XII

A Real Nice Place to Raise a Family

You can’t call her a bad woman because of an impulse or personality disorder. She brought Tony Drury home one night just for fun, maybe hoping for more, but what’s the crime?

The day passes quietly. He sleeps mostly between analyses and possibilities. Inez shows up, and life goes on. She eases tension with her cheerful outlook and is given a toothbrush, floss and lessons. Tony suspects a greater give, an example of fair play, an act of love that will allow kissing the new maid before mounting her, before understanding the blessings of tolerance. Or maybe Heidi hates the unflossed side of romance and wants to practice on Inez before heading up the hill to brighten Charles’ smile. Or maybe she’s expanding her aid to underdeveloped nations.

They drool and froth, getting up in there where the gingivitis takes hold. Inez giggles when Heidi says gingivitis and spews a baby blue VanDyke onto her little brown chin. Cleanup takes a mop; not to worry. But Inez declines the floss; it seems unnatural, possibly ritualistic. Heidi calms her and says, “Liremi.” Inez heard of loco gringo custom but never believed it. “You got to get the crud out,” Heidi garbles. Inez pursues the crud and gets stuck. She whines like Heidi, who doesn’t floss enough. Floss-jammed and tugging, they pry with knives and more floss until their sad smiles unravel. Inez says it hurts. Heidi says yes, sometimes it does.

He calls them fools for flossing without modern implements and shags his loops from his dopp kit. They’re stuck to the brown stuff that forms on dopp kit bottoms, along with the ancient Band-Aids and rubbers, but they peel off easily. He has them looped in no time and with a gentle touch he works them free.

Heidi looks down and concedes, “I don’t floss like I should.” She looks up and says, “Oh, well,” on her way with a few bottles, a new bag of Michoacan and another bag of cukes. He offers floss for her date. She ignores him, saying her home is his and she can’t care for him better than that. He calls out that she can and asks if the new maid is supposed to take the edge off her guilt. She calls back, “That’ll depend on whether you score.”

She tells Taco to look after the place because Jorge also sees Taco as warm and tender—and falling off the bone to a hot tortilla. Tony thinks she leaves the dog for loving, in case Inez won’t. He thinks continuing contrition proves her guilt.

Sure, Inez’s threadbare dress clings to her shapely hips and presents her ripe papayas to advantage. And flossing and brushing brings her up sociologically. And maybe a bit of the antidote can cure the funk, she’s so young, so innocent, so happy. But you can’t romance a third-world teenager, especially a Catholic, so he doesn’t. It wouldn’t work anyway, not as a cure or a romance.

He watches her clean. He reads. He walks. In the afternoon he offers her a drink. “Oh, sí!” she says and moves casually for drinks. Muscles stretch across her shoulders as she reaches for the bottle and the glasses to serve the drink he offered. He stands beside her and only traces the flex with his fingers. She coos. He asks, “Is that from tension?” She nods, not knowing tension from burritos. He presses the knot. “Why?”

“Many things.”

“Many things. Money, romance, the future.” She smiles meekly. He lets it go; enough of trouble for awhile.

“Come.” He slides her chair over to ease her knots, giving like Heidi. He leans close for the smell of her, which isn’t like Taco sniffing a burro’s ass, not really. Taco is only playful and smart enough to know he can’t fuck a burro. Tony isn’t playful these days but is more open-minded than most dogs.

Her smell isn’t wrong but isn’t right. It isn’t flowers but earth and flesh. She doesn’t stink like nicotine, liquor and monkeyburger. She wafts innocence and dirt and an eagerness to please. She sits still when he tells her to esperante for a minute while he fetches Heidi’s whore bath—Danger, Outrage, Poison, Hazardous Waste, Eat my Heart, Raw Lust—Heidi has the flavors. Inez doesn’t know the difference between whore bath and playing in the sprinkler, but that’s okay, she so loves guidance in the ways of the other world. She titters when he dabs it on her neck, coos on her chest, chirps near her armpit, murmurs under her breast, whimpers around her nipple.

She giggles. He licks it and finds himself nearly blissed again, retrenched among the living. Taco barks and jumps around. He loves to watch people fuck. It’s that simple, like life; Inez and Tony are on like it’s been on all along. Sure, she could say no, but she doesn’t. Why should she, when the negative includes but is not limited to deprivation, denial and endless working for the pale-skinned people? She says sí, Dios mio, oo la la. The antidote appears to be mutually effective in the short run.

