With some delicacy they climbed into the Porsche. The small one, who was named Javier, took the tiny back seat, and the big one, named Diego, the front, bringing with them a masculine smell of earth and gasoline and cheap deodorant that almost overpowered the interior’s scent of sweet leather and old sunlight. For a moment Tom felt a pulse of trepidation—two strange men were squeezing into his car and he was taking them home—but the feeling passed quickly. The men were utterly polite, even demure, and when Tom instructed them to buckle up, they obeyed immediately.

He pulled into the traffic of Grand Avenue and motored toward the Ross Island Bridge. On the way he asked Diego, the apparent spokesman, where he was from. Diego was from Puebla, he said, south of Mexico City, and Javier, his friend, was from the state of Michoacán. They lived together in North Portland, and they liked the Northwest, except it was too rainy. Diego had a strong accent, but he spoke slowly and clearly and seemed comfortable making conversation with the boss, holding his rounded, weathered hands in his lap without fidgeting.

“So you guys have been here awhile?” Tom asked. He was always curious to hear the outlines of his hires’ stories. His own career managing an insurance company gave him a special interest in the hazards that buffeted the majority of the world’s population.

“This time?” Diego said. “Two months for me. Five months for him.”

“And you always work together?”

“Nah,” Diego said. “Only sometimes. Sometimes I don’t see him for days. What about you? You’ve been here a long time?”

“I’ve been here all my life, Diego,” Tom said, accelerating. The supple action of the gear shaft under his palm was pleasing. “My dad came over after World War II. From China. He owned a grocery store not too far from where I just picked you up. He did pretty well for himself. And I’ll tell you something”—Tom paused, signaling to Diego that he should judge the merit of his coming words for himself—“He never could have done it anywhere else, Diego. Only here. Only in America. You work hard and you can get somewhere. That’s the truth.”

The clean wind battered the windows. “Good for him,” Diego said, without guile. He rested his big hand on the lip of the glass. “So you’re a native. You’re very lucky.”