Free Spanish Disco by Erica Orloff Page B

had been promised a glimpse today.
    “So what are you doing? Sitting on your ass and drinking piña coladas?”
    “Actually, Maalox.”
    “What?”
    “The food. I e-mailed you. I eat Mexican food and Tums all day long. I can’t take it. Do you know Roland Riggs will not leave his house from seven o’clock to eight o’clock each night?”
    “Why?”
    “ The Wheel and Jeopardy. ”

    “I like Jeopardy. Nothing wrong with that. Alex Trebek is a smart guy.”
    “ The Wheel? The Wheel, Lou. The man whose command of the English language has sent high school seniors scurrying for Cliffs Notes sits on his couch with his housekeeper each night and tries to guess nine-letter words for occupations beginning with ‘a.’”
    “Architect.”
    “Hmm?”
    “A nine-letter occupation beginning with—”
    “I got it…. Look, what if he doesn’t have it anymore?”
    “How bad can it be? You can whip it into shape. Remember Tawny Phelps.”
    “How can I forget? The woman who composed her book on cocktail napkins where she scribbled the bedroom secrets of Washington, D. C.”
    “But you turned it into a modest seller.”
    “And then she left us for deeper pockets. And her next book sucked.”
    “Because she didn’t have you.”
    “Okay. I’ll fix Riggs’s book no matter how bad it is.”
    “And maybe it’s great. Now how are you, really?”
    I heard the trepidation in his voice.
    “I know about my mother, Lou. Stratford Oaks called here.”
    “She’s a bitch, Cassie. I’ll give her that. But don’t let her make you crazy.”
    “I already am crazy. I will spend his entire estate on hiscare. There’ll be nothing left. Did I tell you I bought them a new van?”
    “Stratford Oaks?”
    “Mmm-hmm. And I paid for new eyeglasses for three of the residents who couldn’t afford them. Anonymously of course.”
    “You’re insane. Literally. What is she entitled to? Fifteen percent or something? You’re gonna screw yourself out of your father’s money—which you know he wants you to have—in order to screw your mother?”
    “Precisely.”
    “You are the most stubborn—”
    “I know. Gotta go, Lou. Kisses. Hugs. Love you!”
    I hung up and decided to venture downstairs. I had by passed whatever Maria’s breakfast had been by sleeping in. I would drive to 7-Eleven and eat a pack of Twinkies before I would put another breakfast burrito in my mouth.
    Maria, as expected, was whipping up something red for lunch. Very red with tomatoes and chili powder.
    “Hungry?”
    “No. I’m going to run to the store. And then I think Roland and I are going to do some work on his book finally.”
    “He’s the smartest man I ever met. And the nicest.”
    I watched as she added ingredients in pinches and dashes, no recipe, just a familiarity with the kitchen that I would never know. A Mexican Julia Child in a curvaceous body with a knockout smile.

    She sighed and started rolling out dough on a pastry board.
    “He takes me out to the nicest restaurant on Sanibel every year…on June 22.”
    “Your birthday?”
    “No, the anniversary of the day I started working for him. But he never forgets my birthday either…. And you see that stove?”
    I nodded.
    “Jenn-Air. When the old stove broke, he actually took me to the store and let me pick the very best one I wanted. The very best stove.”
    “That’s nice,” I said, not knowing a Jenn-Air from a dish washer myself.
    “I never had the best. Not of anything. And now I have the best of everything. And he says no matter what happens—even if he—knock on wood—” and then she crossed herself three times “—I can live here until I die.”
    “That’s very nice of him. You can take care of all his animals.”
    “Actually, Mister Riggs didn’t have any pets until I came here. I told him it’s no good to have no pets, no plants, no flowers. Nothing living. It makes you want to die. So that is why I feed him life. I grow my own chili peppers out back and make sure the