ducktail and was dressed in skin-tight jeans and a Marlon Brando-style white T-shirt. Ellie could see a pack of cigarettes tucked into one rolled-up sleeve. The boy was slouching against the front fender of a late-fifties model car, the kind that was all chrome and fins, while the girl stood by smiling at him adoringly-if perhaps a little too indulgently.
Ellie pulled the photo closer and peered at it, searching for a resemblence between this young man and the artist she knew only as McCall. Impossible to tell, really; the styles were too different, the details blurred…
“Yeah, that’s my parents,” McCall said, startling her so much she gasped and knocked over the picture with a clatter. He reached calmly past her to set it to rights. “That was taken when they were in high school. About a year before my mother got pregnant with me.”
“I wasn’t trying to be nosy,” Ellie said, her voice gone raspy with embarrassment, heart beating like a jack- hammer. “It was right there, I couldn’t help but notice-”
“It’s all right,” he drawled. But his eyes, for once, seemed shielded. “I just came to tell you lunch is ready-if you’re interested.”
“Oh, yes-thank you. I’m starving…”
What the heck, she thought. In for a penny… “So, is that the only picture you have?” she brazenly asked as she followed her host into the living room. “Of your family, I mean. Brothers and sisters?”
“Nope.” He waved her past him toward the round rattan table, cleared now of painting supplies and set with woven place mats, heavy glazed crockery plates with a bright Mexican design, and the kind of inexpensive flat-ware that sometimes comes in picnic baskets-flimsy metal with bright red plastic handles. And as a centerpiece, the fruit bowl from the kitchen-blue and white ceramic, piled high with tropical fruits. It reminded Ellie of a still-life painting by…she couldn’t think of his name, the French impressionist who’d fallen in love with the South Seas.
“No napkins,” McCall said gruffly, handing her a folded dish towel. “I don’t have company very often.”
The Alice-in-Wonderland feeling was back again; she wondered when she was going to stop being surprised by this man. She felt like the kinkajou, nose a-tremble, all but beside herself with curiosity, but all she said as she took the chair indicated-in an abrupt, almost afterthought way-by her host, was, “Thanks. Looks good.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said dryly, shifting a dish-towel-covered plate closer to her before sitting down himself. “I do eat.” The corners of his mouth twitched-as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Occasionally even sitting down.”
Ellie lifted a corner of the dish towel. Tortillas-of course. She took one and put it on her plate, then passed the plate to McCall, who did the same. He picked up a shallow white bowl and ladeled a spoonful of its contents onto his tortilla, then passed the bowl to Ellie. Ignoring good manners, she held the bowl to her nose and took a good sniff. Rather like oranges, she thought. Spicy… Her stomach rumbled.
“Smells good,” she said. “What is it?”
“Chicken,” muttered McCall. “Mostly.”
Chicken…loops of onion, chunks of red, yellow and green-peppers, perhaps. And something orange… Mango? With McCall, even the food came in bright, simple colors, she thought, like a child’s first box of crayons.
She spooned some of the mixture onto her tortilla and rolled it up, following McCall’s example, into a taco-the Mexican version of a sandwich. She picked it up and bit into it, closing her eyes. Sweet-sour…hot…spicy…exotic. Heavenly. “Good,” she said, nodding.
“Glad you approve.” Again his tone was dry, ironic.
“No, I mean it. Different, though. What’s it called? Where’d you learn to make it?”
He shrugged, busy building himself another taco. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s pretty much local, I guess. No particular way to make it-everybody does it their own way.” He gave her a look and a half smile. “Kind of like meat loaf in New Jersey.”
But he hadn’t answered her questions, Ellie noticed. She thought about that as she polished off her taco, then reached for another. “How long have you lived here-in Mexico, I mean?”
“All my life,” said McCall.
Her eyes snapped to his face. He returned her look with a long, direct stare, and she felt her cheeks grow warm and the food she’d just eaten form a lump in her chest. It had seemed to her an innocent enough question. Hey-just making normal conversation, right? But such a blatant and obvious lie in reply carried its own equally obvious message:
She cleared her throat. “You mentioned an ex-wife,” she said evenly, returning the stare.
His eyes shifted away from her as he nodded in time with his chewing. “I have one.”
“Then I assume she must be Mexican?”
Again their gazes locked-hers wide-eyed innocence, his veiled…secretive. Again he was first to break the contact. “Your mother ever tell you it’s rude to ask so many questions?”
Her eyes followed the bottle as he lifted it to his lips. Her own throat, tight with shame and anger, convulsed when he swallowed. “We’re going to be working together,” she said in a low voice. “You’re supposed to be my husband. It would be nice to know something about you besides your last name.”
The corners of his mouth lifted. “What you see is what you get.” But it was almost insultingly glib. After a moment he tipped the mouth of the bottle toward her and said very softly, “
This time it was Ellie who jerked her eyes away from a touch that had become too intense. Her cheeks felt so hot she thought they must be glowing. “As if I would forget that,” she said in a choked voice. But she had.
This undercover stuff was turning out to be a lot harder than she’d expected. Or, maybe, she thought dismally, she was just too fundamentally honest for this kind of work. Too open. She’d always found it hard to lie. Even harder to hide her feelings. She didn’t know how to think like a married woman, much less act like one. She hadn’t had any practice. And this man, this McCall, it seemed, missed nothing. She was going to have to be very, very careful.
“What’s that you’re drinking?” She changed the subject almost violently, hurling the inquiry at him in a voice that was too loud and raspy with self-consciousness.
He glanced at the bottle in his hand, as if surprised to see it there. Or surprised by the question. “This?
“Sure-” she gave a savage little shrug “-why not? When in Rome…”
McCall pushed back his chair and went off to the kitchen. He came back a moment later with a second bottle, which he placed in front of Ellie. She lifted it to her lips, sipped and gamely suppressed a shudder.
“You want anything more to eat?”
“No, thank you,” Ellie said, determinedly taking another, longer swig of the beer and repressing an urge to gag. She watched resentfully from the corner of her eye as her host gathered the dishes, stacking everything except the fruit bowl into a haphazard tower, then shifted to more blatant, almost defiant observation when he started off with them to the kitchen.
Oddly, watching him walk away from her, dish towel flung casually over one shoulder, shirttail flapping, sandals slapping on the Mexican tiles, she felt her resentment and frustration melt into something else…something she couldn’t recall ever having felt before, at least about a man. A warm and achy little pool of disappointment…of wistfulness…of regret. She wanted to
And it sure didn’t look as though she was ever going to get that chance.
She took another swig-a big one-of pulque. It didn’t seem so bad this time; perhaps she was acquiring the taste for it after all.
When McCall returned, the kinkajou was riding on his shoulder, once again with her tail curled around McCall’s