Her boyfriend is dispatched in the first minute of ficky fick when a man knows that he can never get enough, and a woman is in control. “What about your boyfriend?” He’s kidding, kind of, but she whimpers again and says Chico cannot be her boyfriend, because now Señor Tony is her boyfriend. Sure, she’s putting it out there for a ticket to room and board, shelter and clothing, an easy gringo ride. She says she loved him from the first minute, and so on. He knows about first minutes but believes her because it’s easy. And what if she’s lying? What’s the difference? Different cultures, habits, values—none of that matters either because this is therapy, luck, timing or all of the above. Free will in a free world brought them together by chance. The moment is the meaning and the meaning is love, not exactly the real love he envisioned, but nothing works out neatly as planned. He’s a buckaroo. She’s a Mexican beauty. Yahoo, mi guapa.

She whispers gratitude to Jesu Cristo and an assemblage of prior deities for luck as promised, or at least as indicated by heavy ablution. She also thanks the hombre between her legs, for his stroke is deliberate and kind.

Once the stuff flows and he’s had enough, she gets up, gets him a pillow and gets to work—windows, floors and counters—because she came to serve, like Heidi but less complex. He loves that and wants to give back, but not just yet. For now he sinks to real sleep, the deepest in days and nights, the sleep induced by the antidote.

Inez makes dinner. They eat with the sparse talk the rancho inspires and proceed to the common country pursuit. Lights out, they crawl in together and curl up flush. Something comes up but she makes it go away. He momentarily wonders how she got so good and then he drifts. “Don’t you have to go home?”

“No,” she says. He wonders if this is it, flowing into slumber. They dream of each other.

Up as the cock crows, out feeding the burros and chickens, gathering eggs and setting the place in order, Inez awakens her mentor with coffee; the roasted aroma in first light with no hangover makes it a dawn to remember. He sits up and feels plunked down from outer space to Don Diego de la Vega’s rancho for a long weekend with a Mexican juniper berry. With plenty frijoles and tortillas, cukes and limes on hand, another day passes in weightless comfort. And he still has a few bucks if they need to head in for supplies, Inez and Tony, dos improbables.

He suspects this fantasy is marginally framed but should weather another day or two. Tony D is grateful for many things but mostly for composure; he could worry about sudden interruption, or worse: that this is it, that Inez will soon be fat and then fatter, pregnant and then pregnanter and then pregnant again. But worry no màs, not now in a warm embrace, with cold roads ahead. A new series of moments begins with perfect eggs over easy, rice and beans. Inez has a way with coffee, Mexican-style, and a morning of idle talk over too much caffeine leads to energy crisis by noon. Sexual lyric and siesta feel poetic for two people getting acquainted. He avoids the fear that takes a man down—even on the down side of middle age when the woman is vibrant, alive and unembittered. Inez leaves no doubt that this is it, that happily ever after lies dead ahead, all the days in a row. Why can’t it be so?

Well, it can, except for the nagging questions of family, friends, a social life, education gap and those things you can’t leave behind like you died just because you go shack up with a road-worn gringo or because you really enjoy fucking the maid. Wrong again. Inez says her mother will be happy to learn of the lovebirds nesting. Simple as that; then she pulls off her dress and jumps in the sack to prove it. He’s still a gamecock but a new fear displaces the old fear; a couple go-rounds yesterday and last night and another just after brunch left both him and Lord Jim far more responsible than when they couldn’t get enough. He and Jim wonder if she expects three times a day. But this fear vanishes fast as the first fear, maybe faster. She says she wants what he wants. He wonders how she knows what he wants and wonders what it is. She can’t understand oral sex, she says, especially in post-floss stress syndrome, but she’ll try it soon, because the gringos favor it most of all. She giggles at the thought of it. What a woman.

Next thing you know it’s day three, or four.

And on a clear blue dawning of another glorious day, she says, “Sí,” in general, soft affirmative that this is it, testimony to the happiness her mother will feel for her and Señor Tony. She sighs and nods. “Sí.” And so will the happiness be felt, she says, by her children and grandchildren. He thinks she means her mother’s children and grandchildren. He gets corrected. She radiates over the love he will feel for the dark-eyed bambinos, they’re so beautiful and full of life. Her timing is impeccable, waiting a few days until body temperatures match and contentment breaks down the resistance innate to all men of spirit. She knows what she’s doing, delivering the news while experimenting with what gringos favor most of all. Her talent seems natural there too, with so little practice.

