The locals had warned her about the heat but she had brushed off their warnings. She’d experienced enough summers in D.C. to feel confident she could handle one in Tucson.
But D.C. heat was nothing like this.
In a desperate attempt to feel cooler Monica had smoothed her dreads back into a ponytail. She also wore her union baseball cap to keep the sun off her face.
“Union! Union!”
Monica looked over and smiled. Mrs. Juanita Whitecloud, her plump, brown face glistening with sweat, stood near the curb, waving her sign at the passing cars. Her cardinal-red and navy-blue University of Arizona T-shirt was covered with union buttons, as was the large straw hat she wore.
Most of the cars, their windows rolled up in order to sustain their air-conditioned interiors, zipped past. But one car, its windows down, Spanish-style rap music pulsating out of its mega-speakers, slowed down for the light.
Monica moved closer to Mrs. Whitecloud.
The older woman shoved her sign at the car. “Union! Union!”
The car was full of young men. One of those in the backseat pushed his lean, handsome face out the window.
“Hey! Abuella! Why don’t you go home and bake some coyotas?”
“If I do,” Mrs. Whitecould taunted, “will you and your fine-looking hijos come over and eat them?”
The boy grinned. “I don’t know. You kinda old for me. You got maybe a granddaughter I can hang with.”
“No grandbabies yet. But I got a daughter.”
“She fine as you?”
Mrs. Whitecloud laughed, her full bosom jiggling. “Yeah, but she’s too good for you.”
Before the boy could respond, the light changed and the car sped off.
Silas, who worked at the hotel as a custodian, shook his gray-haired head at Mrs. Whitecloud. “You ought to stop pimping Chenoa like that.”
“I’m not pimping her. It’s true what I said. I got no grandbabies yet. Chenoa’s my only child. If she don’t give me any, how I’m going to get any?” She looked over at Monica. “Ain’t that right?”
Monica smiled. The last thing she wanted to do was encourage Mrs. Whitecloud in her campaign to get her daughter, Chenoa, married. Especially since from the moment Monica had met Chenoa, she’d been unable to stop thinking about her.
The union members marched up and down the street, waving their signs and chanting. Monica smiled. From day one she had been fighting an uphill battle to convince the hotel workers they needed a union.
Mrs. Whitecloud had been her first convert, and she had enthusiastically thrown herself into the fray, helping Monica strategize ways to organize the workers. As a result of spending so much time with her, Monica had met Chenoa, who was home for the summer from grad school back East.
Even now, standing in the hot, blazing sun, Monica felt that deliciously cool quiver deep down in her belly whenever she thought of Mrs. Whitecloud’s beautiful daughter.
Chenoa. Of the black licorice hair, the smooth butterscotch skin, the succulent caramel-rich eyes.
Monica winced. Damn it. She couldn’t help it if she thought about Chenoa in candy-coated images. She wanted to eat the woman alive.
Carnally speaking, of course.
“Chenoa!” Mrs. Whitecloud’s voice cut through the chants of the workers. Monica quickly whirled around, bumping into Silas who was walking behind her.
He took a step back and grinned. “Watch it, girl.”
“Sorry.”
He slyly winked. “Keep that up and you might get me wondering if you got a thing for me.”
Monica vaguely returned his smile. He’d been hitting on her since day one.