From The Aroma of Desire in Fresno

1991. The Persian Gulf War began. Lady Luck dropped me like a kidney stone. My business was in ruins, dissolved like salt in water and wax in the sun. I imported luxury goods: Chanel La Crème Douce, Mahler, and medications such as Calcium Corbière, Becozyme, Bepanthen, Mysteclin. One night in Los Angeles, burglars broke into my van and swiped all my beauty products, a cruel loss of several grand. In quick succession, my heavily cylindered vehicle, which transported rice and groceries to Long Beach via Utah, collapsed on the freeway, an incredible omen that magnified my losses by thousands more in perishable goods.

With me buried to my neck in misfortune, my young wife decided this marginal businessman with a bottomless financial setback was equal to a man condemned to death. She left me. Bye, bye! She abruptly disappeared from my landscape, pursuing her Mexican ex-boyfriend in San Jose. No money, no honey. This is the norm in the adventures of everyday life in the U.S.A. When the evil eye strikes, the rabbit's foot escapes us. We lose the things we have, but we also lose the things we don't have.

After that Great Vehicular Disaster of '91, I thought I could get into mussels and shellfish, which were harvested in Modesto. But the rivers were polluted that season; this deep-water activity was not a good idea. One of my merchant friends suggested garlic, Texas via Fresno. He told me that he made a lot of profit, three to four grand per interstate shuttle from Houston via Fresno in his pickup. This also failed to work out: garlic season had not yet arrived.

My ambition to harvest mussels and mollusks and garlic was further demonstration of my inexperience in this field. I was a Baudelarian albatross fallen from the sky, ill-prepared to walk on Earth, tangled up in its injured wings. Those in my circle, family, friends, riddled me with sarcasm, mockery, and criticism I had little use for at this point in my life. It was rumored that what I did now was not indicative of my past glory, and that this did not result from congenital maladjustment but from insanity… nothing more, nothing less.

My new vehicles were broken down. There was nothing left for me but an Astro cargo van in my last fight against destiny. This van, which I had driven for only 40,000 miles, was already giving me signs of exhaustion, in the form of costly repairs. The cause of these operations had occurred during my trips to Utah; I was used to sleeping innocently and blissfully with my car running, while the air conditioner hummed. I didn't realize the damage I was causing until a mechanic told me.

The sister-in-law of one of my friends, a well-advised Vietnamese woman who once sold duck eggs, whispered in my ear to sell "tough hens" in Fresno (hens with firm flesh). These moan svet were very well appreciated by Laotians in Fresno, but the venture required me to stock up from an enormous henhouse fifty miles from Long Beach on the way to Vegas. This transaction would bring me $400 to $500 per ride, just enough to pay for my minor survival needs without having to depend on money from other sources.

The price of these "tough hens" came to eighty cents per hen. I could easily sell them for $2.50 or $3, going door to door. This was a wise thought but quite a poor calculation. Each household, in theory, would be able to take five or ten, and the contents of my cargo van would vanish in no time. But here was the flaw. We were used to plucking these "tough hens" and reselling them in Long Beach, whereas in this case, I had to travel in the opposite direction to ship them from Long Beach all the way to Fresno, 300 miles from my residence. My frantic desire to go elsewhere, this irresistible peregrination towards a faraway...