CI Capítulo 91: Taking The Easy Way Out....Again!

Capítulo 91 

[Parte 1]

Lo del Pasado:

While Simona 2.0 tells Esther she has a problem recognizing her new and improved self in the mirror, Octavio and his guilt-ridden conscience don’t do much better with Ghost of Eusebio, his identical twin brother (as in spittin’ image of) who’s also apparently got it in for Los Narvaez. (And we thought Ewwwie and his raspy voice were one of a kind!  Who knew?)

Lo del Nuevo:

Twin Brother Of Eusebio asks for a job cuz he’s hurtin’ for money.  Tav says sorry, my ranch has been sold so I can’t offer you anything.  Maybe the new owner will have something for you. (Uh, aren’t you the new ranch manager for the one next door, Bozo? It's just like I thought!  You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout runnin’ no ranchos! Just like I thought: just gonna be Simone’s toy-boy.)  Tav wanders back the way he came, telling TBOE that he heard wrong.  No work here.  El TBOE gripes to himself that now he won’t have a chance to get back at his bro’s murderer.

Ester offers Simona a cup of water.  (Viewerville gags and wonders if Ester has meticulously filtered and boiled it first, then maybe added a touch of bleach. Or hey, maybe Ester did finish that well after all?)  Ester can’t believe Miguel and Tav actually sold the place. (I can’t believe Simona actually took a whole gulp out of that mug without retching.)   “--What a shame since all the land around those parts is said to hold gold and even diamonds—all undiscovered.”   They agree that now none of the Narvaez’s will get to share in the goodies when and ever if. 

Speaking of gold in them thar hills, a mining company has a couple of geologists testing the area who’ve apparently found various veins [veta=seam, vein] spanning all through the nearby hills and underground rivers and streams.  However, it won’t do to let the people there know what they’ve found.  Let The Company work it out with the people living around there.  Better policy [politica] to keep quiet rather than brag [alardar] about it and be in a hurry to broadcast their find, they agree. That way the company owner, one Snidely Whiplash [El Insidiosamente Del Latigazo] can buy it right out from under them all.    

Tav the Toy Boy returns to Simona’s manse a bit late for lunch.  Simona shouldn’t have waited on him, he scolds—he’s just another employee now….  No, now relax, she says all smiles and maternal sweetness.  This is supposed to be a bit of vacation, she says caressing his cheek and smoothing his collar.  Right?  How can he not be upset, he asks her?  He’s got so many memories of that place, good and bad.  (Ok.  More bad than good, but….) You never know what you have till the money’s all gone and you need it, he says sorrowfully.  Simona smiles.  Hey, you’ve got all of mine now to play around with, big guy.  Remember?   Take time to get past the troubles you left behind and we’ll talk about running the business afterwards.  Deal?  Deal.  They shake on it and hug.  

Across the way, Lucia and son arrive in a taxi.  Ofelia grovels at her feet.   Luciafer’s there for a last look and to make darned sure a number of unmentioned  things of hers are never to be had by the new owner.  Lucia eventually asks after Ester and learns she’s living in squalor in Realengo.  “--Hmph.  Serves her right for throwing herself at that kind of good for nothing filthy field hand.”  Still, though, says Lucia, she has hopes of going over to see her and of convincing her cousin to move out of there.  Good luck, she’s too in love with Jose Antonio.

Tav has beaten Lucia to Easter’s.  Over another neighborly cuppa (gulp) water which Tav politely accept, he tells  Ester he can’t believe she’d live like that.  She and he discuss the new and improved Simona.  Ester tries convincing him to marry Simona.  True, says he, Simona’s been marvelous and she’s beautiful now as well, but he just doesn’t think of her as wife material.  Hey, marrying for money is as old as the hills, says Ester.  He wouldn’t be the first.  It would settle his money problems and assure him of a very secure future.  Naw, he replies with a manly swish of his chestnut locks, I don’t really like the idea of mooching off my mujeres.  Let’s change the subject.  Ok.  They discuss how strange it is that somebody from Isla Dorada would have bought the rancho, and that that somebody just happens to be a woman!  (Hmmm!)  But nope.  Neither one has the first clue as to who the new neighbor might be.

