The Tortilla Curtain

first the big jerk with the Elvis hair and then the _pelirrojo__ who'd run him down in the road, the very one, and his gangling tall awkward _pendejo__ of a son who'd hiked all the way down into the canyon to violate a poor man's few pitiful possessions. It was too much. He needed to go to confession, do penance, shrive himself somehow. Even Job would have broken down under an assault like this.
    For the next hour he hid himself in a clump of shrubbery at the far end of the parking lot, watching the door of the _supermercado__ for América. This was where she'd look for him--it was the only place she knew besides the Chinese store, and she must have known he wouldn't hang around there any longer than he had to. So he waited in the bushes, out of sight, and though his concealment made him feel better--at least now no one was going to push him around--he was still in a fever of worry. What if he'd missed her and she was down below in the canyon, staring numbly at the bleak pile of rocks where their camp used to be? What if the _patrón__ of the job he hoped she'd gotten forced her to do something with him? What if she was lost, hurt or worse?
    The traffic was thinning on the road now and fewer cars were pulling in and out of the lot. His tormentors--the _gabachos__ young and old--had shoved into their cars and driven off without so much as a backward glance for him. He was about to give it up and cross the road to the labor exchange and look hopelessly round the empty lot there and then maybe head back down the road to where the path cut into the brush and shout out her name for every living thing in the canyon to hear, when a Mercedes sedan pulled up in front of the grocery and America stepped out of it.
    He watched her slim legs emerge first, then her bare arms and empty hands, the pale flowered dress, the screen of her hair, and he was elated and devastated at the same time: she'd got work, but he hadn't. They would have money to eat, but he hadn't earned it. No: a seventeen-year-old village girl had earned it, and at what price? And what did that make him? He crouched there in the bushes and tried to read her face, but it was locked up like a strongbox, and the man with her, the _rico,__ was like some exotic animal dimly viewed through the dark integument of the windshield. She slammed the door, looked about her indecisively for a moment as the car wheeled away in a little blossom of exhaust, and then she squared her shoulders, crossed the lot and disappeared into the market.
    Cándido brushed down his clothes, made good and certain that no one was looking his way, and ambled out of the bushes as if he'd just come back from a stroll around the block. He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact with the _gringos__ he passed nd out goas he crossed the lot and ducked into the grocery. After a week and a half of living on so little that his stomach had shrunk and his pants were down around his hips, the effect of all that abundance was devastating. There was no smell of food here, no hint of the rich stew of odors you'd find in a Mexican market--these people sanitized their groceries just as they sanitized their kitchens and toilets and drove the life from everything, imprisoning their produce in jars and cans and plastic pouches, wrapping their meat and even their fish in cellophane--and yet still the sight and proximity of all those comestibles made his knees go weak again.
    Candy, there was a rack of candy right by the door, something sweet and immediate to feed the hunger. Little cakes and things, Twinkies and Ho-Ho's. And there, there were the fruits and vegetables lit up as on an altar, the fat ripeness of tomatoes, mangoes, watermelon, corn in its husk, roasting ears that would sweeten on the grill. He swallowed involuntarily. Looked right and then left. He didn't see America. She must be down one of the aisles pushing a basket. He tried to look nonchalant as he passed by the checkers and entered the vast cornucopia of the place.
    Food in sacks for pets, for dogs and cats and parakeets, seltzer water in clear bottles, cans of vegetables and fruit: God in Heaven, he was hungry. He found América poised in front of one of the refrigerated displays, her back to him, and he felt shy suddenly, mortified, the unwanted guest sitting down at the starving man's table. She was selecting a carton of eggs--_huevos con chorizo, huevos rancheros, huevos hervidos con pan tostado--__flicking the hair out of her face with an