Caray, Caray!

Fr/Ed acts like he suddenly notices the passenger (Jacinto) next to her. He looks over and says hello to “the stranger.” The two men act like they’ve never met. Fer introduces the two of them and then gets ready to pay for her gas. Fr/Eddy Boy grabs her ticket and tells the attendant he’ll handle it. (His way of celebrating cuz Estev was right about him getting Damian Dip-stick out of the frickin’ picture.) She accepts after a polite protest or two, and then makes the excuse that she has so many things to do that they really need to get going. As she drives off Eduardo’s got a sh!t-eatin’ grin on his face that’s the length of the whole darned parking lot.

Meanwhile, the Barbinator is paying a visit to Cigar Man. She is steaming when she walks into his office and angrily asks if he's the one who sent the flowers and note to Fernanda. When he says he doesn't know what she's talking about she wonders who did send them then. She quickly explains about the flowers and note that were sent anonymously and says they ruined the reception. Because of it, she says, "everything is out of control.” “—Why would I ruin our plans?” he asks her. Cigar Man says he thinks it could be Eduardo. She doesn't agree because if he'd come then he'd have buried his mother and Jacinto and his wife would have known. CM tells her to ferret out who the culprit is. "Find who sent the arrangement because that's the key."

Back at the hacienda, breakfast is over and Santiago is stuck like glue to Aurora. They’re taking a little walk around the pool and he’s nipping at her heels like a love-sick over-sized poodle. Rory tells him he's been great to her, but she's decided she has to leave. Santi scrambles to make excuses. (Damn, watching this guy beg is just sad.) He tells her he knows that the way they met was weird, but he wants her to overlook that. He turns on the goofball charm as a last resort and asks her if he'd told her how happy he was being with her. She smiles back and says yes, and that she feels the same. He jokes with her about being Superman and hiding his S under his clothes (a waste of precious viewing moments). Yeah, all right, so he’s not really Superman; he wonders if that’s why she’s leaving. (Like I said, Sorry. Ass. Dope.) Rory admits to him that she's actually running away from him because she's afraid of getting used to being with him. He doesn't understand. (Naw. S.A.D. just needs her to spell it out for him.)

Rory tells him he's the most wonderful man she's ever met and she'd love for this to be real and for her own life to be different, but she won't try fooling herself. Santi is thrilled to hear it and suddenly he’s pumped. She tells him she has the feeling that with him lots of nifty-neat things might happen and in particular, finding her mother. He begs her to stay. (Well, she pretty much has talked herself into it anyway, but who can blame her? Storybook endings are rare as hens' teeth for girls like her.) She agrees to stay as his guest. So, Santiago leans in for The Kiss and Rory starts to oblige--till Big Bro Cadmilo wolf-whistles at the two of them and the moment is lost.

Cad ogles at the two of them and then the jack-ass jerk wad suggests that his little brother take advantage of Aurora before she finds out what a loser Santi really is and “leaves him like all the others.” Cad laughs at his brilliant sense of humor and timing before mercifully leaving. Santiago, mucho embarrassed, says sarcastically, "My loudmouth jerk of a brother loves me." Rory gives him a hug.

At the looney-bin: Adolfina rushes Ciro to come with her to her office since Lili's about to make her call to Fernanda.

Fer and Jacinto finally arrive at his house and she tells him she'll wait there for Eduardo’s phone number. She wants all of them that he has because she won’t stop till she finds him. Cinto offers to bring the information to her later at the hacienda, but she says no, she'll wait. He goes inside and she thinks to herself that wow, after fifteen years she'll be talking to Eduardo.

A little further down the road, Eddie is driving home and smiling to himself at how happy he was seeing Fernanda like that again. It was as if they'd “gone back in time when nobody had yet tarnished their happiness.” (I don’t write these things, I just translate.) He immediately scolds himself for “thinking the impossible” since now she belongs to another man. (Considering what you know about Dam's infidelity with Evil Step-Mom, Eduardito, you’d be better off thinking of a way you can snooker Nanda into getting a quickie divorce, fool.)

