Stung by this, Benita had cried, “Would you rather Carlos had not been born? Rather Angelica had not been born?”
“No.Dios siempre bate bendiciones con dolor! “ God always mixes blessings with pain. “Your brothers have moved far away, and we see them seldom. You are my only blessing who is with me, and I will not let my blessing be destroyed!”
It had seemed to Benita that Mami had been in a dreadful hurry to be sure Benita could manage. The reason was clear all too soon. Mami knew she had cancer, though she hadn’t told any of the family. She ended up having several surgeries and chemo, but two years later she was gone. The farm where the family had grown up was hers, inherited from her people, and she left it to Benita and her two brothers. The boys didn’t want to keep it. Benita had no money to buy it from them, so it was sold and she and Bert had gone on living with Bert’s mother on Benita’s money, which had lasted a few years. Papa had a trailer out at the salvage yard, and Benita always thought he’d moved in there with a sense of relief. Mami had been the campes-ino in the family. Papa had never been that interested in farming, and needless to say, neither was Bert.
“Finished?” the quizzical person asked from the doorway, eyebrows halfway up his forehead, the ink smear on his jaw longer and darker than before.
“You have ink on your face,” she said. “You’ve been running your fingers around on your cheek.”
“Damn,” he said, peering at himself in a glass-fronted cupboard. “I always do that. I’m writing something, and next thing I know I’m tap-tapping on my face. They called me Inky in school. Or worse.”
“You buy the wrong pens,” she told him. “The kind I buy do not leak.”
He sat down and gathered up the application. “Urn. Um. Um, well, um. Fifteen years? Really?”
“Really.” She smiled ruefully. “While my children were at home. Now they’re off to school and lives of their own.”
“Who have you dealt with at Bantam?” he asked.
She gave him a name. He mentioned several more publishing houses, and she gave him names for each.
“You’re real.” He sighed. “Halleluja. Now, this is the deal. We have this store. We have branches in Georgetown, Alexandria, and Annapolis with a modest Web-market operation. We’re not Amazon-dot-com, but then we’re showing a profit. I need someone who can take over. How about thirty thousand to start, ninety-day trial, and we’ll talk about a long-term arrangement then?”
She was shocked into silence. She made twenty at the Written Word. Ten dollars an hour, after all those years. Of course, New Mexico salaries were lower than the average. And this was a lot bigger job.
He said hopefully. “I’m desperate for someone really good. You’ll start as assistant manager. We need somebody like you, we really do. Someone well educated, personable, capable . . .”
She almost blurted out the truth, but managed to keep her mouth shut. She had continued her education. Never mind if it hadn’t been inside ivy-covered walls, she’d done it.
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” she murmured, collecting her purse. “I’ll drop in tomorrow morning.”
“Were you coming in to buy something?” he asked. “When I saw you outside?”
He took her by the hand, casually, and drew her out into the stacks where he helped her pick half a dozen books, a gift, he said.
“By the way,” he murmured as he let her out, “my name is Simon DeGreco. My card is here, in the top book, and I’ll be here all day tomorrow.”
She turned toward him and removed the dark glasses. “If you check my references, please don’t tell either of my bosses where I’d be working. I’ve left a … difficult situation, and I don’t want it to come looking for me.” She looked straight at him.
His eyes fixed on the swollen eye, now turning shades of chartreuse and pale violet. “I’ll be discreet,” he said, crossing his heart, not making a big thing out of it. She decided she liked him.