Carlos spit on the blacktop. The saliva sizzled.

“Whoooweee,” whistled his friend Hector. They were both languishing against an ancient oak, avoiding the sweltering heat in the shade of its expanse, watching their construction foreman and a pasty man in a suit argue. Hector took off his hard hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I swear it never got this hot back home, Carlos.”

“Probably because it didn’t. Least not with this kind of humidity.” He trailed off at the end, as the foreman looked like he was about to hit the man in the suit. “I think it happening again.”

“Aw, what? No!” Hector looked up and scuffed the dirt with the heel of his boot. The two arguing men walked to separate cars and drove off. “Not again.”

That was the third time in the last two months they’d had a job shut down on them. The American economy was falling apart, nothing was being built any more.

“I’m getting sick of this, man. We spend a week on a job, and it ends up costing us money.”

“That’s because you drink expensive tequila,” Carlos laughed.

Hector frowned at him. “Man’s got to have some standards.”

Memphis Note
On the whole, Memphis officials have been unwilling to actively pursue undocumented immigrants in the area. Which lead to a booming hispanic population over the last twenty years. Unfortunately, as the housing boom ended and the bubble burst, most of the jobs the immigrants relied upon disappeared, and so did a large number of them, leaving a void that is only now beginning to refill.

Hector could hear Kamal talking in the other side of the store, then the cash register chiming and the receipt printer grinding. A few seconds later a white couple came around the corner with the slip of paper. They handed it to Hector, he nodded, gestured for them to take one of the long family style tables, and went to work in the kitchen.

Hector had worked in a few taquerias before, and knew his way around a kitchen, but even he was surprised to find himself here. Kamal had taken the time to teach him traditional Indian cooking. The proper way to season a curry, the exact ratio of potatoes to spices in the perfect samosa, what good – really good – tandoori was.

Sometimes, after the store was closed, they would sit and talk while Hector finished cleaning up. Kamal would bring him a tea cup filled with rich chai, and they would talk as best they could through each others’ broken English.

They’d talk about the deserts they grew up in, those desolate empty spaces, filled up by people, their culture, their lives, their food. Hector’s closer, Kamal’s farther, but both worlds away from where they found themselves now.

Memphis Note
This one is for the kitchen crew at the SaiGruha Indian Market on Winchester. They make the best damned Indian food in the city, and the fact that you’ve got a Hispanic kitchen at an Indian restaurant should tell you about the melting pot nature of our city.