Speaking of Evil Step-mothers, said Bitch On Wheels now rolls herself into the hacienda and angrily yells at Tomasa to tell her what she did with the bouquet of flowers and the card that came with them. Tomasa swears to BOW that she threw the flowers and the card into the garbage and that, no, she didn't see who the florist was that delivered them. After dismissing the "good-for-nothing" Tomasa, Bitch Barbie decides to start searching florists online to find out who the miserable SOB was that wrecked her plans by sending them.

Tomasa returns to the kitchen where the resident lounge lizard of the domestic staff, Lucio, is lollygagging around at the table reading the funnies. He tells her to get him a cup of coffee. She tells him to get his own. The smarmy horn dog then gets up and tries his fascinatin’ charisma on her, but she's not on his wavelength at the moment. He suggests she needs to be a bit more "congenial" or they might fire her the same way they fired Denia. Industrious, innocent Tomasa doesn't understand what he’s getting at. "Know why Sra. Barbara ran her off? Because she wasn't …affectionate...with me.” He grabs at her collar and deliberately peeks inside her dress for emphasis. (Smarm alert!) Tomasa flicks him away and tells him to stop with the B.S., and then goes to answer the phone.

It’s lovely Lili on the other end of the line but after fifteen years of having her brains fried with psychotropic drugs she is struggling to spit the words out. Lil finally manages to ask for Fernanda but Tomasa tells her Fer isn't there and asks who's calling. Lili totally freaks and tells Tomasa just to tell her that Eduardo Juarez called and then spastically slams down the phone. Tomasa tells Lucio that it sounded like some old lady on the line who was dying.

Back at Jacinto’s, Margarita and he are furiously writing down the phone numbers Fer needs while Denia rages at them about Eduardo not being decent enough to even bury his own mother. Instead of telling Denia to stuff a sock in it, the two (who I’d say are quickly becoming candidates for beatification) bite their lips and try hard to ignore her. Cinto goes outside and hands the information to Fernanda. Daffy Denia runs out after him and yells something in Chipmunk about Eduardo at Fernanda. “Tell God that it’s a good thing it’s not me calling that ingrate of a pig Eduardo, the way he was towards his mother!” Cinto apologizes for Denia’s outburst and tells Fer not to pay attention to his SIL’s crazy rants. Nanda looks puzzled, but says she's probably got her reasons and doesn't take it any further.

Before Nanda goes she asks Cinto if he knows who was responsible for putting the tacks under the horse's saddle and getting Natasha thrown the day before. He swears it wasn't him but that he'll find out. Fer says there’s no need to swear, just to keep her up on things if he finds out. She drives off.

We beam back to the kitchen of the hacienda de los Elizalde. Lucio sees Tomasa writing down Eduardo Juarez’ name on the notepad and is impactado to learn the call came from Soledad’s son. He tells Tomasa that people told him Eduardo was sent away [de escobazos: taking a broom to somebody, i.e., swept away like dirt or trash] from the hacienda years ago for supposedly trying to take advantage of little Fer. Tomasa, disgusted, waves him out of her face and says that that was all lousy gossip and walks off. Lucio now gets those rusty windmills in his pea-sized brain matter to start turning. He suddenly figures out that Eduardo probably was the one who sent those flowers and the note that got everyone all upset. Lucio wants to make points with BOW, so he orders Tomasa to tell the Sra. that he wants to talk with her. At first Tomasa doesn't take him seriously so he yells at her like the damned owner of the hacienda himself. Tomasa looks over at him like he’s got rabies and heads off to find BOW. Said lounge lizard, having successfully lorded it over somebody further down the food chain, smiles smugly at himself.

