came out of the elevator trying to fit something into her small black purse.
She looked up and gave us an economic, careful little smile, took two steps, then took another look at me and froze.
She continued forward, her smile a little more forced. As she got closer I could see crisscross abrasions under the makeup on her cheek.
"George," Jenny said, "Tres, let me introduce Ana."
"Ana," I repeated, greeting Detective DeLeon for the third time that day.
"Nice to meet you."
Chapter 11-12
Chapter 11
The ride to the restaurant was a long one.
Not that I had to avoid conversation with Ana DeLeon. The detective and George were isolated in the backseat by the wind and the roar of the VW engine, but in front Jenny was bending my ear about her day, her week, her month. She must've been used to people tuning her out, too, because she double-checked my attentiveness with annoying frequency.
"And so I was telling George we shouldn't be using a check-writing service," she said. "There's really just four of us at the title office and that didn't justify the cost, you know?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Right?"
"Right."
"And so I started doing the bills myself and we saved so much money. I just went to this seminar on Peachtree and I mean I can't understand how I got along without it. I mean you must have to do that kind of thing with Erainya's agency, right?"
"Right."
"Yeah?"
"Uh-huh."
And so forth.
I liked Jenny. Intelligent. Good sense of humor. George was right that she and I joked around whenever I visited his title office. But the mean-spirited truth was I had nightmares about the man Jenny would marry, what he would look like after thirty years. I pictured him sitting in his easy chair with the game shows on and his nose buried in a magazine, a bright-faced geriatric Jenny standing over him chirping about her day and his responses of "uh-huh" that were once politely upbeat now reduced to inured grunts. It was not an image I wanted to have in my head on a first date.
When we got to Los Barrios the dinner rush was in full swing. The restaurant's green exterior walls were floodlit, its pink neon sign glowing. The surrounding two blocks on Blanco were lined with cars and people crowded into the brick entryway.
"You can sometimes find parking in the back," Jenny advised. "This place has gotten so busy since it expanded it's unbelievable, even on a Tuesday night. You know?"
"Sure."
"Hasn't it?"
"Oh, yeah."
She was right about the parking. We were able to wedge the VW between two Cadillacs in front of a house halfway down Santa Rosa. I held the door as George and Ana extracted themselves from the backseat. As DeLeon passed me she whispered, "Great car."
I made a snarly face at her but she'd already brushed past and was asking Jenny something about her shoes. George helped me put the top up on the Bug as the first splatters of rain started falling.
We had to wait for our table. The foyer was full of couples in evening wear, families with children, some college kids. Through the arched interior windows you could see into the restaurant's different sections, each crammed with diners. The decor was nothing fancy - plastic tablecloths, pseudo-Aztec art, fake plants, cheap wood paneling. The smell, however, promised great things.
While we waited we were again spared the problem of communication by the rockin' svelte sounds of Rod "the Rod" Rodriguez and his electronic mariachi band. Rod was doing a number somewhere between "My Way" and "Gracias a la Vida" - kind of a black velvet, Hammond-organ-salesman sound with a Tijuana twist. A couple of young drunk women were dancing. There were quite a few dollars in Rod's jar.
We finally got a booth in the oldest section of the restaurant, the part that had once been a Dairy Queen.
George grinned nervously and called Ana DeLeon "princess" and insisted on ordering for her - the chile relleno. DeLeon allowed the order to stand, though she didn't look dazzled by George's manly charge-taking. Jenny had a long conversation with the waitress about different sauces and finally decided on the green enchiladas, only with red sauce, and refried beans rather than borrachos,and no MSG in the rice and a couple of other changes on the clauses and subparagraphs of the menu that probably should've been initialed when it was all agreed on. I ordered the quesadillas, regular, with a kid's order of cheese enchiladas on the side.
Jenny looked across