The governor's wife stifled a yawn.
The heat and her county fair lunch of fried chicken, fried okra, fried ice cream, fried Twinkies, fried butter-every four years the governor's wife had to prove to the voters that she was still a country girl who ate country food-had conspired to make her drowsy. But she fought her heavy eyelids. It would not do her husband's campaign any good for the cameras to catch her yawning during his speech. Standing at the podium a few feet away, Governor Bode Bonner bellowed sound bites in his booming campaign voice.
"We got boys marrying boys and girls marrying girls and kids having kids and Mexicans having Americans and…"
Of course, it was difficult not to yawn when she had heard the same speech a hundred times, maybe more. She knew every crowd-pleasing phrase, every pause for effect, every applause line… and she hated every word of it.
She wanted to scream.
She always put her mind somewhere else during his speeches, tried not to listen to her husband's words and hoped he didn't believe them, that he was just an actor on a stage reciting his lines. But was he? Had he come to believe his own speeches? She feared he had. That he had bought into his own ambition.
He wanted to be president.
A faint hint of smoke from the wildfires out west and a stronger scent of farm animals filled the stock show arena at the Lubbock County Fairgrounds where that very morning the governor's wife had presented the prize for the Grand Champion Bull. The governor now stood before ten thousand registered Republicans gazing up at him like a flock of sheep, waving little American flags, and eating up his red-meat stump speech, the one in which he railed against the federal government, Washington, deficits, taxes, global warming, gay marriage, ObamaCare, liberals, and illegal Mexican immigrants.
"What part of illegal don't they understand? They don't need a path to citizenship-they need a path to the border!"
Amarillo on Tuesday, Midland on Wednesday, and Lubbock on Thursday. A campaign swing through the rural counties of West Texas-the Bible Belt of Texas. The brightest red counties in a bright red state. Tea party country. Bode Bonner country. Cattle ranches, cotton farms, and oil wells. Where the people loved their governor and hated their government-except the government that gave them farm and ranch subsidies and tax breaks for oil. They liked that part of government. But her husband was a politician, so he told them what they wanted to hear.
"They want to pick your doctor and indoctrinate your kids… They took Christ out of Christmas and prayers out of school…"
And she now wondered, as she often wondered when out on the campaign trail: How did she get from a cattle ranch in Comfort to a stump speech in Lubbock?
The first day of April had Lindsay Bonner longing for home. Not the Governor's Mansion-that had never been home to her-but their ranch in the Hill Country north of San Antonio. Her family had moved to Texas when she was five and Comfort when she was fifteen. At twenty-two, she had married Bode Bonner and moved to his family's five-thousand-acre ranch. That had been her home until eight years ago when they moved into the Mansion. She missed the ranch. She missed the small hacienda-style house with the courtyard and the flowers and the shade trees. She missed spring when the days were warm and the nights cool, when the green returned to the pastures, and the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush covered the hills like a blanket of blue and red and yellow. She missed riding with Ramon and cooking with Chelo. She missed spring roundup with the vaqueros. Lindsay Bonner much preferred working cattle than working crowds. She was a reluctant politician's wife.
Her husband was not a reluctant politician.
"When it's hot and dry, they say it's global warming. When it's cold and wet, they say it's global warming. Hell, in Texas we call it summer and winter."
The crowd cheered. They loved him. And Bode Bonner loved them. He craved attention, whether from football fans or registered Republicans. She did not. He had always been the star; she had always lived in his sizable shadow from that day in ninth grade when Bode Bonner, senior football star, had walked up to her in the hallway and asked her to the homecoming dance. The moment she said yes, she had taken up residence in his shadow. And there she had lived the past twenty-nine years. But now she needed more. Not more attention. Not more from a man. But more from life.
Her own life.
