Being from LA, in particular Koreatown, where Korean food and Mexican joints had been the norm, Margot always thought of the classic diner as “charming” and “novel,” a location of unspoken heroism out of a movie or a short story about decent, hardworking white Americans trying to catch a break. Margot remembered when she had moved to Seattle eight years ago and made her first white friends—people who seemed to navigate their identities, their skin tones, their appearances so easily, in such an invisible way, as if the world had been created for them, which, in a sense, it had. Many of them—with their blue eyes and tall noses—appeared intrinsically attractive because even white people who weren’t supermodels were at least white.
She didn’t want to think that way since, theoretically, it made no sense. Beauty is a construct, but theory is not the reality we live, she thought. Theory didn’t live in the bones. Theory didn’t erase the years of self-scrutiny in a mirror and not seeing anyone at all, not a protagonist or a beauty, only a television sidekick, a speechless creature, who at best was “exotic,” desirable but simple and foreign. Growing up, she had often wondered, If only I had bigger eyes or brown hair instead of black. If only . . .
The food arrived, interrupting her thoughts. Margot and Miguel devoured their meals—a cheeseburger and fries, a tuna melt on rye, and tomato soup—like animals. Margot tried to slow down, but everything tasted too good, perfect, American. All she could hear was mutual chewing, sips, and gulps—an orchestra of fulfillment. She wanted to sit here forever, forget about her problems, LA, her mother.
“We should hit the road, no?” Miguel asked. “Wanna switch?”
They paid the bill and went outside, where clouds had cleared out for an evening sky that promised stars. The moon glowed silvery white like a door’s empty fisheye. Margot regretted not packing a winter coat, only a windbreaker and a few sweaters for the warmer weather in LA.
About five inches taller than Margot, Miguel adjusted the mirrors, then the seat to give his legs more room. The top of his pomaded hair brushed up against the fabric of the roof.
He merged onto the freeway, driving hard and fast. Whistling around slow-moving cars, he always signaled, never cutting anyone off. Margot had never imagined how quick and nimble her car could be, how such confidence and fearlessness could both impress and terrify her. She had become so used to going at her own, or her mother’s, speed.
Her mother never liked the idea of traveling anywhere far. She rarely spoke of the past, but she had once told Margot that at the age of four, she had fled with her family from the north during the Korean War. Somehow, she had been separated from her parents permanently in that bloody time. Movement for her mother was essentially an experience of loss that Margot, American-born, could never imagine. And yet Margot herself had inherited the same anxiety about driving fast, particularly on freeways. She thought too much about the experience of speed itself, its danger, rather than getting somewhere at last.
Hitting flat straight highway without traffic through farms and fields, Margot untied her ponytail. She could feel herself relax, her shoulders and grip loosening. The sky—an inky ombré of blue and black—stretched wide to reveal a field of stars, twinkling at them from vast distances.
Once, twenty years ago when Margot was six, her mother had packed up their Oldsmobile for a weekend trip to Vegas—the only road trip she had ever taken with her mother, who never took more than a day off work. On the way there, she had driven below the speed limit in the slow lane the entire time, stretching what should’ve been a four-hour trip into an entire day. Cars and trucks zoomed by, honking. Through open windows, a dry breeze carried an odor of petroleum, mesquite, and sage. Dust powdered Margot’s face and arms as she slumped low in her seat.
“Where are we going?” Margot had asked.
“Somewhere very special,” her mother said.
“Will there be ice cream?”
Her brown eyes, hard as cabochons the entire drive, softened in the rearview mirror. “Yes.”
Driving down the Strip, Margot had marveled at the seductive lights, a wonderland of distraction and pleasure. Here they could have anything—ice cream, games, stuffed animals, cheeseburgers for breakfast, walls made from hard candy that they could lick. But instead they spent most of their one full day in a shabby motel outside of Vegas, waiting for what—or for whom—Margot never knew.
After hours of waiting, they left the next morning. On the drive back, her mother had seemed so utterly deflated that Margot didn’t have the courage to ask why they had driven so far. She always assumed that her mother didn’t want to talk about the things that hurt her. But maybe Margot was wrong about that. Maybe now as an adult, she was growing into a woman who could understand and support her mother, despite the different languages they knew.
A light every now and then winked from distant points in the black sky and fields around Margot and Miguel. Driving with the road illuminated by the stretch of their headlights made her feel as if she was on a rocket ship, blasting into unknown depths, an infinite spray of stars and planets, tiny galaxies in the void.
She closed her eyes. Why didn’t her mother pick up the phone?
THE NEXT MORNING AFTER SPENDING THE NIGHT AT Miguel’s parents’ house, they were on Interstate 5, listening to a story on the local NPR station about the devastation of the drought. She never knew how much she loved the sun—Los Angeles’s interminable light—until she had moved to Seattle where the cold and rain stretched for gray days on end. Growing up, she had often found the light-filled sky oppressive in its ceaselessness, the doldrums of wearing shorts almost every day. That heat, those clothes could be glorious on a day off, but Margot and her mother, who worked long hours at her store six days a week, never had any time for vacation. But now as she contemplated the goldenness of the sun-scorched earth against a backdrop of cloudless blue sky, she could appreciate the warmth and light as if she had escaped a prison.
Hours later as Margot merged onto the 101 South, the sun began its long descent, transforming the sky into a wash of muted blue that blended into bright streaks of hot pink, the glow of tangerine in the west. After crawling along for thirty minutes with other drivers, possessing that quintessential LA—bored and spiritually deceased—look in the eyes, Margot and Miguel exited at Normandie Avenue and drove down the bustling streets of her neighborhood, Koreatown—clusters of signs in Korean, shopping plazas, parents holding bags of groceries and the hands of children, the elderly in sun hats hunched over and hobbling across streets, teenagers with baggy pants and backpacks.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been to Koreatown before,” Miguel said, staring out the window.
“Have you spent much time in LA? You’ve been a few times, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve done the touristy stuff. Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills, downtown.”
“There’s not a lot of reason to be in Koreatown, I guess, unless you’re into the food. It’s changing now, though.” Margot explained how in recent years, developers were carving playgrounds for the fashionable and moneyed, building condos, hotels, and restaurants in the neighborhood. “It’s so strange to me,” she continued. “Why would anyone want to come here?”