Exiles by Elliot Krieger

table. Spiegel, however, was distracted, for he had received a letter. And, to his surprise, it wasn’t from America. It had a local postmark.
    The letter was from Tracy, a simple, hand-scrawled note— Sorry we haven’t been to see you. Meeting tomorrow at 3. Be there?— and the address of the American Resisters Movement— Sweden. Spiegel would have to leave class early, but he would risk missing the valuable lesson on supermarkets.
    Jorge squirmed in his seat, kicking against the table leg, trying to get Spiegel’s attention, until at last his impatience got the best of him. When Melissa turned from the stove, he spoke.
    “My friend does not introduce us, but my name is Jorge Ramos.”
    “Gee, I’m sorry,” Spiegel said. “This is Melissa.”
    “Thanks, I can do it myself,” she said. “Melissa Layne. I’ve seen you at the school.”
    “Yes, I’m just starting. For the third time.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I keep dropping out. I miss one lesson or two, and then when I get back to class, I’ve forgotten everything, and so I quit. And then start over again.”
    “You’ll get screwed when you try to get credits,” Melissa asked.
    “I only take the class because of my residency permit. So long as I can be in class, I do not have to apply for a permit to work. And that is enough to make me want to stay in the class forever.”
    “Oh, I guess you’re not here on an exchange,” Melissa said.
    “Sorry?”
    “Exchange student. You know, from a college?”
    “I never went to college. I was in business,” Jorge said.
    “That’s so interesting.”
    “Yes, I will tell you sometime about my business.”
    “Jorge was the leading leather exporter in Europe,” Spiegel said.
    “Leather, ugh,” Melissa said. “I like animals, so I use vinyl.”
    Except for the whips, Spiegel thought.
    “Well, I wouldn’t say leather,” Jorge said. “I would say clothing. Flight jackets and so on.”
    “Oh, I hate that, too!”
    “Well, what kind of clothes do you like?”
    “You know, like this.” She ran her hands along her soft, cotton khakis. “Natural stuff. Silk. Chinos.”
    “It was not the style where I came from, but maybe if it was big in California . . . ”
    “I don’t know that it was big. What do kids wear back east these days, Lenny?”
    “Don’t look to me for fashion bulletins,” Spiegel said. “I used to wear a bomber jacket, though. I thought of it as an ironic statement.”
    “I don’t understand,” Jorge said.
    “Irony?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s not his native language, Melissa.”
    “No, really? I thought you were, like, English.”
    The guys laughed at that, and Melissa joined in, a little uncomfortably.
    “I will take that as a great compliment. I love the English,” Jorge said. “But my mother language is Portuguese. I am a native of Lisbon.”
    “Cool. You speak so well.”
    “You should hear me speak Portuguese.”
    “I wouldn’t understand a word,” she said.
    “Then I would sing to you in Portuguese. Everyone understands the language of music. And of food. And of love . . . ”
    “Yikes, speaking of food!” From what they could discern, Melissa was not a kitchen whiz. Her method seemed to be boil water, add rice and curry powder, watch for smoke. The aroma of curry had filled the small kitchen, but it was beginning to be displaced by the acrid odor of scorched rice.
    Melissa rushed to the stove and yanked the pot off the burner, singeing her palm. She began to shovel the rice out of the pot and into a soup bowl, scraping the burnt husks from the bottom.
    “Shall I put that in cold water for you?” Jorge said.
    “It’ll clean,” she said.
    “No, I mean your hand.”
    “I’m okay. Are you guys hungry?”
    “I have to be getting to my home,” Jorge said. “But will you allow me to renew my offer?”
    “Of cold water?”
    “Dinner, á la portuguese .”
    “That’s nice, but there’s so many things I don’t eat.”
    “There