Fernando didn’t have long to wait. He was out smoking on the crumbling, graffitied overlook, surveying the motley sprawl of Cortez old and new, when Pedro’s crew-cab truck drew up beside him. Pablo sat in the backseat. Their looks were sober, grim.
“Primo,” Pedro said.
Fernando nodded to him.
Crushing out his cigarette beneath his bootheel, Fernando walked over to the passenger side of the truck and got in. Pedro ferried him away to a part of Saguero he’d never been. A graveyard place of
It was one of Lalo’s guys who first alerted him to the trouble. Fernando followed him downstairs, weaving after him along the broad path he cut through the seething torrent of the crowd. Fernando went out back to find himself pitched headlong into a scene of scandalous turmoil. In addition to Lalo, Fernando saw that Chico, Pepe and Tito were already there, along with several others of Mondragón’s crew—and a straggling contingent of gawkers which was growing by the second.
Smoke rose from
Fernando would have to begin again, distancing himself from her.
There were many ways he could accomplish this. The goal was to wean Felicia off him without provoking her to hysterics. Fernando enjoyed playing with women. He even enjoyed tormenting them a little—but to cause them real pain was never his intent. Women’s tears of anguish sickened and repelled him. A clean break was best for all parties concerned. Arguably tricky to accomplish when a woman’s pride had been exploited for his
Felicia craved direction. Whether this was her nature or simply the result of her circumstances was difficult to say, but Fernando suspected the latter. This made her uninteresting to him fairly quickly. There was always excitement with a new woman, the novelty of seeing them exposed for the first time. To Fernando this wasn’t necessarily synonymous with seeing them naked. In Felicia’s case, he’d seen the breadth of her in their first rendezvous.
Most men would have been thrilled to have
Once, Monica worked as a night shift nurse. As far as hospitals jobs went, it wasn’t a particularly stressful one. She was the lone nurse on duty in the short-term recovery ward. Most patients in this ward were discharged in a matter of days, perhaps a week or two at most. Monica spent most of her time at the nurses’ desk, sipping coffee, scanning the personals ads in the newspaper and updating patient charts. Otherwise she answered the occasional calls for water or painkillers, or rambled
Fernando returned several times to the Hollywood house in Antigua. As Felicia had said, Mondragón was never there. With its grandiose stylings and furnishings, its garage of sportscars and motorcycles, its pools and palms and flamingos, its silent maids and sleek silver hounds, the place had the look and feel of a poor boy’s playground fantasy, a dream deferred realized into a trophy house—and Felicia was its crown jewel. Placed there with pride only to be forgotten. Beautiful and bored and
Felicia flushed from cheek to chest. The points of her nipples peaked through the silk of her robe. She put down her glass with a clatter and stood, turning toward the house. Fernando followed after her, back inside and up the grand staircase. His eyes bore into her from behind. When she snuck a glance back at him, she nearly missed her step. Clutching tighter to the banister than a drunk person should, she ascended mincingly the rest of the way.
By the time they reached the landing, she seemed
“Open up, bitch!”
Gwen groaned. Uncrossing her folded arms, she dragged her face up from the table. She rubbed at her forehead, which was smooth and shiny after laying plastered to the veneer for half an hour at least. As lowdown and shitty as she felt, she couldn’t help but perk up just a bit at the sound of that loud, bossy voice shouting at her through the door.
The moment she turned the knob, Lexi burst in. She breezed past Gwen in a whirlwind of expensive perfume, bouncy blonde
Felicia fidgeted with her cigarette, flicking ash onto the marble floor. “Would you like something to drink?”
Fernando inclined his head. She led him from the room, putting out her cigarette on the silk arm of a settee as she went. They walked across a cool foyer, then out onto a clay-tiled patio, bedecked with white wicker furniture, lounge chairs and a bar which bordered the gleaming pool that lay beyond. It was a muggy day, even at these lofty heights. The fragrance of the pale vining flowers