Driving up on the I-5 from San Diego, they passed a big yellow sign, with the silhouette of a father, mother and daughter running across the road. A yellow light flashed above the sign, in warning and welcome.
A people crossing. Lisa imagined darting across the highway, and the instant prayer inspired by the oncoming lights. Geoff, her oldest friend in Los Angeles, was at the wheel. He drove when they went out, knowing that she preferred to ride.
They were on their way back to Los Angeles after a day of deep-sea fishing. A month ago, they’d seen a television documentary about the amazing life of the ling cod. Now one sat in the cooler, filleted and stripped of its mystery, wrapped in blue paper and plastic.
She saw a car parked at the side of the freeway. “Did their car break down?”
“Sometimes people coming up illegally abandon their cars. They pay someone to drive them up. They get this far. Then sometimes the border patrol searches cars at a checkpoint in San Clemente.”
“So they just leave their cars?”
“They don’t have any choice. It’s either that or deportation.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back to Mexico.
“They think they’ve made it, but it turns out to be a sham. It’s even worse than if they were caught at the border,’’ Lisa said.
Six years ago, they met while grocery shopping at Vons. Bright banners proclaiming “Singles Night . . . find a date, get double coupons.” They were both reaching for the same package of Oreos when a red-vested employee clasped handcuffs, made of sandwich ties, onto their wrists.
“You’re here in time for our last game,” the clerk had said.
“We’re not together,” Lisa said. Geoff was too tall for her tastes, too pale, too nervous-looking, she had decided in that second when she sized up potential lovers.
Since neither one of them had much money for groceries, they joined a version of Twister that employed baked goods instead of colors. “Right hand on chocolate chip cookie,” the clerk said. “Lovin’ from the oven.”
Winning the consolation round, they wound up with a tub of coleslaw, a bottle of wine, and a chicken that they charred to bits in Lisa’s oven.
Geoff’s boyfriend, Tony, lived across the country in Philadelphia. A year ago, they had met at the Pride Parade in West Hollywood. The sweaty, cheerful crowd jammed them against each other. They called and e-mailed daily, had phone sex weekly and flew across country every few months, waiting to be a permanent couple.
Lisa had escaped the sticky mouths and clinging hands of her younger brothers and sisters in Modesto. She’d had her fill of togetherness, pruning the number of obligatory relationships as a result. None of the men she dated much liked Geoff. He was around too much, they said. The moment they complained, however, she cut them loose. With Geoff, she had the intimacy without complications.
“I used to think that cruise control meant that the car drove by itself,” Lisa said, shifting in her seat. “I was disappointed when I found out you still had responsibility.”
She hated people falling asleep on her while she drove, when she wanted to drift off as well. She always wanted passengers to keep their eyes open. That was her potential test for friendship.
“That’s why I never stop driving,” Geoff said. “Then I’ll know for sure who’s responsible.”
Traffic around them started slowing down until walking would have been faster. They were next to the shoulder of the road, part of grid of unmoving cars, in shadow between pools of sodium lamps. Lisa screamed.
“What’s wrong?” Geoff asked. The man and his family standing outside the passenger window answered his question.
“Let’s let them in,” she said. Geoff nodded, taking his hand off the wheel and resting his fingers lightly on her shoulder in support.
She reached back and unlocked the back door. The man, wife and baby—the roadside sign seemingly come to life—ducked down and slid onto the floor. She wanted to protect their trinity. Lisa was glad that they had decided to take Geoff’s car, a dark brown Ford with tinted windows, with a trunk roomy enough for dead bodies, guns and contraband drugs.
“Pull down the backseat,” Geoff said.
She motioned the family to pull down the cord attached to the vinyl cushion. Geoff had installed seats that folded down, for hauling lab equipment. After the family rolled into the back, Lisa swung the trapdoor shut. No one in the surrounding cars seemed to notice or care.
“We just have to stay calm.” Lisa said. “Don’t speed, it’ll look suspicious.”
“I can’t speed when we’re stuck in traffic.”
He turned on the radio. Violent violins blared out of his speaker, a tinny whine that rattled the windows. “Classical music will make us seem more respectable.”
“No, that’s too suspicious. How about classic rock? Fits our demographic,” Lisa said, twisting the knob. The notes skittered across stations and static.