Meanwhile, Maria Alejandra informs Raiza of her decision to sell the casino and move off the island.  She’s trying to get a buyer and had hoped that the Exmir would buy her out, tho’ he’s still got pipe dreams of returning someday to his country and regaining his throne, she informs Raiza.  Raiza tries to persuade her to stay.  They’ve all learned to admire her and they respect and care about her.  MA replies unhappily that nothing ties her to the island any longer and she’s not up for playing power games with ruthless Doris DOG (daughter of the guv).    Naw, she’s heading back where she came from, to the place where it all began.  She’s got things still to do there.   Venganza stuff.

Back by the pier, Raiza tells MA she’s too young and attractive to bury herself and her little girl in the middle of nowhere on some hacienda.  MA says she’s got an objective and that’s all that’s driving her now.  Raiza tells her to think twice about that vengeance thing cuz whatever she does will reflect back eventually on her daughter.  No.  MariAle’s need to avenge her past is too strong.  Maybe once she’s attained her goals.  Raiza suggests that if the need to get even is that strong, perhaps she should consider seeing a doctor to help her through those types of negative feelings.  (It’s called obsession, dear.)  Again, MariAlej rejects good advice.  She’s already rejected Tav’s offer to kiss and make up, she explains, and that means she’s now got the strength to carry this through to the end; and so that’s the plan.  Raiza cautions her that this eye for an eye thing always has a way of coming back and biting a big chunk out of your backside if you’re not careful.  

Meanwhile, while Awfelia unpacks, Luciafer tells her that she’s still got a job with the Narvaez’s till the new owner takes over, and that after that they’ll see what they can do for her.  Talk turns to Simona’s new look and Tav’s agreeing to run the rancho for her.  How nice if the two of them could eventually hook up, right?  Lucia is all for that provided it gets Tav’s mind off that damned filthy savage once and for all!  Yeah, she’s got lots of good gossip for La Offal, but suffice it for now to know that the little snipe finally got even with her, yes even humiliated her in front of an entire crowd of people.  Lucia tells her the humiliating story about the muddy rose pit and the reason.  La Offal timidly says well maybe we shouldn’t have treated her so badly when she was living here.  (Ya think?)  Lucia doesn’t seem to care about that.  Maricruz may have gotten even, but rest assured the little wench is going to pay for it, and in spades!!  (Ok, folks.  Cue the dark clouds, the thunder claps and the lightning strikes.) 

[end parte 1]

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Parte 2:

In the casino office, Mari Ale stops to consider her choices.  Nope.  What’s done is done.  No going back.  Tony arrives and she gives him the ad to place in the afternoon paper. Pretty soon the whole of Isla Dorada will know she’s selling out her part of the casino, she tells him.  He asks her if she’s sure she wants to do this.  Yep.  More venganza needs to attend to.

In Realengo, Lucia surprises JA and Ester with an unexpected visit.  She takes one look around and her grimace says it all.  What’s the matter, Sra., asks JA.  “--Don’t you like our humble abode?”  Lucia tries to ignore him and talk sense into Ester, but he won’t shut up like the cowed puppy she used to know; and now Ester won’t leave her homespun hubby’s hearth.  Lucia doesn’t do homespun, let alone humble.   It’s a hovel.  How could she live this way?  JA says take her, she’s yours!  I’d be better off for it!  Ester screams back that she’s his wife and she’s staying, y punto!  Lucia gives him a sneering and threatening “Shut UP!”  JA, though, doesn’t cower a bit.  He’s in his home and she’s no big fish in their little pond any more. “—Congratulations, Lady.  You’ve succeeded in getting my wife to disrespect me.  You came to cause grief and you have; now leave!”  Lucia looks him in the eye and tells him she doesn’t know how, but one way or the other he’s got to get her cousin out of this squalor and he’s better do it ASAP!

On Isla Dorada once more, La DOG is yelping at the Comandante to get that Mendoza woman off the island like yesterday already.  He tries explaining that he’s got to be cautious about the way he handles things to avoid her father finding out and putting the kabosh on it all.  Anyway, he’s got to find the right motive before moving on her.  Doris doesn’t want his excuses.  She wants action.  “—You found a motive quickly enough when it came to expelling Octavio Narvaez!  I’m just as powerful as my father whether you believe it or not.  Could be my father just might have his eyes opened as to how inept you are in this position!” 

