dogs, riding bicycles, pushing babies in strollers, carrying groceries in big paper sacks cradled to their chests; they were smoking, chatting, laughing, tilting back their heads to drink from red-white-and-blue cans of Pepsi that said “Uh-huh!” on the label.
    As tired as she was, as tentative and unsettled, she couldn't help being fascinated by the spectacle--and by the women especially. She watched them covertly, women her own age and maybe a little older, dressed like _gringas__ in high heels and stockings, watched to see what they were wearing and how they did their hair and makeup. There were older women too, in _rebozos__ and colorless dresses, _niños__ hurtling by on skateboards, workingmen ambling past in groups of three or four, their eyes fixed on some distant unattainable vision way out ahead of them in the haze of the endless boulevard. And the traffic--it wasn't like the traffic on the canyon road at all. Here it moved in a stately slow procession from light to light, every kind of car imaginable, from low-riders to Jaguars to battered old Fords and Chevies and VW buses and tiny silver cars that