The four men ahead and across are holding a loud conversation in Arabic. One of them makes gestures with the hand motions of a flamenco dancer, and it is difficult to tell if he is arguing or just telling a story. On the table, in front of the links of london man, are a pack of cigarettes and a cardboard box of opened Sprite and Coca Cola cans that seem to resist all our lurching and swaying. He and his friends wear different colors of the same cheap plaid, a common dress I’ve seen in the orchards.      I can pretend we are on a ship: there is nothing but blue water on the right, blue water that could be an entire ocean, its sky keener, larger than our own summer links of london jewellery sky, pale and subdued between mountain ranges. But the next stop is
Modesto, where the men across, no doubt, will get off for a few minutes and stub half-smoked cigarettes when the conductor calls.      The blue of the bay is gone. I watch the green lines of crops, the white-skinned eucalyptus trees, the solitary oaks move past in slow motion. A row ahead of the men, a group of high school girls with glossy hair and spaghetti straps links of london bracelet plays a clapping game that does not seem to annoy the other passengers. There is a lull in the Arabic, and I can hear a child singing in Spanish from across the aisle.      “Senora, ” says a male voice. “Would your daughter like a soda?” The child’s mother, a pretty girl in drab polyester, smiles without showing her teeth, shakes her head “no .”      Then again, this time in Spanish: “Senora, what is your daughter’s name?”      “Mercedes,” the woman answers and turns her links of london earrings attention back to the little girl, who is coloring with a pen on a notepad. The sun is starting to set, turning cloud wisps neon red in the dimming light.      “Senora. Why are you so sad?” I put down my magazine to look between seats for the Spanish speaker. It is the Arab with flamenco hands. He pronounces his words like a links of london native, and if it were not for his body language, he could pass for a Latino. I notice he has a goatee and a blue Lakers cap. His companions doze.      “You speak Spanish,” the little girl’s mother says without evident surprise.

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