Politics had destroyed their lives. Her life, anyway. Bode had gone on to the University of Texas and majored in football. By the time she arrived at UT in his senior year, his shadow consumed the entire campus. When the NFL passed on Bode Bonner due to the four knee operations, he returned to the family ranch. After she graduated with a nursing degree, she had become Mrs. Bode Bonner. He ranched cattle; she worked in the emergency room at a San Antonio trauma hospital. She was happy then; she had her own life and the life they shared. Then Becca came into their lives, and they were happier. She would never forget Bode lifting the little girl up onto his horse, sitting her in the saddle in front of him, and the two of them galloping off. It was a glorious moment. Becca Bonner was Bode Bonner's daughter, as beautiful as he was handsome, tall and athletic, at home riding horses and roping cattle.
Bode Bonner loved his daughter more than life itself.
Lindsay Bonner loved those years. She was content. Happy. Useful. But Bode needed more. More excitement, more adventure, more competition. He needed politics. Men needed three basic things in life: sex, food, and competition. Politics provided two out of three. So he ran for the state legislature to champion rural interests as Texas became more urban. He lost his first election as a Democrat, but he won his second election as a Republican and every election since. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough.
He always yearned for higher office.
"Texas was once an independent nation-and if Washington keeps messin' with Texas, we just might be again!"
She suddenly snapped out of her thoughts-the Lubbock Republicans sitting on either side of her were applauding the governor and glancing suspiciously at his wife. She was late with her applause. Again. She now clapped for her husband. He basked in the applause.
Bode Bonner had fallen in love with politics. It filled a need inside him. It fed his competitive instincts and enabled his ambition. It stole the romance from their lives. He had found something he loved more than her. It was painful enough for a woman to lose her man to another woman, always a risk when her man is in politics, but to lose her man to politics, that bordered on cruel. But seduced by politics he was. So he ran for the governorship. Texas had turned red and Republican, but Bode saw that it had also turned green, as in money from big business, that the State Capitol was no longer the seat of government, but instead a shopping mall where laws, rules, and regulations were bought and sold-and the people were sold out. But Bode Bonner had been different. He was a populist. A man of the people. He wanted to change things.
Now he wanted to get reelected.
She had campaigned with him that first election, crisscrossing the State of Texas in a pickup truck. It was romantic, it was fun, and it was important: Bode Bonner was going to make a difference. He promised change, and the voters put him in the Governor's Mansion. Election night was glorious, standing next to her husband, the governor of Texas.
But once elected, they descended upon him. People vested in state government: people doing business with the state, seeking money from the state, buying from the state, selling to the state, lobbying the state, controlling the state. People vested in the status quo. People who didn't want their world to change. The power brokers and lobbyists and lawyers entered their lives, and they changed Bode Bonner. He became what he had hated. He sold his soul for four more years in the Governor's Mansion. And she had aided and abetted him, the dutiful and loyal governor's wife.
And she was still living in his shadow.
He now grabbed the microphone and stalked the stage, no notes, no teleprompter, just Bode Bonner and a microphone, quoting chapter and verse of tea party politics.
"Washington is giving America away to Wall Street, to multinational corporations that outsource your jobs and in-source their profits…"
He could've been a preacher. The "Bode Bonner Hour" on Sunday morning television. So tall, so handsome, so articulate-an ex-football player, imagine that-but he wasn't real. He was just an image in a campaign commercial in his cowboy boots and hair sprayed in place. He was a cut-out cardboard figure you stood next to to have your photograph taken. That was not the man she had married. That was the politician Jim Bob Burnet had created.
She blamed Peggy.
Jim Bob had met and married Peggy at UT; Lindsay had been her maid of honor and Bode his best man. But Jim Bob had changed when Peggy left him five years later and ran off to California with their daughter, when she had decided that Jim Bob Burnet would never give her the life she wanted. Peggy was like that. Politics-winning elections-became Jim Bob Burnet's life. His obsession. As if he needed to prove to himself and to Peggy that she was wrong about him. But he couldn't do it alone. He needed Bode Bonner. So he took her husband and changed him.
Jim Bob made her husband a politician.
"But your voice isn't heard in Washington because you live in a red state and vote Republican, because you read the Bible and not the New York Times…"
Bode pulled out the pocket-sized Constitution he always carried and waved it in the air like Moses waving the Ten Commandments, a signal that he was building to the big finale, whipping the crowd into an anti-government, tea-party frenzy.
