The Tortilla Curtain

the light, and she rode up against her mother's breast as if she were attached to it, as if she were part of her still. Cándido had to marvel at that--his daughter, and look how well-behaved she was, and not eight hours old yet.
    “What is this place?” America demanded when he settled her in the roofless box, and her voice had lost its contentment.
    “Just for now,” he said, “just till I get this straightened out.”
    She didn't argue, though he could see she wanted to. She was too tired, too scared, and she sank into the corner and accepted the orange he handed her.
    He didn't want to risk going over the wall again--he could see the glint of the first cars on the canyon road as he made his way back down the slope--but he had to, just one more time. There was something he'd seen in the next yard over from the one where he'd got the tools, something he needed to borrow before it was too late. He hit the shed at a bound, then crouched to peer cautiously over the wall and into the yard below, watching the windows of the house for movement. There was no sign of life, though he'd been hearing the cars for a while now--minutes, that's all he had--but this time he wasn't going to leap down behind that wall without a way up, was he? He was. He couldn't help himself. Down the wall he went, crouched low, and he saw the big doghouse in the corner of the yard and the two deep aluminum dishes--one with water, one with kibble--and he stuck his head inside the doghouse and saw the nice green wool-blend carpet they'd put in there for the dog to lie on. They would miss it, sure they would, and the aluminum dishes too, but Cándido was a human being, a man with a daughter, and this was only a dog. Was it wrong, was it a sin, was it morally indefensible to take from a dog? Where in the catechism did it say that?
    He threw the whole business over the wall and darted through the hedge into the next yard, and there it was, the thing he coveted, the thing he'd come for: a roof, his roof. It was a single sheet of green-tinted plastic, with corrugations for the rain, and it wasn't even attached to the little greenhouse that sat in a clutch of fig trees just beyond the swimming pool--not even attached, just laid across the top. He stood there a moment in his exhaustion, contemplating it, and the figs seemed to drop into his hands, and then they were in his mouth, pulpy and sweet and with the thick bitter skin to chew on. All the frenzied stinking bad luck and terrible draining exhaustion of the previous day and night began to exact its toll on him then and he just stood there, locked in place, staring stupidly down into the pool. It was a little pool, no more than a puddle compared to the big lake of a thing in the middle of the development, but it was pretty, oval-shaped and blue, cool, clean blue, the water so pure it was transparent but for the film of ash on the surface. How nice it would be to dive in, he was thinking, just for a second, and clean himself of the filth and sweat and black slashes of charcoal that striped him from head to foot like a hyena... But then he started at a sound behind him, away and across the street--the slam of a car door, voices--and he sprang for the greenhouse.
    The sheet of plastic was unwieldy, too big for the greenhouse, too big for his little shack, but there was no way to cut it to size and the voices were louder now, closing in on him. He gave it a frantic jerk and the next thing he knew he was on the ground, writhing out from under it. The plastic was looser than he'd thought, more flexible, and that made it all the harder to manipulate. Still, he managed to drag it across the lawn to the wall, and he was just working it up the side to tip it over the top when a window shot up in the house next door and he froze. There was a face in the window, a woman's face, gazing out into the yard that now lacked several hand tools, four sacks of fruit and vegetables, a plastic bucket of kibble, two dog dishes and a scrap of carpet.
    Cándido didn't dare breathe, praying that the line of bushes separating the yards would screen him from view. He studied that face as he might have studied a portrait in a gallery, memorizing every crease and wrinkle, waiting for the change to come over it, the look of astonishment, fear and hate, but the change never came. After a moment the woman took her face back into the house. Instantly, with a quick snap of his shoulders, Cándido flipped the sheet of plastic up and