The Mexican Wife...

"At the corrida we'll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We'll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreon..."
- Dylan, Romance In Durango

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - That last time they'd been to visit her in-laws, Claudia Gonzalez had decided she'd give up on her husband, Rafael. Something told her life was passing by in a blur, days simply moving from one to the next, her fairy tale dreams long-gone and Rafael in the same rut. She would tell him, and then she would announce the decision to her family. Eighteen years of marriage and she had little to show for it. Her 19-year-old car, one she'd gotten while still in high school, moved along with a loose fender. "That's my life right there," she'd said to herself when it became clear Rafael had no interest in fixing it.

On the morning she planned to visit with her mother, Claudia stopped at the mall and walked into her favorite dress boutique. Maybe a new blouse would make it easier, put her in just the right mood, the best frame-of-mind to do what she'd been wanting to do for months. Rafael had been absent from her side of the bed for just as long, their once-hot romantic interludes a thing of the past. Frustration, she would tell her mom, had led to desperation. She needed fresh air.

Inside the store, Claudia walked the aisles and settled on a display for colorful nylon blouses. Rafael hated nylon; he was a 100% cotton guy, and he liked to see her shop at better stores. Nothing grabed her eye until she spotted a blouse in orange and yellow. The weather still called for warm clothing, but this far south in he country, well, tomorrow might bring 90-degree heat, was her feeling. She took the blouse from the rack and walked back to the fitting room, where a young attendant helped her to a stall. Claudia's clothing at home rested between dark-browns and grays, clothes for a woman 10 years older. Rafael liked her in conservative garb, nothing showy and especially nothing sexy. This blouse was a bit of a sparkler. When she looked in the stall's mirror, she could see right through the material to the bra cups and her cleavage.

The ring off her cellphone rousted her from the moment.

"Yes, mother, I'm on my way," she said, after answering.

Claudia took the blouse and walked it back to its place on the display. "I'll come get it later today," she told the store clerk. Shortly, she was walking outside the mall toward her car. On the boulevard, she snaked around delivery trucks and other vehicles. Her mother had coffee and pan dulce waiting. Claudia worked on her speech. She would run through all the problems she and Rafael faced, all the arguments, all the debt, all the fighting, all the deceptions. She needed this talk with Mom. Claudia gunned the engine and swept around a city bus lumbering past the tall palm trees that lined the street. This was a good day to end something, so that something new could begin.

At her mother's house, Claudia took little time in getting to the news. Her mother gasped, and then reached across the dining table to clasp her daughter's hands. "I'm done," Claudia said, bringing an end to her side of the conversation. A brief silence filled the small kitchen and Claudia could only lower her head. "Don't," her mother said next. "Hold your head high, and don't even think about crying." Claudia smiled and reached for her coffee cup.

Minutes later, she was back on the road, driving toward the shopping mall. She would go back to the dress boutique. Traffic was lighter as she drove while listening to a love song by Phil Collins coming out of her dash radio's speakers. A string of green lights at arriving intersections seemed an omen, she thought. Overhead, a bright sunball had cleared away the morning fog. It would shine all day long.

At the dress shop, Claudia beelined for the blouse rack and found the one sexy blouse she'd tried-on earlier. Taking it, she turned to head for the register, but stopped after a few steps.

Reaching toward a chrome, upright rack to her left, she grabbed a pair of red, crotch-less panties and let out a little laugh...

- 30 -