Back inside JA’s squalid little shack, JA yells back at Lucia that he’s never been ashamed of who he is or what little he has, nor has he ever felt the urge to be a rich man, cruel and miserly and corrupt as they are!  "--That’s because you've got no desire to better yourself—because you’re nothing but a hopelessly resigned, submissive cur of a farm hand! [miserable = a powerful and wholly encompassing definition of the word, which when Lucia spits it out, leaves no question as to what she means in describing JA.] ”  JA gives as good as he gets this time.  “--Better a wretched farmhand than a murderer!!”  (A communal cheer arises in all corners of Viewerville.)  Lucia warns him to watch what he says around there.  Naw, I know exactly what happened with you Narvaez’s and with Maricruz.  Too bad you have to leave because if she ever should return one day to live here, she’d make you pay for all the wrong you’ve done her!

Lucia sniffs and turns away from him.  “—I didn’t come to argue with you.”  “—Oh, because it doesn’t suit you now, huh?  Well, I’ll just remind you anyway!  You had Maricruz put in jail without any reason to and then Don Ramiro’s death!  His death wasn’t an accident, either, lady!”  “Stop all this foolish talk!  Let me just say that whatever I did she’s already collected on and with interest!”  Ester asks him to stop saying so many nasty things.  JA asks why, because the little blind girl has heard them all or what?  He turns back to Luciafer and finishes what he has to say.  “—This house is humble, but honorable.  There’s no room here for murderers!”  (Swish! Thwump! He jump-shots the ball right down through the hoop--and, he’s got game!)  He leaves and Lucia tells her cuz that she hopes she has the sense to leave the brut eventually and, if not, that she never has a reason to regret staying with him.  As a final act of beneficence, Lucia offers some of her furniture to Ester to make the place more livable—something he later angrily complains about being nothing more than charity.

Back on the pier, MariAle thinks back to the way she struggled to get her father to give her carte blanche to save the business for him.  It was his pride and joy.  He’d have been so proud of her, but now he’d be the first to cheer her on in her decision to leave it, she tells herself.  Of course, wherever you are right now, you’d probably not be happy about what I’m going to do with my life now, but there’s no other option.  It’s my destiny.

Later, after Lucia leaves, the little blind girl cries and gets Ester to promise she’ll never leave Realengo (ugh!) or her.

Lucia goes to see Simona and unloads on her about the conditions Ester’s living in and how rude JA was when speaking to her.  He had the nerve to accuse her of falsely accusing Maricruz of stealing and sending her to jail and of murdering her grandfather!  (Hey, this is Simona you’re talking to—you know, the one friend on Earth you have; the one you confessed to in your son’s hospital room when you thought Dios might let him die?)  Simona slides past that and tells her to forget all of that and take a nap.  She’ll feel better after.  No way, replies Luciafer ominously, her weird Martian-y eyes shifting from side to side.  “--One day Maricruz Olivarez is going to get what’s coming to her!”

Tav arrives back at Simona’s a few minutes later and learns his SIL is back for a few days. 

JA walks back into his hut and starts screaming at Ester again about Lina, about Lucia’s visit and yada, yada, yada. “—Why isn’t that kid gone???!!  Why won’t you just up and go back to her already!??!” (It’s got me stumped, too.)  She gives him what for for screaming at her in front of her cousin and the frightened little neighbor girl.  He screams back that he only told her cuz what she deserved to hear.  He screams again that she can’t continue to live here with him and needs to go back to her own kind like they’ve all told her to!  “--Well, why did you bring me here if it’s so bad, huh?”  “—I told you a thousand times: because this is the only place they couldn’t throw us off!  Because it doesn’t belong to anyone else!”  Ester snorts at that.  “—Ha!  Sooner or later they will throw you off here!”

Lucia complains to Tav about Ester’s living out a similarly unbearable marital situation to his with that insufferable savage wife of his.  He politely asks her to change the subject.  She decides to ask him if he’s learned yet who bought their ranch.  No, only that it’s a woman from Isla Dorado.  Why?  Does she know anything else?  No, Lucia lies.  He admits that he really’s feeling crummy that he’ll never see the place again once they hand it over.  She gets a lump in her throat also.  (Could be she drank some of that water over at Ester’s….)  She has Tav sit down and asks him if he hasn’t thought that someday somehow he might consider possibly marrying Simona?  Not really, he answers.  Well, he should, she advises.  She’s got all the requisites: she’s wealthy, she’s a terrific person, and now she’s even beautiful.  With all that money he could acquire quite a lot.  He could even regain the ranch!

