Sequoia Gardens

California

From the back window of the van it was a world made out of cement, a tangle of freeways streaming with cars, of aqueductlike overpasses. Once you merged it was like you were propelled along in your slot amid the other vehicles by some mastermind computer. Everyone gaped from the tinted windows when Arturo said, "This is LA," though nothing looked very different from before. There were twelve of them plus the driver; no one spoke, they just looked. When he heard the sirens the driver jumped. The sound got louder, and then there were flashing lights. "Fire trucks," Arturo said. "Something is always burning in LA." But it was police cars, one two three four five, passing them in the fast lane as they and all the other cars slowed and moved to the right. Was he going to end up in the back of one of those cars, handcuffed, bleeding from a gunshot wound? "Don't worry," Arturo said as if he could read Raul's mind. "I've got your ids: born in the Golden State, all of you. You haven't committed a crime. Yet." He and the driver started laughing their heads off. At sundown they started climbing: the city lights ended and the freeways faded into black except for the taillight streams of red veering off and the white cones of light ahead from the van. They still watched.

A week ago he'd been working in his uncle's appliance store in Mazatlán—it was something to do before he started hotel school in Mexico City in the fall—when opportunity knocked. That was his mother's favorite expression. It had knocked when she'd signed up for cosmetology school and again when she'd applied to work at the hotel in Acapulco. But the sound could be false, they both knew that: there had been a very loud knock when she'd met his father, then the assistant night manager at the hotel. He had always wondered if you'd actually know the critical moment when opportunity knocked. What if you failed to heed it?

His mother had a first-row seat as manager of the hotel salon and kept a minute-by-minute record of who got ahead. Every night she came home with more information. It was the maître d' in the restaurant who made the most money, more than the concierge. But it was the manager who met all the most important people. The chef got a write-up in an international newspaper. The couple who had the jewelry-store concession netted a hundred thousand dollars one quarter.

He was nine when he began working after school in the hotel kitchen on cleanup. He saw for himself how the El Conquistador operated. It took him until he was eleven, the same year he'd joined the recreation director's Boy Scout troop, to decide for sure what direction he wanted to go. He would aim for the top, hotel manager. No one got yelled at or worked up a sweat in the manager's office. He'd taken all three English courses offered at his school because of that, and also because he liked British movies. He was going to learn Japanese, too; they were the world's most dedicated travelers. When he got tall enough he moved from the kitchen to outside maintenance and then to housekeeping, which was more efficient than maintenance and the reason for the 405-room hotel's 93 percent occupancy rate, according to his mother. At fifteen he became a bellhop, which meant big tips.

His mother's younger brother, Jorge, had worked in maintenance at the hotel too, but later went north and opened an appliance store in Mazatlán. After school ended in May every year he took the bus to Mazatlán and stayed with his uncle's family for the summer. He knew his uncle felt it his duty to make a man of him because he had no father—and because his mother was his mother, a strong woman, as Jorge said. He enjoyed being...