"Because you believe in Jefferson and Madison, not Marx and Lenin, free enterprise not freeloading, America not ObamaCare…"
He could fire up a crowd. He always said it was no different than firing up the football team before a game. This crowd was ready to play for Bode Bonner. To vote for Bode Bonner.
"This is our America! This is God's country! God bless Lubbock! God bless Texas! God bless America! And never ever forget: Bode Bonner's got your back!"
The crowd broke into wild applause and that familiar chant-"Bo-de! Bo-de! Bo-de!" — just as the crowd had chanted back when he had starred on the Longhorn team. Back then, she had joined in the chant from the spectator seats. But not today. For two terms, she had accepted her role as the dutiful loyal spouse. She had played her role, perfected her role.
But that had all changed now.
Her trip to the border had changed her. A month had passed, a month of public appearances and photo ops and volunteer work-but something was missing now. Or now she noticed what had been missing for so long. That day in the colonias had made acting a role unacceptable, living in someone's shadow intolerable, cheering from the sideline unbearable. She wanted to live her own life again. She wanted to be useful again.
She no longer wanted to be the governor's wife.
One man in the crowd did not clap or cheer or chant the governor's name, for he hated Bode Bonner with every fiber in his being. He was the state Democratic Party chairman, which is to say, the longest losing coach in the history of the game of politics. Twenty years he had gone without winning a statewide race in Texas.
With no end in sight.
Clint Marshall pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for the mayor of San Antonio. Jorge Gutierrez had first won political office before Clint was born. He was the leading Latino in Texas, which meant he was the leader of the Texas Democratic Party. He answered on the second ring.
"Clint, how are you this day?"
"Terrible. I'm in Lubbock."
"Yes, well, that was your first mistake." The mayor chuckled. "What are you doing in Lubbock?"
"Stalking the governor."
"Ah. And what have you learned?"
"That our boy's gonna get his ass kicked in November."
"You just figured that out?"
"No-but I'm always hopeful. Or I was."
"There is no reason to hope, my friend, not for the Governor's Mansion. Not this election. But be patient. Our time will come. The governor-for-life will surely die one day."
He chuckled again.
"Maybe, but I'll be out of a job before then."
"Do not fret, Clint. No one in the party expects you to beat Bode Bonner."
"Jorge, the guy is fucking Teflon. We've got a twenty-seven-billion-dollar deficit, but no one blames him-hell, they don't even believe we have a deficit. We're suffering the worst economy in decades, and they don't care as long as they can keep their guns and watch Fox News on cable." He paused. "God, what I'd give for a good sex scandal in the Governor's Mansion."
The mayor laughed. "Clint, would you cheat on the governor's wife if she were your wife?"
"No."
"Even a Republican governor is not that stupid. Search for another scandal, my friend."
"Mrs. Bonner! Look this way!"
The cameras took aim at her like a firing squad, the photographers wanting a front-page photo called out to her, and the people reached out to her. She smiled for the cameras, but the crowds frightened her. The raw emotion. The mob mentality. The power her husband held over them. She eased closer to Ranger Roy, who towered next to her, protecting her, holding her door open and gently tugging her arm. One last wave, then she climbed inside the Suburban and breathed a sigh of relief.
She had escaped the crowd.
But her husband didn't want to escape. He loved the crowd. He thrived on the crowd. He needed the crowd as much as they needed him, cheering for him, touching him, taking photos with him, so desperate to breathe the same air he breathed. He shook hands and slapped backs and kissed babies-and a few women-until Jim Bob Burnet pulled him away and pushed him into the vehicle. But Jim Bob did not get in; he was not allowed in the same vehicle as the governor's wife. Ranger Hank shut the door and jumped in the driver's seat; Ranger Roy rode shotgun. They began a slow exit from the fairgrounds through a gauntlet of cheering Republicans. The governor of Texas had a big smile on his face and red lipstick on his cheek.
"Hell, I could win the White House on red states alone. They love me!"
