Extraits

“Hector? You call him Hector?”

“Well, I can hardly call out, ‘Agent Chavez, oo Agent Chavez,’ When he makes me climax, now can I?”

“Look who finally came in from the cold,” Ralphie announced and my head came up when Buddy muttered, a lot louder this time, “Jesus.”

I stared, mouth open and everything, at Hector “Oh my God” Chavez standing in Buddy and Ralphie’s living room.

He was wearing jeans, black boots, a flannel shirt (untucked) and you could see his white t-shirt at the open collar. His thick, black hair needed cutting and he needed a shave.

He’d never looked better.

“You were just a beautiful woman. Now you’re my beautiful woman.

What you got under your clothes is for me. No one else. They don’t look.

They don’t touch. That’s the deal. Yeah?”

I stared at him, speechless, which was a good thing because if I had words, I would have said them so loudly the neighbors would hear.

“Now,” he went on, either not feeling or not caring about the badder than bad vibes emanating from me directly toward him, “go put on a tank.”

That’s when I found my words.

“Maybe I should go put on my ragged white dress and stone necklace and you can put on your leopard skin tunic and we can pedal in our stone car to the roadhouse before you go bowling with Barney and I go shopping with

Betty, Fred.”

His thumbs stopped circling and his eyes narrowed.

“You wanna repeat that?” His voice was low with warning, telling me that, no, I didn’t want to repeat it, I wanted to run upstairs and put on a tank.

This, of course, I did not do.

“I’m referring to the Flintstones who lived in the Stone Age.”

“I know what you’re referrin’ to.”

“My point is, Hector and Sadie are not Fred and Wilma. We don’t live in the Stone Age. We live in the here and now, where women show cleavage and men don’t tell their women what to wear.”

“I asked nice.”

“You didn’t ask, you told.”

“All right, I told nice.”

Mrs. Chavez,” I said gently but she wasn’t looking at me anymore, her eyes sliced to Hector and she started yelling at him in rapid-fire Spanish.

Yes, yelling. And, yes, in Spanish.

I tried to take a step back because, well, she kind of scared me but Hector still had a tight hold on me.

Then she started waving her arms around and she spun, stalked up to

Eddie, got in his face and started yelling at him still in Spanish.

Then she turned to Lee, wagging her finger at him and then she yelled at him (in Spanish).

“Mamá,” Hector said low, cutting into her tirade.

She spun around from wagging her finger at Lee and glared at Hector.

“Cómo?” she snapped.

“Sadie’s hungry,” Hector told his mother, throwing me right under the bus.

“No!” I cried instantly. “No, really, carry on, um… yelling at people. It’s your house. Do whatever you want. I’m good. I’m not hungry at all.”

“Lee nodded, his smile somehow bigger like he was trying not to laugh then his eyes moved to Hector and he said, “I tried to stop it.”

Hector looked at Lee then looked at me then he muttered, “Oh fuck.”

“It was Ally’s idea,” Lee told Hector.

“What was Ally’s idea?” Hector asked Lee.

“It was not Ally’s idea!” I cried.

“It wasn’t!” super-power-eared Ally yelled from the open back window of Lee’s Explorer. “It was Sadie’s idea. I just was offering moral support.”

“Shut up, Ally!” Indy shouted out the open passenger side window.

“I will not shut up! I’m not taking the fall for this one!” Ally shouted back.”