Elemental: Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

see if you’ve been to Lupe’s to eat yet. See, she’s a godmother of sorts to us, but she’s certainly one hell of a cook, and it’s all local food that she cooks right in her house. Thought we’d tell you about it if you want some authentic cuisine. We like to help her drum up a little business whenever we can. Helps her with her finances, you know?”
    “Lupe’s? I don’t think I’ve heard of it,” Tessa said. “Can we walk there?”
    “We were just on our way,” Giles said. “Why don’t you chicas come with us?”
    Tessa innocently looked at her three companions. It was clear what Dara wanted. “What do you two think?” she asked Gillian and Melissa.
    “I could eat,” stated Melissa. “We can head there.”
    “Sure,” Gillian agreed. “I think we’re okay. Besides, we can take care of ourselves.” She glanced at Dara, practically drooling over Dallas. “Well, most of us can.”
    The girls donned swimsuit covers that doubled as sun dresses and packed up their straw bags. A short walk down the beach took them to a dwelling that looked like it could’ve served for the picture in the dictionary for the term ‘shanty’. The building was part wood, part mud, and part tin. Someone had extended a generic blue tarp from one side of the small building to create a half-tent under which a picnic table and a few rusty lawn chairs were arranged. Buckets were placed at the chairs and the table. Two men whose age was indeterminable since the sun had leathered their already tanned skin already occupied the area. They sat chatting quietly in a fluid, mumbled Spanish that sounded more like intonations than words.
    Gavin greeted the gentlemen and asked how the day had gone for them and made a little more small talk. Tessa heard him ask where Lupe was and the men gestured towards the shanty just as a plump brown woman came out the curtained doorway with her arms spread open towards the brothers. Giles and Gavin both grinned like little boys and bent to hug the jolly-looking woman. Giles even lifted her off the ground and planted a kiss on her cheek. She proceeded to ask in what sounded like rapid-fire questions about where they had been, why they hadn’t seen her in so long, were they losing weight, how were their brothers, where were their brothers, and were they hungry.
    “Si, si,” Gavin replied to all of her questions, clearly trying to interrupt the flow. Finally he picked Lupe up and actually brought her over to the girls, put her down in front of them, and laughed as she began to ask more questions about who these beauties were. Which was for which brother? Where did they meet them? Why they were so pale? Had the brothers brought them from America? Was that where they had been?
    Gavin was finally able to introduce Lupe to the girls. “She’s probably the most famous cook in the village. Everyone loves her cooking and both women and men are jealous of her—women because they want to cook like her—men because they want their women to cook like her. She said she has some parrillada that she made just a few hours ago that we must have.”
    The girls smiled and nodded. Tessa shook Lupe’s hand and told her what an honor it would be to eat at her table. Lupe smiled and blushed, both proud and impressed at Tessa’s Spanish.
    The six gathered at the picnic table as Lupe and her scrawny little daughter of ten brought bowls and plates and a pitcher of deep red wine out underneath the blue hues under the tarp.
    “So, about five percent of the world’s beef comes from Argentina,” Giles told them. “And you’re about to taste the only reason that percentage isn’t higher. This, ladies, is a national treasure. Salud!”
    The dinner lasted for a few hours and Lupe plied them with so much food, the women were threatening to make the guys carry them home. The sun started to set and the colors of the sky changed from orange to pink to a fuchsia unseen in the Northern Hemisphere.
    As the sounds of the day