“We don’t fit a demographic. Why not NPR?”
They tugged the dials back and forth. While arguing, they drove through the roadblock. The authorities decided that they were respectable and waved the car through.
At the first exit ramp, they pulled off and headed for a bright cluster of fast food establishments, passing a Taco Bell and a Del Taco before pulling up the Golden Arches.
Lisa opened the trunk. The man and his wife were huddled inside, arms and legs intertwined, as if reducing surface area would hide them. The case of beer was pushed off to the side. They climbed out and sat on the bumper, gasping. They rose from the roadside sign into reality, taller than Lisa expected.
The couple started talking quickly in Spanish and nodded in thanks to Geoff and Lisa. Pablo, Mariela and Juanito. With the flimsy aid of her high school Spanish, she almost understood what they were saying. From Guanajuato. A coyote. An uncle. Jobs.
Mariela reached back in and pushed off the loosened lid off the cooler. Wrapped in a blanket, the baby was nestled beside the fish.
“I don’t understand,” Lisa said.
“The only room left in the trunk. And the safest place to hide.”
Lisa wondered what would have happened if the parents had been caught. Maybe the child would have been left behind, with her and Geoff. Together, just the three of them.
Out on the water, she had gripped the fishing tackle and felt the life vibrating on the line. The fish’s life flashed before her eyes: the egg floating beneath a shower of sperm . . . the school of fish . . . the wife and family. Then Lisa threw herself into the motion of the winch, until the fish was dangling in the air and baring its teeth.
Geoff went inside McDonald’s to buy Big Macs for the parents and a soft serve for the baby. Lisa tried to think of phrases besides “La Bamba” and “burrito,” words she was too ashamed to mumble to the family.
Suddenly she remembered “¡No contaban con mi astucia!”—you didn’t count on my astuteness—the motto of the El Chapulín Colorado, the grasshopper superhero of children’s cartoons. She repeated the words, and they smiled at this note of familiarity, of common experience that transcended commercials and textbook dialogue.
They dropped the family in East Los Angeles at an address Pablo inked into his jean, a neat bungalow. Through the window, they could see a man watching television in the dark, a blue glow flickering across his face.
Lisa shook Pablo’s callused hand while Mariela, whose hands were full, nodded in thanks. The moment demanded some solemn ritual so she opened the cooler and presented them the fish. The family stood on the curb, watching the car pull away. The mother held the baby bundled in a blanket, the father cradled the fish wrapped in paper.
Lisa watched them get smaller and smaller in the mirror until the three of them blurred together into a single dot. She hoped they would like the fish.
They headed north, to Cantor’s Deli on Fairfax. Waiting to be seated, Lisa scanned the room for familiar men. She often accepted free drinks from men at bars and clubs in the neighborhood, flirting until she was bored. Then, Geoff would come by and pretend to be her boyfriend.
The simplest signs would indicate that she was taken. A hand lingering at the small of her back, a quick tap on the shoulder and a welcomed invasion of personal space from him warded off most prospective suitors. In return, she listened to Geoff go on about Tony. She hoarded the knowledge, each conversation proof that she knew him best and that he trusted her most.
In walked a big man, with balding hair shaved close to hedgehog prickliness. He wore black leather combat boots, black jeans and a black untucked T-shirt. Black: for edginess or slimming effect, Lisa couldn’t tell. Beside him was a slender Japanese woman. Geoff smiled in recognition, and waved to bring them over.
“Joe is in charge of the lab next door. He’s a great guy,” Geoff said.
“Who’s with him?”
“Maiko. She’s an econ grad student. No, they’re not seeing each other,” Geoff said, anticipating her question, the one aimed at all friends of the opposite sex.
Joe spotted them before Geoff could finish his summary. The men exchanged elaborate hand slaps. The two women smiled at each other, the acknowledgment of strangers among the familiar. They sat down together at a booth.
The waitress brought their menus, which they all perused with Depression-era seriousness.
“What a lovely ring,” Maiko said, taking Lisa’s hand.
Lisa twisted the silver ring on her finger, a partial circle that almost but not quite closed. Her fingernails were magenta. The Hard as Nails polish contained ground diamond dust, which was the closest she ever wanted to get to a wedding ring.
