Caray, Caray!

Capítulo 2
Parte 1~
[With heavenward apologies to The Bard…..]

As Diego and Sra. Teresa Alarcón smile triumphantly to themselves and the congratulatory guests at the success of their dastardly plan (as Viewerville deduces it to be) to this point, a disgusted Julio exits to the balcony outdoors to take a much needed smoke and ponder…..whatever.  Suddenly a pensive Isabela comes out onto the balcony and accepts a cigarette from the mysterious man off the train.  “—How come I run into you every time I’m about to take a train I don’t care to take?”  He smiles suavely at her. “—Perhaps somebody needs to convince you.  Sometimes it’s better to stay on the platform.”   He asks if she’s alright.  She says perfectly fine.  He smiles charmingly and chuckles a bit.  “--Should I take you away with me?”  “—You’d do that for me?” He suggests if one isn’t persuaded by Fate, it’s best not to take the train ride because once you decide to get off it might be too far for you to get back again.   Just then El Depraved de Diego (G-r-r-r-r) comes out and the fragile moment is broken.  He walks onto the balcony looking for Isabel as Julio strides quickly into the shadows, formally wishing her congratulations on her engagement.

Diego inquires who the man is.  “Dunno.  Some guest of the hotel.”  Diego and she go back into visit said invitees to their engagement party and to dance together.  Definitely Julio has made one huge impression on her (just as he has–despite his rather non-existent visual appeal in parts of Viewerville as leading man material).



Back inside Diego and Isa dance the first dance together.  She’s not in love with him and her plans don’t include romantic involvement at this point in her life.  (Nope.  They sure don’t.  Medicine must take a backseat to Mother Teresa’s –ja!- plans.)  Oh, she says, I’ve known you quite a while now.  He replies back that she only thinks she knows him, but really she doesn’t.  (Never truer words…Hmmm.  You mean she doesn’t know the debauched you, or the diabolical you, or the depraved, two-timing, double-dealing you?)   He offers to give her back her freedom (Uhhuhhhh….sure you would) if she decides she really doesn’t want to marry him.  (The sumb!tch is such a gambler—he knows she’s putty in her mama’s hands now that papi’s dead and papi’s moral and financial backing are buried with him.)

Back in the moonlight, Andres tries to get Julio’s attention.  Julio reacts violently.  “—what’s the matter with you?  These antics are going to get both of us fired!”  Julio apologizes to his new-found friend and mentions he interviewed Sra. Limantour.  That’s a waste, says Adres.  “—Wrong-o-o-o-oh.  I spoke to her and she told me that no one had stolen any of her jewelry.”  “—What?  Would one of the management lie about something like that?”  “—Well, either they lied or you did.”  Andres denies and Julio takes his word for it.

Back inside on the dance floor, Isa is miffed and asks Diego why he didn’t ask her first to marry him rather than going to her mother instead for permission.  He answers he like to follow the rules.  Well, rules give me a migraine, she tells him, not a little bit indignant at his audacity.  “—I’m not like my sister, Sofia, you realize.”

Big sis is, meanwhile, trying to placate Hubby, who is pissed as hell at not being named the “rightful” new hotel director as most mature male in the family.  He’s obviously not seen as a member of the family and wants to leave the place, ASAPP, but Sofia won’t since this is a huge family ball and it wouldn’t look right.  Hubby goes into a sh!t fit over this, claiming why should he continuously let them walk all over him and he has to foot the bill and clean up the mess the Alarcon’s have made left and right with both hands (a diestra y sinestra)!!  Sofia says she’s not about to leave her mother in the lurch like that.  Hubby complains it was Mama who left them in the lurch, keeping them waiting for hours to learn whether he’d be made hotel director or not, and then rubbing their noses in her announcing Isabel’s engagement to this Mr. Nobody that she’s now made Hotel Director instead!!

Diego sweet talks Isabel by telling her that Daddy would have wanted her to stay and help Diego run the hotel with him, by his side.  (Diego, you slimy, silver-tongued devil, you!!)

Outside again, Julio demands to know who accused his sister, Cristina, of the theft?  Andres has no idea.  Must have been from higher up.  Probably Don Diego.  Yeah, says, Andres, the guy who’s now engaged to Srta. Alarcón!  The guy who’s just finished inheriting the hotel!!  Ever since he arrived five years ago, he’s been Sr. Alarcon’s (Don Romulo) right hand man.

Diego jumps the shark a few minutes later when he tells Isa that he respects her the same as her papi did.  “—Then why didn’t you consult with me before going to my mother???”  She leaves, quite visibly upset, pleading illness.  Dona T. jumps up and asks for a dance.  Appearances, appearances!!

All Andres knows—and it’s not much—is that he had asked Belen to collect Cristina’s things from her room.  “—It’s not like they need a real reason to fire somebody.”  Yeah, but there’s some reason they lied about why they fired her.  She wouldn’t just disappear like that.  Something has happened to her and somebody’s putting on this show to hide it.  --And, he’s going to find out who and what!!  He races off.

Don Benjamin comes out and finds Andres “loafing” and shews him back into the kitchen to help begin serving the guests.


Mama T counsels Diego.  Isa is a bit difficult to control.  Leave her to me.  I’ll see she marries you, but the rest of it is up to you!

