Thirteen Senses Read Online Free PDF

little, tiny smile?” continued Salvador.
    â€œNo!” snapped Lupe again, moving the whole of her hips.
    â€œOh, yes, here, here it’s coming, Lupe. It’s coming, that little smile,” he said, showing his teeth with a big grin, just as a stud would now do.
    â€œOh, Salvador!” said Lupe, not being able to stand it anymore. And she now suddenly smiled, showing her own teeth, and she stuck her tongue out at him. “I don’t want to smile! Because, well, it’s all still true,” she said, hitting him, “if I’d known you then, as I know you now, I never, never would’ve married you, and that’s the truth, and you know it! Those first few years of our marriage were awful!”
    â€œYes, of course they were,” he said, calmly. “I agree completely; those first two or three years were awful, and yes, you never would’ve married me, and I knew that, and so that’s why I lied. Oh, querida mia, you are still my angel! Just look at you, your eyes, your lips, your little smile—even when you don’t want to smile—and your hands.
    â€œI was watching your hands, querida, when you were in the other room playing with our grandchildren as you told them a story, and the way your hands moved, flying like birds as you spoke to them—oh, Lupe, you still fill my heart with as much love today as you did the first day I saw you! Ah, te amo con todo mi corazón! ’’ he shouted with gusto.
    There wasn’t a dry eye in the whole room. Even the guys were choking.
    â€œBut Salvador, you were MONSTROUS! I can’t forgive you for some of the things you did! The distillery blowing up in Tustin, and the police sirens were coming, and I thought you were dead, and Tencha here, still breast-feeding, and oh, it was awful!”
    â€œDON’T FORGIVE HIM!” yelled Carlota from across the room. “You should’ve married Mark, Lupe! He was good! He was decent! He didn’t eat like a pig! He had table manners!”
    Salvador exploded! “My God, I’m going to kill this woman yet! Not one moment of peace have we had with her around! And where she gets this mouth of hers, I don’t know. Your mother, Lupe, she treated me with respect and intelligence!”
    Saying this, Salvador let go of Lupe and started across the room to grab Carlota by the throat and choke her to death. But Carlota was fast, and she quickly shuffled out of the room with her cane in her hand, scurrying across the living room and down the long hallway.
    And she was so fast, so quick with her bad hip and all, that everyone started laughing, even Linda. Life, la vida, was so full of turns and twists! And there went Tia Tota, running with that old cane of hers, and Salvador after her.
    â€œWhy did you marry a man like Archie,” he was yelling, “if you hate men so much! He was a bull! Then in Oceanside down by the pier, you were always flirting with all those young men who came into that bar, leaning up over the pool table to fix the balls for them with your short skirt so high that they could see up your underwear! You were el escándalo del barrio! A hypocrite, and a liar!”
    â€œSalvador!” Lupe was shouting. “Stop it! Please, stop it! One of you has to have the intelligence to keep respect!”
    Everyone was laughing now. The whole thing was hilarious.
    â€œRESPECT, HELL!” Salvador shouted. “Yes, I agree with you, Lupe, the first few years of our marriage were AWFUL, like they are for most married people when they finally really start getting to know each other after all that bullshit goodie-goodie shit of courtship! But,” Salvador added with power, “it wouldn’t have been so awful if this damn sister of yours hadn’t been there at every turn putting in her two cents!
    â€œAdmit it, Lupe, if she hadn’t been there with us, we could have planted our Holy Seeds of marriage in the first three