Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan Read Online Free

that shot and boom, you were in California. "
    A young orange-haired woman in a glittery dress came
up behind Asante and waited at a respectful distance. Asante glanced
back at her and nodded.
    "Well," he said, parting his belly.
"Dinnertime now. Like I said, you need anything, Jack, let me
know. Nice to see you again, Miss Cambridge."
    Asante’s fan club followed him to a table nearby.
My enchilada dinner was probably very good. I don’t remember.
    Around midnight Lillian and I drove back to her house
with the VW top down. The stars were out and the air was as warm and
clean as fresh laundry. "I’m sorry about Asante," she
said after a while. I shrugged. "Don’t be. Coming home is like
that--you have to face the assholes too."
    She had taken my hand by the time we pulled into her
driveway. We sat there listening to the conjunto music from the house
next door. The windows were lit up orange. Beers were being opened,
loud talking in Spanish, Santiago Jimenez’s accordion wailing out
" Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio ."
    "Tonight was hard anyway," Lillian said.
“We’re going to need time to figure things out, I guess."
    She raised my hand to her lips. I was looking at her,
remembering the first time I had kissed her in this car, how she
looked. She had been wearing a white sundress, her hair cut like
Dorothy Hamill’s. We had been sixteen, I think.
    I kissed her now.
    "I’ve been figuring things out for ten years,"
I told her. "It’s got to get easier from here."
    She looked at me for a long time with an expression I
couldn’t read. She almost decided to say something. Then she kissed
me back.
    It was hard to talk for a while, but I finally said:
“Robert Johnson will be mad if I don’t bring him these leftovers
for dinner."
    “ Enchiladas for breakfast?" Lillian suggested.
    We went inside.
 

    5
    Everything with Lillian was familiar, from her linen
sheets to the citrus scent of her hair when I finally fell asleep
buried in it. I was even hoping I might dream of her for a change,
the way I used to. I didn’t.
    The dreams started out like a slide show—newspaper
photos of my dad, Express-News headlines that had burned themselves into my memory that summer. Then
it was a late spring evening in May of ’85 and I was standing on
the front porch of my father’s house in Olmos Park. A battered gray
Pontiac, probably a ’76, tinted windows and no license plate, was
pulling up by the curb as my father walked from the driveway to the
front door, carrying two bags of groceries. Carl Kelley, his deputy
and best friend, was a few steps behind him. For some reason I
remember exactly what Carl was holding—a twelve-pack of Budweiser
in one hand and a watermelon in the other. I was opening the front
door for them, my eyes red from studying for my last round of
freshman final exams at A & M.
    My dad was at his very heaviest—nearly three
hundred pounds of muscle and fat stuffed into oversized jeans and a
checkered shirt. Sweat lines running down his temples from the rim of
his brown Stetson, he lumbered up the steps with a cigar drooping off
the corner of his mouth. He looked up and gave me one of his sly
grins, started to say something, probably a wisecrack at my expense.
Then a small hole blew open in the grocery bag in Dad’s right arm.
A perfect white stream of milk sprouted out. Dad looked momentarily
puzzled. The second shot came out the front of his Stetson.
    Fumbling for his gun, Carl hit the ground for cover
about the same time my dad hit the ground dead. Dad was three months
away from retirement. The watermelon made a bright red starburst as
it exploded on the sidewalk. The gray Pontiac pulled away and was
gone.
    When I woke up alone in Lillian’s bed the conjunto music from next door had stopped. The cranberry glass night lamp was
on, making the squares of moonlight pink against the hardwood floor.
Through the open bedroom door I could see Lillian standing naked in
the living room, her arms hugging her body,