"Better than losing."
"But why do you want to win?"
He looked at her as if she were crazy. "Because I'm a politician. That's what we do."
"But why? "
"To keep this state out of Democrats' hands, so they don't screw up Texas like they screwed up the rest of the country."
"We're pretty screwed up if we've got a twenty-seven-billion-dollar deficit."
"Don't ever say that in public."
"Bode, I've been the governor's wife for eight years. I know what to say and not to say in public."
"Well, if you want to be the governor's wife for another four years-"
"I don't."
"You don't what?"
"Want to be the governor's wife."
She could feel the Rangers' muscles tense up front. The governor turned fully to his wife.
"What the hell does that mean?"
There were two Bode Bonners: the public politician and the private man. She still loved the private man, but there was less of him to love. With each passing year living in the Governor's Mansion-with each election-the man seemed to merge into the politician. Or the politician consumed the man. Like a cancer. She had seen cancer eat away at patients in the hospital until they were just a shell of their former selves. The cancer that afflicted her husband-political ambition-had had the same effect on him. Ambition had eaten away all that was good inside Bode Bonner and left him a shell of a man. She had hoped he would recover, but she knew now that he would not survive. He wasn't fighting his cancer. He had become his cancer. She could no longer bear to look at him, this man she had loved and lain with and looked upon as her hero. She now averted her eyes so he could not see her tears.
"Bode, I'm not happy. With my life."
"Lindsay, this is our life. I'm the governor, and you're the governor's wife."
"I'm forty-four years old. Becca's in college now. She doesn't need me, you don't need me-what am I supposed to do the rest of my life? Smile for the cameras? Shop? Play tennis and do lunch at the country club? That's not me. I didn't sign up for that." She wiped her eyes and turned to him. "Bode, I can't do this anymore."
His expression changed. She saw fear in his eyes.
"You want a divorce?"
"I want to be useful."
"You are. You're the governor's wife."
"I'm used, not useful. Bode, I don't want to just breathe oxygen and fill the space inside my clothes. I want my life to have meaning. I want to make a difference."
"You do. You volunteer at the homeless shelter, the food bank, the elementary school-"
"I want to be a nurse again."
"A nurse? "
"Yes."
"You can't be a nurse."
"Why not? I kept my license up to date."
"Where are you gonna work? In the ER at Austin General Hospital? Everyone knowing who you are? It'd be a goddamn fiasco."
It would.
"Look, Lindsay, we'll talk about all this when I get back, okay?"
"Back from where?"
"Hunting. Me and Jim Bob, we're flying out to John Ed's ranch, tomorrow morning."
"How long will you be gone?"
"Just for the weekend. I'll be back Sunday evening."
"I don't want to wait that long."
He patted her knee as if putting off a child. She hated when he did that.
"Come on, honey, this can wait till then, give you time to think it through. When I get back, we'll talk this out, okay?"
She knew they wouldn't. He just hoped she'd move on to something else. Another "do-good deal," as he referred to her volunteer work. But this was her life.
"Bode, I have thought this through. I'm going to be a nurse. I'm not asking your permission."
His jaw muscles clenched, and she felt his blood pressure rising.
"Where? Where are you gonna be a nurse? You're the governor's wife, and everyone in the State of Texas knows you on sight, that famous red hair. So you may want to be a nurse, Lindsay, but you ain't gonna be-not unless you can find some place in this whole goddamn state where no one knows you're the governor's wife!"
But there was such a place.
"?Nombre? "
"Tendita Chavarria."
"?Cual es la edad? "
" Veinticuatro."
"?Cual es el sexo? "
" Si."
" No. Femenino. "
"Oh. Si."
"?Ninos??Numero? "
" Cinco. "
"?Marido? "
" No."
Five hundred miles south of Lubbock, Inez Quintanilla sat at her desk in the clinic in Colonia Angeles across from a resident, completing another of the census forms left by the governor's wife. Jesse Rincon sat at his desk, thinking of the governor's wife. A woman such as her had never before come into his clinic. The women who came into his clinic were like the woman Inez now interviewed, twenty-four years old with no husband for herself or father for her five children, women who no longer dreamed of a life beyond the wall, women who would live and die in this colonia. But twenty-nine days ago she had walked into his clinic-into his life-and now he could not get her out of his life. Out of his head. Each day he thought of her; each night he dreamed of her. A married woman. The governor's wife.
Was there truly such a thing as love at first sight?
He had no romance in his life, and no prospects for any. Women did not come to the border; they fled from the border. They desired a life in the cities, not a life in the colonias. So he had long ago abandoned all thoughts of love. Marriage. Family. He had resigned himself to a solitary life, as if he were the priest his uncle had wanted him to be.
Then she walked into his clinic.
In the month since, he had searched her on the Internet, read about her and stared at her image on the computer screen, as if he were a smitten schoolboy back at the Catholic school in Nuevo Laredo. He followed her daily schedule in Austin as the photographers caught her coming and going, entering an elementary school and leaving a coffee shop, entering the food bank and leaving the AIDS clinic, entering the homeless shelter and leaving the gym. He went with her on campaign swings to Houston and Dallas and West Texas; she was in Lubbock that day. He knew that this was not what a doctor would call "healthy," for him to know the governor's wife's itinerary, but the governor's official website posted it there for all the world to read.
For him to read.
He was sure that her memory would fade from his mind, and his behavior, so out of character for him, would return to normal. But twenty-nine days had passed, and neither had. Each night his heart drove him to the computer screen, to gaze at her image, to know what she had done that day. But in his head he knew that she would never again walk into his clinic, that he would never again see her face, that he would never again speak to her. Yet still he thought of her. The governor's wife.
"Dr. Rincon."
Jesse looked up to Inez standing there. The resident had left, and Inez was now pulling on yellow rubber gloves to conduct the first of her twice-daily disinfectant scrubs of the clinic. He looked past her to two strangers standing at her desk, a man and a woman. The man held a professional camera.
"They are from a Houston newspaper. They want to interview you."
Another interview. He had tired of telling the story of the colonias because few people listened and those who did had a short attention span for other people's problems in this bad economy, particularly Mexicans living illegally in America. He wanted to tell them to go away, but when he looked back down at the order forms for medicine and supplies he could not afford, he was reminded how much money he needed. Perhaps a few people in Houston would read the story and see the photos and send money. Jesse sighed then stood and walked over and greeted the strangers like close friends.
" Bienvenido. I am Jesse Rincon."
The reporter stuck her hand out to him.
"Kikki Hernandez."
Another woman who did not belong in the colonias. But she was not the governor's wife. She was a young and very pretty Latina dressed as one would expect a female from Houston. Her fingernails were red, her scent was intoxicating, and her cameraman was named Larry; he was a middle-aged and overweight Anglo dressed as if he were going to a pro wrestling arena.