“Thanks,” she said, pulling her hand under the table. She did not want to explain herself, so she reciprocated with a compliment. “I like your shoes.”
“Joe helped me pick them out,” Maiko said, patting him on his shirt sleeve. Joe reached to stroke her hand, but she withdrew her fingers before they could touch. “He knows where to go. We always go shopping together.”
“We looked everywhere for the right pair,” Joe said, pretending to scratch his shoulder. “We wouldn’t stop until she was satisfied.”
Lisa wondered how often Joe helped Maiko. She looked at Geoff, realizing how tired she was. He nodded in understanding, and recounted their deep-sea adventures, letting her drop out of the conversation.
The waiter unloaded their meal. Joe dug into a variety of potato products, Maiko cut into her steak, Geoff dipped into his borscht, but Lisa could only nibble on her pickle. When the check appeared, Joe’s chubby palm slammed down on the leather holder with surprising speed.
“It’s my treat,” Joe said. “I owe you for last time.”
“There was no last time,” Geoff said.
Lisa also thanked Joe, but refused him. Neither she or Geoff felt comfortable being paid for by others. It interfered with their private system of sharing, the back-and-forth treating over the years.
“Oh, no, no,” Maiko said. “Are you sure?” She pulled up a black vinyl lunchbox but made no motion to open the snap. Her bag hovered over her lap, making no commitment to pay.
Joe won out with his body, blocking their attempts to see the check. In the parking lot, they all promised to meet again. Joe reached for Maiko, who stepped away from him with evident practice. His arm dropped to his side, curved toward her.
“She just uses him,” Lisa said, as they walked away. “Does she even like him?”
“What?” He unlocked the passenger side door. “I don’t see what you mean. Lots of men pay for women. I don’t see you complaining when we go to bars. Besides, they’ve been friends for a long time.”
“That’s exactly it. She shouldn’t take advantage of him. There’s a difference between friends sharing and one person just taking.”
“But if he wants to give, what’s the harm? He likes being with her, it makes him happy, and he accepts it. I think that’s all you could ask for.”
He pushed up his glasses with his index finger. Geoff started the engine, pressing down on the accelerator before the engine turned over. He would have had trouble adjusting to a new car, because he had already learned to be patient.
“You’re saying it’s good to be happy deceiving yourself?” Lisa said. “To be mutually using each other? Tricking yourself with hope?”
“Every friendship is based on some sort of need. It’s best if it’s balanced between but it doesn’t always work that way.”
“I still think it’s rotten.”
“For who—the giver or the taker? They’re both guilty.”
Geoff took surface roads back to her apartment. He followed her inside her studio apartment without asking. As she changed into her pajamas, he ducked his head into a magazine that featured two Siamese twins, sharing the same body but possessing two heads.
“They’re trying to show the beauty and miracle of all children. But come on, you look at the pictures and think, do they take turns wiping? Will they both be able to enjoy sex?”
“What gets me is that they can’t ever live apart,” she said. “They share the same everything. What makes them separate, what makes them special?”
“If that’s all you’re ever used to, maybe it’s okay. They don’t know any better.”
“Can you ever tell the difference between what you want and what you’re used to?” Lisa said.
“That might not be so bad, if it’s your choice,” Geoff said. “Maybe that doesn’t matter in the end. You won’t ever know.”
“I sometimes wonder if I’ll know, when the time comes, how to part of a pair, to be part of a relationship,” he said. “If I’ll learn how to stop being alone.”
He looked out the window, at the first traces of light arriving from across the country, from Tony. Lisa tried to follow his vision, but he blocked her reflection in the glass.
He considered himself alone whether he was with her, Lisa realized. And no matter what they shared—there would be a part of him reserved for someone else, a vulnerability glimpsed in moments of intimacy never for her.
Seeing the pink patch glowing through his thinning hair, she threw her bra at him. The straps swung around his neck like the paws of a monkey looking for a nut. She started whipping him with her bra, trying to break his gaze and force him to focus on her.
He yelped, shielding himself with his arm. The eye-hook scratched him across the cheek, a deeper red against the flush. Lisa sat down, wondering where expectations began.
VANESSA HUA, ’97, lives in San Francisco.
