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woman’s true class by the way she wears pearls, Grandma would say. Diamonds are flashy and expensive, an easy bet. Pearls are different. Pearls are hard to pull off.
    She’d forgotten to bring detergent and softener, and so had I. I bought two single-load packets of Tide and a small bottle of Downy at the vending machine, and got both washers going. The laundromat was cool and almost empty. Besides us, there was an elderly Asian man folding one synthetic-fabric sports shirt after another, and an obese young Latina with two little girls who played tag all over the place, filling the room with giggles and yells. They were loud and annoying, but we didn’t have the nerve to give the mom a look. “These people are hopeless,” was all Laura said.
    We sat facing a long line of mammoth dryers with glass doors, and waited. Two large flat-screen TVs showed a muted news segment on Detroit’s auto industry, the same soundless images repeating themselves on a loop, like a recurring dream. I glimpsed at the screens from time to time, but Laura ignoredthem. We watched jeans and panties and skirts roll in soothing twirls of hot air as they dried in the big machines, a troupe of dancers flying and tumbling together, as if their owners’ bodies had broken free, vanishing into merrier realms.
    “Where are you from?” I asked.
    “Mexico City.”
    “I know that.”
    Laura grinned.
    “I mean, which part of the city?”
    “Which part do you think I’m from?”
    Crow’s-feet branched from the corner of her eyes. She wore very little makeup—unusual for a Mexican housewife. Michael Jackson was minutes from the end and the larger world was about to change. Ours too, but I didn’t know it. She did. Laura’s plump body was clad in a navy linen dress decorated with water lilies that played nicely with the vintage mustard Gucci bag that lay on top of the washer, like an aardvark in a cattle ranch. Every time I remember Laura in that dress, my balls tingle.
    “You look south.”
    She let out a small laugh.
    “You’re doing well, country boy. Keep going.”
    “San Angel, I’d say.”
    She giggled and looked out the window. Had she just called me country boy?
    “I grew up in Polanco, but moved to Chimalistac when I married. His family always lived there.” Laura stood and reached for her purse. She retrieved her phone and ran a finger up and down the screen, pretending to check her messages. I took out my phone and started to imitate her every move. I wondered about the color of her nipples.
    Like Laura, I still lived under the weight of having fled thecity where I was born. I worked for the Department of Protection for Mexican Nationals of the Consulate, running dead-end errands like visiting undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation, pretending to make them feel cared for. The Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores had just transferred me from Raleigh to Austin. I had moved to Raleigh from Mexico City because my parents had begged me to take the job in the Mexican Foreign Service that Dad had secured for me. They’d recently moved to La Jolla themselves, tired of seeing friend after friend disappear in broad daylight, exhausted from wondering each morning when their number would be called. I didn’t want to leave. I was cutting my teeth as a reporter for El Financiero , but Dad said that letting me stay was the same as their not leaving Mexico at all.
    In the days after I moved to North Carolina, I started having dreams that my friends from Mexico would ring me from Butner asking for help, but when I called the prison I’d learn that they’d already been deported to an undisclosed location. I started dreaming of Grandma, clad in one of the bright silky dresses she liked so much that smelled of baby powder. I’d see her in her living room, knitting, singing “Solamente Una Vez” as if the bolero were a lullaby. She died alone in her apartment on Cofre de Perote on a winter morning the year after I moved.
    “Let me see your