At the same time, Isa is in her room, mooning over her father and how he assured her that her mama would not fight her going to college and medical school.
Outside again, Julio is back in his everyman hobo clothes.  Andres finds him and points out Isa’s bedroom.  He mentions she left the party halfway through her dance with Diego, feigning illness.  Julio wonders why.  Had to be a reason, surmises Andres.  Julio asks how he knows so much about her and the family.  Andres explains that he was born and raised on the ground of the hotel.  He leaves then and Julio begins playing a sad tune on his harmonica that seems to match Isa’s mood entirely.  She glances out the window and sees him playing there (but isn’t certain of whom she’s looking at?)

Back at the ball, Diego whines wondering how he can get control of her.  Heck, she’s making him the laughing stock of the town by leaving her own engagement party.  Oh, not to worry.  Mama and Isa are made of the same stock even though they appear to be like oil and water, down deep it’s the stubborn streak.  Now Sofia, she’s another story.  Mild and meek, the drab [gris= drab, grey, squirrelly] daughter.  And then, of course, Felipe, who has no strength of character despite all his mischievous endeavors…..  Mama toasts Diego and suggests he’s not going to let her brash, stubborn daughter get the best of him, now is he?
End parte 1~~~~~~~~~
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Parte 2~~~~

Suddenly Felipe appears at the party--making the grandest of ungracious entrances, but an entrance all the same--with the latest of his many hookers hooked to his waist and keeping him upright.  He falls, literally, all over the guests and Mama.  Diego is angry that his reputation is ruined while she’s simply trying to keep the hotel afloat.  Behind closed doors she gives him what for.  He is so drunk—and tells her he’s only fulfilling her expectations of him.  She walks out in disgust and he cries to himself.

Up in his room, Diego has a guest waiting: Belen.  She and he get down to doing the down and dirty.  He fights it but then gives in to his inner urges and his ultimate desires.

Mama T tells Feli to pay off the whore and get her out of the place.  She screams at Sofia to go with Hubby and entertain the guests already.  Sofia whimpers and then scampers.

Mama knocks on Diego’s door next for another chat, inopportune, of course and Belen must hide.  Does she suspect another woman behind the door?  We’ll never know…..”Get dressed and Join me in your office.

A while later, Diego walks the grounds while Julio’s playing his tune.  Juliio hides, and is passed by.  He follows Diego to the saloon of sorts – a real den of wolves—and where there is betting on fights.  Felipe gets in trouble for not paying off his drinking debts.

Julio notes a madame there trying to force her “cousin”/daughter to whore for the crowd in the den of iniquities.  She tells her mama that she’s preggers.  Mama is mad to hear she’s disgraced as a future grandmother.  Isa brushes her hair, safe in her comfortable world of luxury.

Diego pays off Felipe’s debts to the saloon owner secretly for Dona Teresa. The saloon owner throws Felipe out of the place anyway pretending he’s not been paid yet (and possibly planning on beating the crap out of him despite being paid off??).  Felipe argues.  Suddenly Julio starts throwing punches, then grabs and runs with Felipe back to the hotel.  “--Let’s go!  It’s now or never!”
Meanwhile, Isa can’t sleep.

Diego returns to his room thinking to find Belen still there and to continue the shenanigans.  Instead he finds a chest with a ribbon wrapped around it.  Inside is a bloody blouse of Cristina’s. Diego is totally grossed out but has no idea apparently why it’s been put there.  (At least Viewerville hasn’t one.)  He tries to pitch it but Isa’s passing through the hallway at that same moment and he shuts his door.

Sofia returns to her hubby packing up.  She scolds him for being a coward and leaving her and her child.  (Apparently, she’s preggars also.) “--Would you abandon me and your child?”  He doesn’t want his child seeing his father suffering the unending humiliation he’s put up with living there under her mother’s [hotel] roof.

Dona Angela finds Isa looking at the guest registry for the place down on the main floor (excuuuuuuse me, but dressed in nothing more than her nighty and robe?).

The saloon owner puts the young girl up for the bid to the highest bidder.  She fights and is knocked unconscious and carried off by somebody....

“--Do you by any chance know in what room Sr. Julio Montiel Collado is registered?”  Angela says he isn’t registered at the hotel.  She knows because she makes it her duty to know each guest and room so that they’re given the proper amount of attention.

Felipe and Julio arrive through the kitchen’s delivery entrance at the back of the hotel.  Where’d Julio learn to fight like that, asks Feli.  That’s the way it is: in my world if you don’t fight you don’t eat, says Julio.  Well, replies Feli, you should be eating banquets-full then.   “--Oh, and hey, not a word of this to my mother, okay?”  Not to worry, I don’t want to get fired.  “--A lesson for you, Julio: those upstairs worry about appearances and those downstairs about work.  They’re not so different.  Either class is able to be killed by that which worries them.”

Sofia keeps harping at Hubby but saying all the wrong things.  He tells her she’s just too used to the rotten way Mama treated her papi, but he doesn’t intend to live that way.

The young girl would-be hooker is locked in the store-room till she learns her lesson.

At the same time, as Isa and Dona Angela look on, Sofia begs Hubby Alfredo not to leave her.  They begin pulling and shoving until Sofia loses her balance and falls down the huge stairway onto the lobby floor.

End of epi.

Labels: hotel