Back again at the looney-bin, Lovely Lili is in her room with Ciro. She sadly tells him she thinks her sister got married already and has gone off with her husband. Ciro tries to comfort her and insists that she made a good strategic move during that phone call because she left a clue that only her sister could follow. He says he thinks she will see the results of that move very soon.

Lucio follows Tomasa to BOW's office. BOW, who is frustrated at her inability to locate the proper florist, barks at Tomasa that the next time Lucio wants to speak with her she is to tell her immediately. After smirking at Tomasa about that coffee he wanted, Lucio tells the Bar-bot that he overheard Tomasa take a call from somebody calling on behalf of Sole's son.

Meanwhile, Fer arrives home and walks in through the kitchen entrance. Tomasa hands her the note about the phone call. Back in the other part of the house, Lucio tells BOW he's sure the call was from somebody calling for Eduardo. He says she can ask Tomasa herself if she doesn't believe him. We cut to the kitchen again. Fer is impactada to see the call supposedly came from Eduardo. Tomasa clarifies that it was a woman calling for him. Just then Babs races in and barks at Tomasa to tell her whether she just received a call from Eduardo Juarez. Fer, not one to raise her voice ever to the staff, now raises her eyebrows at Babs. Ruh-Roh! Bar-bot is afraid her bionic mask has jarred loose and exposed the wires underneath; her facial expression quickly softens. (Dunno, but Fer may have just seen her step-mom’s alter ego on display and registered it at some subconscious level for later consideration.)

At the same time, Jacinto has just run over to Las Animas to warn Ed that Fer plans on calling him. Ed first wants to make sure Fer believed the bit that Cinto didn't know who he was. Cinto is certain she believed him and says he thinks the call has to do with the infamous flower problem. Ed wonders if she's calling to complain about his sending them and Cinto says he thinks so, but it’s also because the Elizaldes are going to be re-interring his mother's body in the family crypt at the hacienda. Expression of cara de impactado for Eddie-Boy.

Back at the Elizalde hacienda, Fer wants to know how Babs found out about the phone call. Babs lies and says she accidentally lifted the receiver and heard Tomasa’s part of the conversation. Fer, with a possible trick question, asks Babs if she's sure it was him who called. Babs backtracks and says she's not really sure who it was who made the call. Either way they don't know anything about the guy anymore, but if he was calling then it stands to reason he was the one who sent the flowers. Tomasa pipes up and says it was a woman who called. Babs ignores her and says whoever called could have been his secretary or his wife. This immediately throws Nanda into a personal funk.

At Las Animas, Eduardo wants to know when the Elizalde’s plan to reinter his mother. Jacinto said his nerves were too jumbled for him to even consider questions like that. Ed dials his cell. Cinto wonders what he’s planning. Ed cryptically explains to Cinto that Nanda’s going to expect him to attend the ceremony and he’s going to accept.

Fer calls her daddy now from the office at the hacienda and tells him about the phone call from Eduardo. Gonzo wonders if Eddie is actually back in town, but Fer doesn't think so because Cinto doesn't seem to know anything about that. Anyway, it's been fifteen years since anyone has seen or dealt with him, she says, and who knows what to expect. His intentions won’t be good ones. The Bar-bot’s antennae are now locked and upright. Gonzo tells Fer to find him and then says angrily that he expects Eduardo to show himself out of respect for his mother.

Ed calls his secretary and tells her that no one is to know he's on vacation. She is also to put any call from Mexico through to his cell. Afterwards he explains to Cinto that way Fernanda won't know he's actually in the area. Jacinto asks if he’s got business still pending up in the States. Ed says no, he is on vacation, but depending on what happens down there he will decide whether he goes back or he hands in his resignation and stays in Mexico. Jacinto asks about his gringo friend back in the U.S. Ed says Estev was his best bud in college and that his daddy owns a milk products company called (AHAH!) Power Milk. (Nice for some of us to have that cleared up finally.) He is helping Ed convince the Elizaldes that this guy, Franco Santoro, works up there for them. Cinto wonders why he would do something like that. Eddie tells him that he'd have to ask the Good Lord because He obviously has given him two good friends that are like brothers to him.

