The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan by Rick Riordan Page B

came down the elevator alone.
    "I'll be," she exclaimed. "Two
handsome men! Hey there, stranger!"
    She squeezed my arm, noticed and decided not to
comment on the new facial scar, then decided to get a little bolder
and fold herself around my elbow.
    Jenny was a nice-looking woman — maybe
twenty-seven, her skin so smooth and shining with health it looked
like air-mattress plastic. Her hair was floofy blond, teased to the
consistency of cumulus cloud, and her dress just as light — willowy
white layers of cotton. The only things of any hardness about her
were her black boots and her large earrings shaped like fish
skeletons.
    George fiddled with his flowers. "Where's your
comadre?"
    "Oh." Jenny sighed, brushed her hand
against my chest. "Ana's on her way down. Her pager went off
right when you buzzed and she had to call the office. She's always —
well, here we go."
    The elevator doors opened again. The woman who
stepped through was about five-nine, a dark-skinned Latina. Her red
sleeveless dress was mid-thigh length and showed off well-muscled
legs and arms. Her black hair was wedge-cut at the jawline and done
in bangs on top — a style that might have made another woman's face
look babyish, but not hers. Hers was serene, softened with amber and
blue highlights but not enough to dilute the stern set of her eyes
and her mouth. She 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."
 

    ELEVEN
    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