Tav can’t believe she’d ask him to live off Simona! (I think the term you’re searching for, Tav, is “gigolo.”)   Oh, by no means, says she!  Lucia clarifies that he’d work hard to keep the ranch going and be her hubby as well.  They know each other so well, and get along so nicely, etc.  He tells her he couldn’t marry a woman he didn’t love.  She tells him he wouldn’t be the first and he won’t be the last to do so.  He finally tells her he’ll think about it.  Well, just think how happy the family will be to know you’ve married well and how you’ll be able to enjoy life at her side!  (Certainly, she means materially—cause I don’t think he’s the oedipal type.)

Back at Realengo, JA wonders where Ester got such a crazy idea.  She tells him that FYI: there have been some engineers looking through the area that have found gold in the streams and underground rivers.  They work for a mining company that very shortly will want to develop the land and utilize the minerals there.  They’ll throw everyone off the land for certain!  What’s he supposed to do about it then?  Where can they go that wouldn’t be just like Realengo, he asks angrily?  “--Well, how about leasing a plot of land?”  “--From who?  People like the Narvaez’s?  They’d never lift a finger for me!”   No, try maybe Simona.  She’s a decent sort, says Ester.  And she’s NOT a Narvaez!  Sorry, sneers JA!  She just talked him into rescuing her from spinsterhood!  [sacarle de solteria]”

MA takes time to think how she and Lupita will return to the old homestead but this time as well-to-do ladies that nobody will dare mistreat let alone get away with it!  

The next morning the comandante of Isla Dorada smiles from ear to ear when he reads the headline about La Mendosa selling her share of the casino.  He did what La DOG wanted and avoided any guff from the guv.

At breakfast MA reads her ad in the paper and says a little prayer asking for a bit of celestial intervention to speed along the necessary sale.

Tav is sitting down to breakfast with Simona--for the first time, apparently—and has decided to take everyone’s advice.  He swallows hard and then tells his pretty but still prim hostess that as soon as his divorce is final he...he…he will marry her.  (Limp, spaghetti spined excuse for a man!)  Cara de demure and delighted de Simona. 

In town, the comandantephones Doggin’ Doris to tells her about MA’s ad and talks her out of causing a scandal while she waits to get a buyer.  Her daddy’s still interested in the woman and always takes her side.  Nope, better to leave things in his hands and to let him handle sans scandal.  He’ll let her know as soon as she’s got a buyer and is on her way.  Doris hangs up and starts to devise another way to devil the hell out of MariAle.

Tav apologizes for being such a rude jerk these past few days, and blames it on being depressed.  Simona is the essence of maternal warmth and understanding (though I’m sure she’s got to be secretly measuring him for the bow-tie and black skivvies.)  Hopefully we’ll get a nice neighbor who’ll be a hermit of sorts and leave them in an eternal honeymoon state….. (Wrong!)  Yeah, they’ll be good for each other and eventually they might even buy back the ranch from the person.  Simona’s eyes light up—is that what you’d like?  I will buy the ranch back for you!  We’ll buy it right away if that is what you want!  (Why not buy him his very own jet plane instead?  He can entertain himself by chauffering all the rico's in the region to and from their business appointments and taking their wives on shopping jaunts.)  He takes a moment or two to think about it but eventually says no.  Don’t do anything for him that he doesn’t deserve.  Oh, it’s only what a woman in love with her man like Ester and she would do.  No, he says.  With as much passion as a cold fish between them, he lets Salmona kiss him gingerly on the lips.  (Viewerville can feel those goosebumps rising from the chill all along his limp-ass spine!)        

Meanwhile, Teobaldo comes to pay MA a visit at the casino office.  (WTF?  She calls him by his real name?  I admit I must have slept through the scene where she discovers his true identity or he’s confessed it!)   He tells her the Exmir doesn’t want to buy her out in hopes that she’ll remain there on the island.  Nope.  She’s got no reason to stay there, especially with Octavio Narvaez long gone.  He asks her to trust him and says he’s going to help her with her dilemma and convince the Exmir to buy her out.