The Tortilla Curtain

before he could move aside, before he could protest his innocence or fade back into invisibility, he felt the touch of her hand and his fingers closing involuntarily on the coins.
    Her touch annihilated him. He'd never been more ashamed in his life, not when he was a drunk in the streets, not when Teófilo Aguadulce took his wife from him and threw him down in the square with the whole village looking on. He hung his head. Let his arms drop to his sides. He stood rooted to the spot for what seemed like hours after she'd ducked into the car, backed out of the lot and vanished, and only then did he open his hand on the two quarters and the dime that clung there as if they'd been seared into the flesh.
    When she heard the news--“They closed down the labor exchange,” Cándido told her, his eyes defiant, spoiling for a fight--America had to struggle to keep a neutral face. She felt relief, joy, a surge of hope like nothing she'd experienced since the night she lay in bed at her father's house waiting for Cándido to tap at the window and take her away to the North. Finally, she thought, letting the breath escape her in a long exhalation that Cándido would have taken for grief. She kept her features rigid, let the hair fall across her face. Cándido was bitter, angry, ready to erupt. He was worried too, she could see that, and for a moment she felt the uncertainty take hold of her and she was scared. But then it came back to her: there was no choice now, no doubt but that they were going to have to leave this prison of trees, this dirt heap where she'd been robbed and hurt and brutalized, where the days crept by like the eternal years. She had no love for this place. Insects bit her. The ground was hard. Every time she wanted a cup of coffee she had to gather twigs and start a fire. What kind of life was that? She'd have been better off in Morelos, in her father's house, waiting on him like a servant till she was an old maid dried up like a fig.
    “We'll have to leave,” she murmured, and the city she knew--alien, terrifying, a place where blacks roamed the streets and _gabachos__ sat on the sidewalk and begged--gave way to the city she dreamed of. There would be shops, streets lined with trees, running water, toilets, a shower: They had three hundred and twenty dollars--maybe they could share a place with another couple, somebody like themselves, Tepoztecos or Cuernavacans, pool their resources, live like a big family. No matter how small the place, no matter how dirty it was, with rats and cockroaches and gunshots outside the windows, it had to be better than this. All this time Cándido had been stalling because he was afraid--they couldn't go yet, they needed more money, have patience, _mi vida,__ have patience--but now he could stall no longer.
    “Not yet,” he said.
    Not yet? She wanted to jump up and shout in his face, pummel him with her fists. Was he crazy? Did he intend to live down here like a caveman for the rest of his life? She controlled herself, sat there in the sand hunched over the _novela__ she'd read so many times she could recite it from memory, and waited. He was like her father, just like him: immovable, stubborn, the big boss. There was no use in arguing.
    Cándido sat at the edge of the pool in his undershorts, his skin glistening with beads of water. He'd just come back from above, just stepped out of the pool and thrown himself down beside her with his momentous announcement. It was the hottest hour of the day. Everything was still. America could feel the sweat under her arms and down below, where she itched, itched constantly, though at least her pee no longer burned. “Tomorrow morning I'm going to walk up the canyon,” he said, “early, while it's still dark, before _La Migra__ comes nosing around the post office and the labor exchange. I'm going to keep my eyes open--I was thinking of Canoga Park maybe--and see if I can find anything.”
    “An apartment?”
    “Apartment? What's the matter with you?” His voice jumped up the register. “You know we can't afford an apartment--how many times do I have to tell you?” He turned to look at her. His eyes were dangerous. “Sometimes I just can't believe you,” he said.
    “Maybe a motel,” she said, “--just for a night. We could take a shower, ten showers, shower all night. This water's dirty, filthy, full of scum and bugs. It stinks. My hair smells like an old dog.”
    Cándido looked away. He said nothing.
    “And a bed to