Lindsay Bonner stared at her husband. Regardless of the many ways a man ages-hair graying and thinning and finally disappearing entirely; the sharp jaw line descending into floppy jowls; the V-shaped torso gradually turning upside-down until his waist possessed all the structural integrity (and allure) of a mud puddle-his wife still sees the man she fell in love with. She is blind to his physical diminishment.
But disillusionment-that was another matter.
Her husband's hair was still golden, his facial features still sharply etched, his body still remarkably tight and muscular, almost as if he hadn't aged at all the last twenty-two years. But he had changed. She no longer saw the man she had fallen in love with. She now sat next to a complete stranger.
"Who are you?"
His smile disappeared. He groaned.
"Don't start with me, Lindsay."
Up front, Ranger Hank swapped an uneasy glance with Ranger Roy, as if to say, Here we go again. He turned up the volume on the radio.
"No. Really. Who are you?"
Her husband pointed at the cheering crowd outside the vehicle.
"Whoever they want me to be."
"Do you really believe all that?"
"All what?"
"Boys marrying boys, girls marrying girls, Mexicans having Americans…"
"I'm just riding the wave."
"What wave?"
He again gestured at the crowd.
"That wave. See, it's like investing-"
"Your daughter's a lesbian."
"I'm hoping it's a college fad."
"You really shouldn't encourage that."
"I didn't tell her to be a lesbian."
"Not her." She now pointed at the crowd. "Them."
"I'm not encouraging anything. Jim Bob takes a poll then writes a speech saying what they want to hear. That's different."
"That's following."
"That's politics. Jim Bob says-"
"Jim Bob says…"
She shook her head.
"He's tweeting for me now, on that Twitter."
"He was already thinking for you. Pretty soon, he'll be breathing for you. I guess I should have sex with him."
She shuddered at the thought.
"Well, you sure as hell ain't been having sex with me."
The Rangers grimaced, like kids when their parents argued. Their heads seemed to sink into their shoulders. Hank turned the air conditioning on full blast while she fought the urge to bring up Mandy Morgan- as if I don't know! — but she did not need that gossip running through the Ranger ranks across the State of Texas. Or did they already know? She stared west at the distant haze of the fires and took a long moment to calm herself; she then turned back to her husband.
"Can we talk about the colonias? "
Another groan from the governor. "No."
"Bode, we need to help those people."
"We're broke and they're Mexicans."
"They're still people."
"And we're still broke."
"If you saw how they live-"
"I've been to Mexico."
"But they live in Texas-without running water, sewer, or electricity."
He exhaled loudly, a sign he was annoyed.
"Jesus, all you've talked about the last month is the colonias. I wish to hell Jim Bob hadn't sent you down to the border. Incited your liberal Boston breeding."
She felt the heat rise within her.
"Bode Bonner, I'm not a Texan by birth or by choice. But after forty years living in this state, I am a Texan. And by God, it's high time you native Texans got over the Alamo and quit hating Mexicans!"
"I don't hate Mexicans. Hell, I was raised by Mexicans, I worked cattle with Mexicans, I dated… Never mind."
"You don't hate particular Mexicans, just Mexicans in general."
"I hate Democrats in general, not Mexicans."
They cleared the fairgrounds and headed north on the interstate. The wind rocked the Suburban, as if they were driving a billboard up I-27. A pickup truck sped past with a gun rack in the rear window and a bumper sticker that read: O LORD, PLEASE GIVE US ANOTHER OIL BOOM, AND WE PROMISE NOT TO SCREW IT UP THIS TIME. She braced herself to make another run at her husband's humanity-or to find it again.
"Bode, the poverty in the colonias is staggering. We need to do something."
"What? What can government do? We spent trillions fighting the war on poverty, and we lost. All we got for our money are more poor people. I got news for you, Little Miss Colonia-Texas is broke! But you want me to give more money we don't have to Mexicans so they can have more babies they can't afford? We can give those Mexicans all the money in the world, Lindsay, but they're not suddenly gonna start wearing J. Crew and shopping at Whole Foods. The solution isn't more money, it's better behavior. But government can't change human behavior. Government can't make people stop smoking or eating fast food or using drugs or having babies they can't feed. So government can't solve poverty."
"Government can try."