Back at Jacinto’s, Margarita is doing the wash. Denia hasn’t even stopped to take a breath. (Gotta love her spunk, but the girl’s got major issues.) The rant about what an ingrate Eddie was not to show up for his mother's burial is still going at full throttle, though secretly, Denia’s excited as hell about the possibility that he will be coming back into town.

Back at the hacienda, Babs asks Fer if Gonzo told her to find out about Eduardo. Fer says yes and that he feels the same way she does about him, that if he is in Mexico, then he hasn’t come there because he’s got something against them. Babs asks Fernanda if Eduardo opposes the plans they have for his mother. Santiago comes in with Rory at that point and asks what's going on. Babs answers that Eduardo, Sole’s son, seems to be in town again. Nanda says, well that’s not for sure, but if he is, he is going to have a lot of answering to do for her.

At the fertility clinic in the city, Prissy persuades Dr. Zarate to go ahead and give her the results of their tests without Anibal as he supposedly couldn’t be there. After some objection on professional grounds Dr. Zarate hands her the results and warns that they are going to change her and her husband’s lives forever.

Now, alone with her brother in the office, Fernanda tells Santi that she plans on giving Eduardo an ear-full when she gets hold of him. For starters she wants him to explain why he played such a cruel trick on her like that at the wedding. She can’t understand why he hates her and wonders what she ever did to him to cause such a change. “What in the world turned him into my enemy?” (That, Nandita, is the $64 million peso question, isn’t it?) Fernanda begins dialing Eduardo’s number and holds her breath.

Eduardo's secretary puts the call through to him. Jacinto listens from the other side of the room. Babs walks in and she and Santiago listen in on Fer’s half of the conversation. Eddie puts three layers of handkerchief onto the mouthpiece before taking the call in hopes of disguising his voice. (Ok. Ok. We’ll have to give Eddie a break here, considering he apparently didn’t think far enough ahead to pick up a voice-changer from a joke shop back in NYC, and he obviously didn’t think to get a SpoofCard when he bought that cell phone at the mall.) Fer asks if he remembers her. After a painfully long pause, he replies that he does. Fer notes his distant tone and continues awkwardly on. She asks if he had called her earlier and he says no, he never has called the hacienda in his life. This sort of throws her and she asks if it was his secretary. He says matter-of-factly that he’d have had to give her the order and he didn’t.

Fer, choking on the icy reception at the other end of the line, explains that somebody called the hacienda on his behalf but then hung up. There’s only dead silence at his end. “--or perhaps it was just a mistake then,” she stutters. She then asks if he'll be coming back and nervously adds that since his mother has died there are things there he may need to attend to like the house and her personal belongings and says she’d be happy to help him with those. He says no reason to since now that she's dead. He abruptly suggests that if there isn’t something else she needs from him …____ (fill in the blank like: time is money, honey, and I’ve got better things to do with it than flapping my busy jaws with you!) She says well, she’s got a couple of things to discuss with him. He asks what. She says she’d prefer to talk to him about them in person, and …er…she’s still living at the hacienda there. Nanda stumbles through the explanation that she’s living there with her husband since she just got married.

Fernanda slogs on. (Viewerville literally feels her pain. ¡Qué embarazoso!) She tells Eduardo that his mother's death was a hard blow for her, and well, her father wants him to authorize transferring her remains to the family crypt there at the hacienda. He wonders why since she's already buried, but Fer explains that her father had promised this to Sole long ago and now wants to fulfill his promise to his mother. They also want him to attend a simple ceremony she's planning for it and will wait to have it till he gets into town. He says he doesn't really have much in the way of time so if they want to go ahead and start the paperwork for the reburial to go ahead. He will get there once his schedule looks free as long as nothing comes up and prevents him. They leave it at that and he hangs up.