So on another wave the morning overwhelms what looked impractical at first blush, because the world is only practical, with women having babies who grow up and have babies, and life goes on for years. A good life makes more life, and then comes cleaning, cooking and sowing, gathering hearts and minds with practicality. Inez is twenty-nine, she says with a straight face, unflinching when he scrutinizes for a secret thirty-six. She has three daughters, seven grandchildren. If he likes, he can have some too. They lie quietly, contemplating the facts, and in awhile she rises to make her excellent coffee. He laughs at a stray recollection and tells her that just out of high school, he applied for a job at the Gas Company. And to think, he could this very minute be a vice-president. She laughs at the insane wonder of it all and serves coffee. Then come the chores, or the chores won’t get done. She knows this about gringos so she cares for the chickens, burros and rocks. He tells her the chickens have bounteous bugs. She says yes, but if given a handful of scratch in their boxes they’ll lay there. The burros will hush if fed on schedule, and any land likes having its rocks cleared.

Tony Drury has a few rocks to clear, and he ponders some practicalities of his own. He gets up, dresses, goes out and watches Inez. He feels lucky, looking up the road and seeing no trucks, yet he does want to tell Heidi about Inez, and he wonders if Heidi, Inez and he will one day clear rocks together and then make ficky fick. He wonders if three can be practical and open-minded. It’s just a thought.

Maybe Heidi justifies a long absence since she left him with a new playmate. How could she be so mean? Still and all, he must be having more fun. He knows he’s eating better, still rice, beans and tortillas but with more elbow grease and condiments now before adding water. As he ponders the menu for din, up the drive comes his sweet piñata with her apron full of eggs. She needs some things from town, she says. But how can they get to town with no car, he asks. She laughs, “Hombre. Porque los burros?”

Oy vay.

What will he say? That Inez and he are enjoying a long weekend together while Heidi humps Charles up the hill so Charles won’t have to die for our sins? That culturally disparate persons can achieve cohabital bliss, once they accept their practical needs? That Inez flosses and brushes every few days, and she’s open to foreplay? She sees him thinking. She thinks about it too. He asks her what she will tell her friends. She says she will tell them, “Hola.” She asks what else she could say.

What a woman. What a country. He hopes she’s only getting fat. But what’s he thinking? They’ve been conjugal less than a week. So either it’s fat, or hombre numero uno he ain’t. Perplexity lines his brow until she touches his cheek and kisses it. She prepares for town. He knows that God in His Third-World Heaven allows happiness to the hapless who can receive it. So he looks forward to another day of fun, an outing if necessary. But bliss thickens with practical momentum. Her family will be happy, she says, especially her mother, who will love the ranch.

What?

Hay caramba, she wants to bring them out to visit for a few years, to fill the empty rooms with life, to encourage the births of many more burros and perhaps babies, to gather many eggs, to clear the many fields of rocks and to sow for abundance. Oh, she’s not shy about efficient management with such good fortune at hand. Because isn’t love the biggest blessing after all?

He explains that we cannot have by simply wanting, because the place isn’t mine, and even if it was, well, you should … you should … well. She sadly smiles and walks away. He feels stuck again in a mental suburb but finds Heidi’s reefer tin under the bed and rolls a four-wheeler for better traction out and up and away.

He smokes another on foot, walking to town with Inez, Taco and the burros. This outing feels close to the ground and then some. But difficulties are internal for two hours until they reach her sister’s house. Inez grew up here. Little evolves here, but life is a step ahead of decay; wastewater flows out drainpipes from recent washing or flushing. A pervading scent of old coals and shit lingers behind the midday meal on the fire. She speaks too fast for his gringo ear but the women here, like those on the road, eye him up and down.

She tells them the love story over corn, tortillas and beans. He needs rest and light refreshment, but prospects for either seem slim until a little boy leads him to a little bed in a little room with crooked walls and a little window. A beer sits on a little nightstand. Inez and the women shriek with laughter in the courtyard when she demonstrates flossing. Taco wanders into the little room to gnaw on the boiled skull that only a gringo dog could hope for. He is happier than his friend, Tony Drury, who thinks this is the stuff dreams are made of and wonders how good it can get.

Don’t worry is all he has to do. He finishes the beer and wants another and an exit. This little shit-smelling hovel isn’t the problem, and prospects for a rancho full of Mexicans seem slight. No, the problem is himself again. He needs a drink and maybe a talk with Kensho and Cisco. That’s it. At least knowing what he needs eases him into reverie as Taco works the eyeholes.