"It did. It failed. Government has never solved a single social problem, and it's never gonna solve a single social problem. You liberals cry for more money and more government, but the truth is, government can't make a difference in people's lives. Only people can."
Her husband's words jolted her-and she knew at that very moment what she had to do. What she would do.
"You're right."
"I am?"
"Yes. And I'm going to make a difference."
"Good. You go make a difference while I govern a goddamn bankrupt state."
"How bad is it?"
"Twenty-seven-billion bad."
"On TV, you said we don't have a deficit."
"I lied."
"Why?"
"Voters don't want to hear it."
"What are you going to do?"
"Cut the budget."
"What?"
"Everything."
"Schools?"
"Education and Medicaid eat up three-fourths of the budget."
"Raise taxes."
He laughed, but not as if it were funny.
"In an election year? You sound like a Democrat. Raise taxes. That's their answer to every problem."
She didn't think this was the time to tell him she was a Democrat.
"Use the rainy day fund. What is it now, nine billion?"
"Nine-point-three."
"Then use it. At least for schools."
"The tea party will raise holy hell."
"Do they control you?"
"No. They control the voters who control me."
They rode in silence for a few miles through land that lay as flat as a table top and was as dry as cement. The drought had turned Texas into another Dust Bowl. When she again spoke, her voice was soft.
"Bode, you don't want to be the governor who gutted public education. You saw the children in Graciela Rodriguez's kindergarten class. They need our help."
"How many of those kids will graduate in twelve years?"
"Half. Maybe. But she's their only hope. And you're her only hope. I told her you cared. Please don't make me a liar."
He sighed and stared out the window at cattle searching for grass on the plains.
"Bode, please do the right thing."
"You mean lose the election?"
"You used to want to do the right thing."
"I used to lose. Now I win."
"Is that all that matters?"
"Better than losing."
"But why do you want to win?"
He looked at her as if she were crazy. "Because I'm a politician. That's what we do."
"But why? "
"To keep this state out of Democrats' hands, so they don't screw up Texas like they screwed up the rest of the country."
"We're pretty screwed up if we've got a twenty-seven-billion-dollar deficit."
"Don't ever say that in public."
"Bode, I've been the governor's wife for eight years. I know what to say and not to say in public."
"Well, if you want to be the governor's wife for another four years-"
"I don't."
"You don't what?"
"Want to be the governor's wife."
She could feel the Rangers' muscles tense up front. The governor turned fully to his wife.
"What the hell does that mean?"
There were two Bode Bonners: the public politician and the private man. She still loved the private man, but there was less of him to love. With each passing year living in the Governor's Mansion-with each election-the man seemed to merge into the politician. Or the politician consumed the man. Like a cancer. She had seen cancer eat away at patients in the hospital until they were just a shell of their former selves. The cancer that afflicted her husband-political ambition-had had the same effect on him. Ambition had eaten away all that was good inside Bode Bonner and left him a shell of a man. She had hoped he would recover, but she knew now that he would not survive. He wasn't fighting his cancer. He had become his cancer. She could no longer bear to look at him, this man she had loved and lain with and looked upon as her hero. She now averted her eyes so he could not see her tears.
"Bode, I'm not happy. With my life."
"Lindsay, this is our life. I'm the governor, and you're the governor's wife."
"I'm forty-four years old. Becca's in college now. She doesn't need me, you don't need me-what am I supposed to do the rest of my life? Smile for the cameras? Shop? Play tennis and do lunch at the country club? That's not me. I didn't sign up for that." She wiped her eyes and turned to him. "Bode, I can't do this anymore."
His expression changed. She saw fear in his eyes.
"You want a divorce?"
"I want to be useful."
"You are. You're the governor's wife."
"I'm used, not useful. Bode, I don't want to just breathe oxygen and fill the space inside my clothes. I want my life to have meaning. I want to make a difference."
"You do. You volunteer at the homeless shelter, the food bank, the elementary school-"
"I want to be a nurse again."
"A nurse? "
"Yes."
"You can't be a nurse."
"Why not? I kept my license up to date."
