Free Savages by Don Winslow

him.
    “What?” he asks.
    “Nothing.”
    “Get me a beer.”
    She reaches into the refrigerator
    —new, three thousand dollars
    grabs a bottle of Corona and sets it down—a little hard—on the counter.
    “What, you unhappy again?” Lado asks.
    “No.”
    She sees a “therapist” once a week. More money that she resents him busting his ass for.
    Says she’s depressed.
    Lado gets up, steps behind her, and wraps his arms around her waist. “Maybe I should make you pregnant again.”
    “
Sí
, that’s what I need.”
    She slips from his grasp, walks over to the oven, and takes out a casserole of enchiladas.
    “Smells good.”
    “I’m glad you like it.”
    “Kids home for dinner?”
    “The boys. Angela’s out with her friends.”
    “I don’t like that.”
    “Good. You tell her.”
    “We should sit down the whole family,” Lado says.
    Delores feels like she’s going to explode.
    Sit down as a family—when you show up, when you drop in from God knows what you’re doing, when you’re not out with your
muchachos
, or doing your
putanas
, we should sit down the whole family. But she says, “She’s going to Cheesecake Factory with Heather, Brittany, and Teresa.
Dios mio
, Miguel, she’s fifteen.”
    “Back in Mexico—”
    “We’re not in Mexico,” she says. “We’re in California. Your daughter is an American. That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
    “We should go back more often.”
    “We can go next weekend, if you want,” she says. “See your mother …”
    “Maybe.”
    She looks at a calendar fastened to the refrigerator by a magnet. “No, Francisco has a tournament.”
    “Saturday or Sunday?”
    “Both, if they win.”
    This is her life—professional chauffeur. Baseball games, soccer matches, gymnastics, cheerleading, playdates, the mall, Sylvan Learning Center, dry cleaner’s, supermarket, he doesn’t even know.
    Delores can’t wait for Angela to get her license, drive herself anyway, maybe help with the boys. She’s gained five pounds, all of it around the hips, just driving around sitting on her ass.
    She knows she’s still a good-looking woman. She hasn’t let herself go like a lot of the Mexican wives her age do. All the time at the gym—Jazzercise, treadmill, weights, torture sessions with Troy—staying away from the sodas, the bread. The hours at the spa and the salon, getting her hair colored, her nails done, her skin so it’s nice, and does he even notice?
    Maybe they go out once a month as a family—to TGIF’s or Marie Callender’s, California Pizza Kitchen if he’s feeling generous, but just the two of them? To someplace nice? An adult restaurant for a little wine, a nice menu? She can’t remember the last time.
    Or the last time he fucked her.
    As if he wanted to, anyway.
    What’s it been? A month? More? The last time he came in at two in the morning a little drunk and wanted some? Probably because he couldn’t find a whore that night, so I would have to do as a
segundera
?
    The boys come rolling in and they’re all over him. The pitches they made, the hits they got, don’t even bother to take their cleats off until she yells at them to do it. Mud all over the kitchen floor and tomorrow Lupe will bitch about the extra work, the lazy Guatemalan
puta.
Delores loves her boys more than life, but
dios mio
…
    It hits her like a smack in the face
    That she wants a divorce.

54
     
    The Montage.
    Resort Hotel.
    Useta be a trailer park called Treasure Island.
    Aaarggh, Jim, I know where the treasure be.
    The treasure be in a luxury beachfront hotel where the beautiful people will drop four thousand a night for a suite. This in contrast to abunch of retirees and trailer park trash living the SoCal sweet life (the
lo
-cal sweet life?) on the budget plan. Only money they’re gonna make is for the owners of 7-Eleven, the liquor store, and the taco joint. Cheap chump change.
    Plow that dump under and build a luxury hotel, give it a vaguely French name, figure out the