He nearly snoozes when little voices on little feet scamper in with two more beers slightly cooler than the shade. Two of Inez’s grandchildren with dark hair and eyes stare at the gringo who drinks all the beer. He drinks these too on the edge of the bed, lost in another still life: man in contemplation of what’s going on around him.

It all ends in tears anyway—Kerouac wrote it, no big deal. He meant tears of sadness, because life passes surely as beer warms unless you drink it. Thoughts round the bend and go up and down like a road through the hills. He gets up, walks out to the courtyard where Inez and company work over some practicalities, more beans and a brand new goat’s head. He gives her a few grand and says he needs to see a man about some business.

She knows that gringo men are different with their business and their manners, like offering explanation to a woman before leaving. She nods, accepting these things and knowing as well of gringo prospects; he might return, might not. Life will work itself out. They don’t discuss his going or his business. He leaves for La Mexa for drinks and counseling. Maybe he’s homesick.

He heads down to Benito Juarez and sits on a bench then lays himself down until waking up in late afternoon to the soft calls of roosting egrets and the soft talk of Bobby and Earl a few benches off. Bobby makes a point, recognizing this on the one hand but that on the other. Earl nods, resting tattooed arms on his thighs. Maybe they review the relevancy of the nihilistic subtext in Nietzsche or disagree on whether Joe Montana could have played to forty-five with better protection from the front line. Earl raises a finger. But Bobby says, “No, no, no, I know what you’re gonna say,” and on he rattles until Earl nods again like Bobby guessed it right.

Tony walks up to el jardin and sits another hour reading the gringo newspaper that lists restaurants and events. He reads that Mastercard and Visa are acceptable many places now, making the town accessible to visitors who don’t feel safe with all that cash.

He reads the bulletin board at the coffee hole and says hello to a few familiar faces. Some ask if he’s been gone. Some asks if he’s back. “Not exactly,” is his answer.

Near dusk he stops at La Mexa and finds it empty as the end of an era. Too much competition from chic and clever, he supposes, or maybe it’s just one of those days. Maybe everyone is hungover, home waiting for nature to work her magic one more time.

He asks Pancho where he can find Cisco. Pancho shrugs, so he sits with a tequila. Awhile later Cisco steps up and sits beside him. “So?” Tony says. Cisco shrugs. They drink. To avoid what shapes up as nothing in common, Tony stands and says he has to go. Maybe Cisco is in a mood. Tony pats him on the back and says don’t be a stranger, come on out sometime. Cisco says yeah, yeah.

He heads down the hill to the flats, to the cracked pavement and primitive hovel of Inez’s friends or family or whomever they are, to the pervasive dirt that covers the kids and chickens in equal measure. He knocks on the door and the chickens scatter, the children giggle and stare. A woman inside says Inez has gone. She shoos the air toward the ranch. He says thank you and goes the same way. He could go elsewhere, but this is the direction of his choosing and he feels farther along. He doesn’t know what to do but in the meantime feels most prudent with more of the antidote. Inez feels very prudent as well with two strong burros, replenished supplies and a rancho. What fool of a man or a woman would deny such a chance?

In long strides he wants to catch up and soon sees a female ahead with two burros. He jogs but it’s some other grandmother or great-grandmother who says Inez is a half-mile up. Great-grandmother also knows the love story; he can tell. He wonders if women share the spirit of victory in all cultures. He wonders if Great-grandmother is on the guest list and he jogs a few more yards before the miles catch up and slow him down to the dusty shuffle common to this road. Great-grandmother calls, “Hola!” with a yip yip yip at the end that brings Taco back on the run for a jump and a quick sniff. They trod together up the road to Inez and the burros laden with beans, rice and corn, a week’s worth for less than one night’s bar tab.

“Hola,” Inez says, head bowed in twilight. She looks up with two more twinkles and steps close and kisses him. She’s brushed and flossed and makes him think differences are for those who see them. She looks up in last light. He hasn’t flossed, brushed, bathed or looked in a mirror in a long time. What can she see? But her gaze feels surrounded by a softer light. They walk in the last of it on the road home, where they will bathe, eat, have sex and sleep well. And tomorrow … But isn’t that always the problem?

Heidi’s truck sits in the driveway, monolith to the old order. “Oh,” Inez says. “La señora esta aquí.” They unpack the burros by the picnic table, and she leads them to their grazing area where she lingers, so re-entry can occur in phases of apparent practicality. From the kitchen he hears the shower running, so he sorts again, grains, legumes, love. Maybe Nurse Goode is down for a hose down and restock, beer and liquor, beans and cukes and some bug spray. Maybe she’ll head back up after a rest for more of the intensive care she longs for. He waits, contemplating primitive virtue.