"Where are you gonna work? In the ER at Austin General Hospital? Everyone knowing who you are? It'd be a goddamn fiasco."
It would.
"Look, Lindsay, we'll talk about all this when I get back, okay?"
"Back from where?"
"Hunting. Me and Jim Bob, we're flying out to John Ed's ranch, tomorrow morning."
"How long will you be gone?"
"Just for the weekend. I'll be back Sunday evening."
"I don't want to wait that long."
He patted her knee as if putting off a child. She hated when he did that.
"Come on, honey, this can wait till then, give you time to think it through. When I get back, we'll talk this out, okay?"
She knew they wouldn't. He just hoped she'd move on to something else. Another "do-good deal," as he referred to her volunteer work. But this was her life.
"Bode, I have thought this through. I'm going to be a nurse. I'm not asking your permission."
His jaw muscles clenched, and she felt his blood pressure rising.
"Where? Where are you gonna be a nurse? You're the governor's wife, and everyone in the State of Texas knows you on sight, that famous red hair. So you may want to be a nurse, Lindsay, but you ain't gonna be-not unless you can find some place in this whole goddamn state where no one knows you're the governor's wife!"
But there was such a place.
"?Nombre? "
"Tendita Chavarria."
"?Cual es la edad? "
" Veinticuatro."
"?Cual es el sexo? "
" Si."
" No. Femenino. "
"Oh. Si."
"?Ninos??Numero? "
" Cinco. "
"?Marido? "
" No."
Five hundred miles south of Lubbock, Inez Quintanilla sat at her desk in the clinic in Colonia Angeles across from a resident, completing another of the census forms left by the governor's wife. Jesse Rincon sat at his desk, thinking of the governor's wife. A woman such as her had never before come into his clinic. The women who came into his clinic were like the woman Inez now interviewed, twenty-four years old with no husband for herself or father for her five children, women who no longer dreamed of a life beyond the wall, women who would live and die in this colonia. But twenty-nine days ago she had walked into his clinic-into his life-and now he could not get her out of his life. Out of his head. Each day he thought of her; each night he dreamed of her. A married woman. The governor's wife.
Was there truly such a thing as love at first sight?
He had no romance in his life, and no prospects for any. Women did not come to the border; they fled from the border. They desired a life in the cities, not a life in the colonias. So he had long ago abandoned all thoughts of love. Marriage. Family. He had resigned himself to a solitary life, as if he were the priest his uncle had wanted him to be.
Then she walked into his clinic.
In the month since, he had searched her on the Internet, read about her and stared at her image on the computer screen, as if he were a smitten schoolboy back at the Catholic school in Nuevo Laredo. He followed her daily schedule in Austin as the photographers caught her coming and going, entering an elementary school and leaving a coffee shop, entering the food bank and leaving the AIDS clinic, entering the homeless shelter and leaving the gym. He went with her on campaign swings to Houston and Dallas and West Texas; she was in Lubbock that day. He knew that this was not what a doctor would call "healthy," for him to know the governor's wife's itinerary, but the governor's official website posted it there for all the world to read.
For him to read.
He was sure that her memory would fade from his mind, and his behavior, so out of character for him, would return to normal. But twenty-nine days had passed, and neither had. Each night his heart drove him to the computer screen, to gaze at her image, to know what she had done that day. But in his head he knew that she would never again walk into his clinic, that he would never again see her face, that he would never again speak to her. Yet still he thought of her. The governor's wife.
"Dr. Rincon."
Jesse looked up to Inez standing there. The resident had left, and Inez was now pulling on yellow rubber gloves to conduct the first of her twice-daily disinfectant scrubs of the clinic. He looked past her to two strangers standing at her desk, a man and a woman. The man held a professional camera.
"They are from a Houston newspaper. They want to interview you."
Another interview. He had tired of telling the story of the colonias because few people listened and those who did had a short attention span for other people's problems in this bad economy, particularly Mexicans living illegally in America. He wanted to tell them to go away, but when he looked back down at the order forms for medicine and supplies he could not afford, he was reminded how much money he needed. Perhaps a few people in Houston would read the story and see the photos and send money. Jesse sighed then stood and walked over and greeted the strangers like close friends.
