Free Hot and Bothered by Linda Cajio

her. She had a feeling she was supposed to know via osmosis.
    “Vincent is an expatriate American and Ina is his wife. They live here in La Misión. He runs a small pottery kiln, and she makes fans.”
    “Like the one in your house?”
    “Yes. She did that one for my uncle.”
    She glanced down at her T-shirt and shorts. She was hardly dressed for dinner, let alone to meet new people. Yet, Paul was dressed much the same, in cutoff jeans and a faded green cotton shirt. The vague depression that had been hovering over her dispersed. “I’d love to meet them.”
    “It’ll be very late when we get back to the cove,” he warned.
    “That’s fine.”
    Paul grumbled something unintelligible, but put the truck in gear. Judith leaned back in the seat. She was with him a little longer. A side of her liked that very much.
    Out of the corner of his eye, Paul noticed the way Judith daintily pushed her soup spoon toward the back of the bowl, a mark of someone very well trained in elegant manners. Okay, so he’d seen the clothes and the car. The
original
clothes. But he’d thought they’d signaled yuppie money. He knew now she was from old money. He’d probably unconsciously known it all alongbut hadn’t wanted to admit it because he’d wanted her within his reach.
    Maybe it was better that he’d become angry on the drive up from Sunset Cove.
I don’t know
, she’d said. He hated her answer to whether they would keep dancing around each other. Well, he was tired of her dancing around. Hadn’t he told her about himself? Hadn’t he asked her into his bed? Hadn’t he adhered to their don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy? What the hell more did she want from him?
    The question had plagued him through the introductions to Vincent and Ina, through the tour of their modest house, and now through dinner on the patio. He found himself confused and jealous, two states of mind he had no desire to be in. He wasn’t sure what he was jealous of, but he was definitely jealous.
    “I still do not understand why you are vacationing in an
ejido
,” Ina said to Judith, frowning in confusion. She was in her late forties, her long hair already heavily gray, though her features were clear and still unlined. “That’s a little village of people claiming common land for their own use, not a resort.”
    Bingo
, Paul thought, tucking into the hot clear broth of his black bean soup. He couldn’t wait for Judith to answer this one.
    She smiled easily. “It’s interesting to see normal people’s lives in another country, don’t you think?”
    He acknowledged in disgust that she’d finally found a good pat answer.
    “I suppose,” Ina said. “But it can be a very rough life.”
    “Oh, I don’t need much.” Judith actually laughed. “Or so I’m finding out. It’s like camping.”
    “Not quite,” Vincent said. “You go home after camping. People living in an
ejido
are struggling to make it a home.”
    Vincent launched into his pet topic: the corruption in the bureaucracy that sold common land to businessmen who weren’t entitled to buy it, violating the laws for establishing
ejidos:
to sell such land at an affordable price to any poor Mexican family. Vincent was a throwback to the hippie generation sometimes, but Paul agreed with him on this point. The
ejido
concept was not for the already wealthy.
    Judith listened politely and asked questions. That was another thing, he thought. She made social conversation easily—with everybody else, that is.
He
was a different story. Then again, he didn’t want social conversation with her.
    On the other side of the house yard, Ina’s birds suddenly began squawking, attracting everyone’s attention. The small building that served as a cage contained peacocks, pea hens, pheasants, fancy chickens, and a turkey. They fussed and flapped in a shower of feathers atnothing Paul could see. Finally the birds calmed down.
    Paul turned back to the table at the same moment Judith did. Their gazes met. Paul