“Hi,” she chirps with no guile or doubt. Glancing here and there, preoccupied, she hurries as if the crazies might go crazier if she doesn’t get back in time. “I didn’t know if you were still here.” He feels her indifference. It’s easier now. He was a charity case who made her laugh, a man of mental stability, modest resource and abundant durability. He wonders if he can actually become a Mexican. He could get some job leads from Tomàs. Nevermind. He doesn’t care, not with Inez and beans and tortillas and the warmth. Heidi sees the new strength on him sure as a new shirt. “God, I can’t believe it.” He stands taller. “You … I swear, I’ll make it up to you.” She hurries back to her room and returns with half a million pesos and chucks it to the table. “How did you get this?” She means the groceries. The groceries are what she saw; groceries fill her eyes and heart.

“In town. The burros.”

“You went to town with the burros?”

“Inez and I went to town with the burros.”

She thinks it over, shaking her head; the crazy shit some guys get themselves into just to get laid. She smiles; she knows.

Inez enters, head bowed. “Esta muy bueno. They need to work.”

“We did too,” he says.

Heidi is neither saddened nor amused but leans into the fifty-pound bags like a missionary exporting resources. He follows the lead of his peasant girlfriend, humping supplies into the truck, feeling secure in manual labor and injustice. He doesn’t mind that gringo excess instantly absorbs his toil, nor does he resent the gringa queen; she bought Inez for him, didn’t she? Besides, without the gringo excess, who would need laborers like himself? It’s working, he thinks, but the waste bothers him.

Inez titters on the sly; the grain and produce ran three hundred, and Heidi just bought half for five. Inez is ready for another round trip and loves the atmosphere of crazy good fortune that surrounds gringos. Heidi looks less fortunate, thinner, paler, matted, stringy, bruised, scratched and stooped. They load. They rest.

“It’s worse,” she says. Charles is less coherent, less rational. Jorge grunts and hand-jives Charles to a head of steam. Charles piles the trash. “That’s all he does.”

“He should be getting fit,” Tony says. “Or finished. When does the show let out?”

She says he cleared a swatch a hundred yards long, twenty yards wide. Then he built two palapas from debris. Jorge had him shape them into pyramids. Yesterday the old man climbed to the top and told Charles to pray, so Charles prayed. The old man came down and had Charles climb up. Then he prayed to Charles. He made her pray too. She did, because they were nuts. “It’s a game with Charles, but Jorge wants to kill him. If he says jump off the cliff and fly, Charles’ll step up and flap his wings.”

“But if Charles jumps, Jorge loses his following.”

“Charles is leaving him money.”

“Charles wrote a will?”

“Yeah. He says an inheritance to look forward to will help Jorge realize his potential.”

“Now you’re saving Charles from murder?”

“I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t want Charles to die. That’s all. You think I like it up there?”

“It must be entertaining.”

She slumps onto a bench. “He won’t eat.”

“Maybe he’s not hungry.”

“Please.”

“What do you eat?”

“Jorge gets stuff at night, broccoli, carrots, corn. Mostly broccoli. Charles eats it raw by the pound and turns white and starts working on a rock or a bonfire. We have a bonfire every night. Jorge gets him going with fire and the eclipse …” She weakens, “He won’t talk to me.”

“Jorge?”

“No!” She sobs.

Inez cradles her and says, “Otra vez Nanauatzin.”

Heidi looks up. “Jorge says that.”

Inez says Nanauatzin was the god who threw himself in the fire and made a new sun. Another god followed for a new moon. And now the old legend is a modern hustle. “Many men play Nanauatzin. You can make money near Mexico City. The legend is touristic. They come to look. They pay but not like before.” Inez grew up on the outskirts near Teotihuacan, near the ruins and souvenir stands. Her family is mixed and still practices the Toltec tradition of walking the Avenue of the Dead to the pyramids of the sun and moon on astral alignment, when a family can double its fortune with a little extra drama. “Ahora, el eclipse esta para los Cristos, màs o menos.” The big money now is in hand-carved crucifixes but hand-carved Nanauatzin sells a strong second.

“So what?” he says.