" Bienvenido. I am Jesse Rincon."
The reporter stuck her hand out to him.
"Kikki Hernandez."
Another woman who did not belong in the colonias. But she was not the governor's wife. She was a young and very pretty Latina dressed as one would expect a female from Houston. Her fingernails were red, her scent was intoxicating, and her cameraman was named Larry; he was a middle-aged and overweight Anglo dressed as if he were going to a pro wrestling arena.
"So, Ms. Hernandez-"
"Kikki."
"So, Kikki, what brings you all the way from Houston to Laredo? Do you want to see the colonia? "
"Actually, Doctor, I wanted to see you. I was in Brownsville for a story last month, and a local newspaper reporter-Alexa Hinojosa, do you remember her?"
"Yes, I remember Alexa."
"She certainly remembers you." Kikki's eyes twinkled like the stars on a clear night. "She said I should tell your story to Houston. She said she met you when you built a medical clinic in Boca Chica."
"Then I shall tell you my story. Come, let me show you Colonia Angeles."
He took his guests for a tour and watched their expressions change as the colonia confronted them fully. Kikki Hernandez seemed to age before his eyes. Larry the cameraman took many photographs of the colonia and the children, photos that would shock the wealthy people of Houston next Sunday morning when they opened their newspaper, photos that might bring money for medicine and supplies. When they returned to the clinic an hour later, Kikki Hernandez drenched her manicured hands with the gel sanitizer sitting on Inez's desk and rubbed her hands forcefully, as if trying to rub off a tattoo she now regretted. He knew she was thinking, Get me back to civilization! Jesse gave them cold bottled water. After she had gathered herself, Kikki Hernandez sat before his desk and fanned her face.
"It's only April, but it feels like summer."
"It is always summer on the border."
"Doctor, why do you do this?"
"Someone must."
"Surely there's more to it."
Perhaps his melancholy mood and his thoughts of lost love made him vulnerable to her soft eyes, but Jesse now told Kikki Hernandez what he had never told anyone.
"My mother lived in Nuevo Laredo. She was very beautiful. When she was twenty-one, she had a brief romance with a handsome American and became pregnant. He did not stay around, perhaps he did not even know she was pregnant. But she wanted her child to be an American citizen, as the father was. So when she was ready to deliver, she came across the river, to the midwife in this colonia."
He felt his emotions rising.
"And?"
"There were complications."
Kikki stared into his eyes.
"She died."
"Yes. In childbirth."
She stared again.
"Yours."
"Yes. She died giving me life." He fought his emotions. "No woman has died in childbirth in the colonias on my watch."
"So this is your mission in life?"
"I suppose it is."
"Does that make you happy?"
"It makes me useful."
"Is that the same as happy?"
"One must be useful to be happy, I think."
"Do your patients pay you?"
"Not in money."
"How do you make a living?"
"A few heart surgeries at the Laredo hospital each month. My specialty."
"Heart surgeons in Houston make millions and live in mansions. They seem happy… and useful."
She had very nice legs. He spread his arms to the clinic.
"You think I should give up all this for such a life?"
"Do you think you will get married and live happily ever after here?"
Jesse caught Larry the cameraman rolling his eyes.
"Happily ever after? No, no, no, Kikki-we do not do happily ever after on the border."
She smiled. She had a very nice smile as well.
"So you will live out your life in obscurity?"
"No. In this colonia."
"Alone?"
"Apparently."
"You don't want children?"
Jesse Rincon leaned back in his chair and studied Kikki Hernandez. He and she, they would make handsome babies.
"That would require a wife."
She offered a coy smile. She did not wear a wedding ring.
"Certainly you have prospects?"
"I am afraid not."
"A handsome doctor with no romantic prospects?"
"A poor doctor with no romantic prospects." Jesse again spread his arms to the clinic. "What woman would want to share this life with me? How about you, Ms. Kikki Hernandez-would you like to marry me and have my babies and share this life with me?"
The smile left her pretty face. But Larry now smiled, as if Jesse had made a fine joke.