Jacinto watches Ed put down the phone and sympathetically tells his friend that he didn’t think the call would be that painful for him. Ed admits that he has tried to rip out the feelings he still has for Fernanda, but it’s been useless. He says he’ll love her till the day he dies (and another group sigh erupts through Viewerville).

Across the way at the Elizalde’s, Babs wants to know what Eduardo told Fernanda. She tells Babs the high points: that he’s coming to the ceremony and will dispose of his mother’s personal things. Babs still wants to know if he made the earlier call, but Fer says he denied making it. Babs thinks that he had somebody call for him. Fer says he’s arriving tomorrow so…. Babs sneers that they’ll see then if he is capable of taking responsibility for it and leaves in a huff. When Santiago and Nanda are finally alone again, he asks her what really happened with the call. She is near tears and says to be perfectly honest, Eduardo spoke rather coldly to her and was not the person she knew. In fact, he acted as if she were a perfect stranger.

Back at the fertility clinic, Prissy is desperate now that she’s learned Any Balls is shooting blanks (that is, if his trigger works at all with her and/or anyone else of the female persuasion) and she wants to find some kind of treatment, artificial insemination or something. The doctor explains (PSA alert!) that she can have all the children she wants, they just won’t be Any Balls’ kids. He’s sterile. Period. No cure for that exists in the present universe. Prissy says the news will destroy her marriage and her husband’s life. She says she wants to wait to tell him the news herself “at the proper time.” The doctor says fine, but if he should come around asking, he will have to be frank with him. Prissy says not to worry. That won’t happen. She asks if she can count on his silence and the doctor agrees to stay mum.

Back at Las Animas, Ed explains to Jacinto that things have changed and for the first time it won’t be him waiting to come face to face with Fernanda, but the other way ‘round. Cinto asks what’s the reason for an answer like that? Has jealousy entered the picture because now she’s another man’s wife? Ed says he doesn’t know and doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter to him. Jacinto says yeah, he’ll see if Eduardo can say that when he really does come face to face with her, but Ed says he won’t be saying anything to her. Jacinto is confused because Ed just finished telling Fernanda that he would be arriving the next day. Eddie says he will leave her waiting for him the same way she left him waiting, waiting for fifteen long years for a letter that never came. Eduardo Juarez will never arrive because he is dead forever!

Fernanda is on her way out of the house for an appointment. Santiago races after his sister and demands to know why she is still so upset after that call. She says she isn’t and to just forget it. He says he knows her too well so what it is? She allows herself to let off a little steam. She explains that she always thought when she finally saw Eduardo again it would be something special, but it seems it was just foolishness on her part. Santiago asks if she wasn’t idealizing Eduardo’s memory just a bit? (Now that’s rich.) She says well, perhaps. He says well, if it upsets her this much, perhaps it’s best if he doesn’t come back. She lets this sink in for a second, but Babs is waiting on her so Nanda says she’s got to leave. The sibling heart-to-heart is over and Nanda walks out of the house flustered and depressed. Santiago sits down on the stairs and smiles to himself because it seems that his suspicions were correct: Fer is still in love with Eduardo, her childhood love.

Across town in the city somewhere, Bad-Boy Vlad is off playing Jai Alai at his club while Prissy drives off from the clinic. She is in tears because now she cannot make her daddy happy by giving him an heir to the Elizalde fortune, and her dreams of being a mother have been nixed as well as her chance at recuperating Anibal’s love for her. “What love is that, anyway, if he (Anibal) has never really loved me?” she sobs. Suddenly she gets an unexpected call from Vlad. He asks if they can see each other again and emphasizes that he realizes she’s married but doesn’t care. Vlad adds that he’s hoping it doesn’t matter to her either. Prissy suddenly gets a big smile on her face. The woman has a plan.