Nada mucho, Inez says, except that every shitbum beggar in the world comes in and ruins a decent tourist hustle, especially at eclipse time, and the old guy up the hill is doing it too. Tony shrugs. Heidi’s eyes implore.

“I won’t play.” He steps away. “I don’t wish anything bad for Charles. I hope he gets through this thing he set up for himself, but the game ain’t mine. I care. But life and death are a game to him. I admire that in a man. But it’s not my game, not this round. I don’t think he’ll do himself anyway. He’ll be up there till he works a few kinks out.”

He looks down. Heidi wants help. Inez wants a ranch of her own. He wants dinner and a nice fuck. Life converges on a moment from three directions and in the next moment goes in the three directions each moment potentially leads to. Heidi prepares to head up with a bitter smile. Inez steps back like a courtesan leaving a queen. He pours a drink so he can ditch all that crap—Charles isn’t crazy, just full of shit. He’ll turn himself to toast or he won’t; either way he’s a big boy who knows what happens when you play with matches.

Heidi looks sad as a little girl who saw the Easter Bunny but nobody believes her. Charles is crazy, she insists. People that motivated ought to find fulfillment, Tony allows. But if Charles doesn’t kill himself, then this big, dumb game will be forgotten like the rest. If he does, momentum will be internal; Chuck won’t be pushed, except maybe by Jorge, unlikely straight man in the traveling Wannaspotec Show. “Charles can be remembered for his last production.”

“Oh, you,” she utters in pitiable exit, chilling a recently happy homecoming, clouding it with dust and weighing it down with disappointment. At least day is done, a long one when you factor the gringo stuff. The peasant number is simpler, slower and smoother. Humping it to town with burros was a world away from the insanity ensemble up the hill. A new-found man and his woman Inez stocked up at a profit. So what does she want, that he’ll join her so a beggar can come back down and scratch grass from a few more cobblestones and a failed actor can continue where he left off with his old friend alcoholism on his quest for the perfect blueberry pussy? I doubt it.

Tony D needs a drink. But a troubled mind soaking up liquor is troubled still. Maybe Charles is a goner with admirable commitment. Here, here. For he’s a jolly good fellow. People reach dead ends every day, good people, strong people and true. Tony Drury and Associates happen to be on a lovely boulevard for now, so the rescue will have to wait. If the odd couple still need help in springtime, then he’ll head on up with mercy and sharing and all that.

Charles might not make it to springtime, but that’s all right, because sometimes you have to give a man his feet and let him walk. Because all these people grew up thinking drunk, stoned and horny are equal to freedom and anarchy. Viva la revolutión. If Charles burns, then good for him. He deserves a bravo from the rest, who only melt like figurines near the fire, stuck in poses of exquisite meaning, and don’t forget the art. Maybe it’s a good day after all, a welcome home, where you can hardly knock a guy for his career at the Gas Company, because we do what we do.

The modern renegades in town survive their usefulness and take refuge in familiarity. Inez is a tawny Cinderella in glass harachis. She knows about heaven and gringo habitat. Maybe she spread her legs for the head honcho before. Now she’s mistress of the house, reclaiming the earth for those who still live with it, inviting him to join in. It’s not his house. It’s hers. He likes the arrangement; it’s so free of responsibility. He drinks and thinks. She stocks, arranging a productive cocina on a smooth running rancho, saying what can come of what they have and how he will love her cooking. He loves her cooking all right, listening with a patient erection to the Spanish and Indian recipes blended in her family. Some of her family live near town and will one day visit, maybe one day soon, maybe next week, or the week after. She knows he has friends in town. She wants to entertain. Because work is good and provides food and shelter and after security comes the gravy. He nods and shows her the turkey baster. She agrees and hikes her dress like she and Heidi went to the same finishing school. Dicing hormones in hardly a minute, she smiles over another simmering recipe, which is the memorable stew called today. Sex will not be rationed because it’s free for the taking; it’s the happiest work leading to babies and more of the wonderful days. Life is good, is it not? “We will celebrate, sí?”

He considers a fiesta at Rancho Heidi but shakes his head. But she laughs at the gringo anxiety, knowing she can easily chase it away.

Fuck it: Inez is planning a fête. What’s one more crazy idea on a day like today, along with love and simple living? Familiarity takes over; Inez gets better and better, rising to the situation, or maybe that’s him, since she’s been big-hearted all along. But what about money? What about her swelling belly? What about a place to live after Charles comes, down or goes up in smoke? What about purpose, liquor, food and shelter—what about peace of mind? She laughs again. He laughs too and wonders how long.