The Trophiest Wife in the Valley
Ch. 4 of An Evening With God
When Ana’s dad got the job as Buxton Green Earth Motors’ accountant, he kept Ana and her mom in stitches telling him about owner Dan Buxton’s obnoxiousness. He wore more cologne than any man Papi had ever been around, either back in Hermosillo or in California, and Papi, who was allergic to some ingredient in the fragrance, had to be careful not to get within four feet of hm.
Whenever an attractive woman would come into the showroom, Buxton would pop a handful of candy mints into his mouth to mask the smell of cigarettes and, if it were after lunch, liquor. He would hurry out to the showroom and tell the salesperson the attractive woman had been dealing with, “I got this,” assuring the woman, “A gal as pretty as you deserves nothing less. than the boss man,” and kiss her hand, which he seemed to think made him seem quite the sophisticate. He seemed not to notice how, as he led them to the cars he proposed to sell them, many of the women took hankies out of their purses and wiped their hands.
The owner of the biggest hybrid and all-electric car dealership in the Phoenix metro area thought climate change was horseshit, and himself drove a Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing that got around 11 miles per gallon.
Ana met the man Papi had spoken of so often four months after Papi’s hiring, at B-GEM’s gala Christmas party in the ballroom of the Sheraton. The employees invitations specified suit and tie for gentlemen and dresses with high heels and hose for their dates, be they wives or other. The high heels were to be no less than three inches high, as at the dealership’s office and showroom. It was Papi’s impression that Mr. B had a special interest in high heels.
Mr. B wore even more cologne than usual to his party, at which he seemed intent on kissing every attractive, under-40 woman in sight. But when he got a load of Ana, fresh from being named Homecoming Queen at Arpaio Community College, he forgot about everyone else, and gaped at her so long and brazenly as to inspire considerable giggling.
He tossed a handful of mints into his mouth, and charged over to scold Papi. “May I know why you never mentioned that you’ve got the sexiest daughter in the friggin’ Southwest, Luis?” He said this while gaping at Ana’s cleavage. Everyone except Mr. B’s wife Peg, who was furious, was mortified. Ana had become used to her male college classmates never giving her a moment’s peace, but no adult had ever embarrassed her as Mr. B was doing.
He seemed to lack any intention of letting go her hands. “Don’t think I’m going to let you leave her tonight before you’ve agreed to come to work for me,” he said, mintily. “Don’t even think about it.”
“The problem, Mr. B,” Papi tried to explain, “is that Ana just three months ago started college. She wants to be a pediatric nurse.”
Mr. B didn’t want to hear about it. “If you’re the first person a customer talks to when they come in my showroom,” he told Ana, “my sales go up 20 percent instantly, guaranteed.”
Knowing how much Papi needed his job, and not wanting to make Papi’s and Mami’s embarrassment any more severe than it was already, Ana smiled and said, “But I don’t know anything about cars, Mr. Buxton. I don’t even own one.”
“Correction,” Mr. B said. “You didn’t own one. You come see me Monday. I’m giving you the previously owned vehicle of your choice as a sort of signing bonus. What do you think about that? And Mr. B was my old man. I’m Dan.” The look on Papi’s face told Ana to play along, and four days later she was the owner of a cherry red 1028 Honda CR-Z.
Eight days later she’d withdrawn from college. And seven weeks later, Dan Buxton, having accepted that Ana wasn’t going to sleep with a married man, even one who gave her a car and made her the highest paid member of his sales team, announced that he’d left his wife.
In spite of the 26-year difference in their ages, and in spite of Papi’s initial great discomfort, Mr. B and Ana became an item. Ana told her parents that in private Danny — Danny! — wasn’t always the person he played in public. He could be sensitive and funny. They weren’t supposed to repeat this to anyone, but Mr. B was constantly marveling at his good luck in Ana dating him.
She had no income, having lasted only nine days as the official greeter at the B-GEM showroom. Mr. B determined within the first week that she attracted fewer prospective customers than young studs who wanted to ogle her up close. Her family had never had much money, so Mr. B’s commonly giving her one of his platinum credit cards and urging her to go buy some new high heels to wear to dinner at the Valley’s best, most expensive, restaurants didn’t exactly displease her. She got huge pleasure taking Mami along on her so-called retail therapy sessions, and buying her something Papi would never have been able to afford to buy for her.
Mr. B got her to promise to marry him when his and Peg’s divorce was finalized. She expected Papi and Mami to hate the idea, but Mami said, “Whatever you think is going to make you happiest, hija, is what we want,” and Papi concentrated hard on being amused by the prospect of being the boss’s son-in-law, especially since he was five months Mr. B’s senior. In a profile in Phoenix magazine, Mr. B was revealed to believe that when he and Annie, as he preferred to call Ana, tied the knot, his would be the trophiest trophy wife in the Valley of the Sun.
After the publication of his profile, in which Mr. B speculated that he might be the most conservative man in the Southwest, a trio of local Republican kingmakers came a-calling. The state’s junior senator had been getting a little maverick-y, if not full-on rogue, lately, expressing a succession of views contrary to the president’s, and the kingmakers thought Dan Buxton might be just the arch-conservative to replace him.
The Republican party’s market researchers discovered a high degree of enthusiasm for the idea. Serving drinks and canapes in an outfit the kingmakers thought might make a lasting impression on prospective donors, Ana nearly laughed aloud when Danny, irrepressible clown and showoff that he was, put on the face he wore to church when he went, and said with the utmost seriousness that he would welcome any opportunity to serve his fellow Arizonians.
But there were some significant negatives. It was a foregone conclusion that his opponents would brand him as a used car salesman whose background in no way prepared him for public service. Those polled felt much more strongly about his having abandoned his wife of 18 years, Peggy — an extremely outspoken conservative in her own right — for a much younger fiancee, and a Latina fiancee at that. When advised that the kingmakers would want him to go back to Peg, Buxton’s first response was “No friggin’ way!” But the kingmakers didn’t take no for an answer.
Buxton both wanted his cake, and to eat it. He thought the best idea was for him and Ana to keep private and secret even from the kingmakers, their unchanged plans to marry, on a date still not specified. Dan believed she should be linked to another man. She would tell anyone who asked what had split them up was Dan’s realization that the decent Christian thing to do was try to revive his and Peggy’s marriage. Under no circumstances was the public to get the impression that it was Peg who’d done the leaving (in disgust, when she found out about Ana). Dan Buxton was not a man whom a woman would leave.
Would Ana be allowed to resume her studies? No, she would not. The reason Dan had been uncomfortable with her working at his showroom was that too many good-looking guys her own age had come in not really to hear about how this or that electric or hybrid car was good for the environment, but to see how far they could get with Ana. Dan and his new team of advisors would choose the new guy she’d be linked with.
They chose Eric Blumenthal Jr, the Arizona Diamondheads star pitcher. He was 33, good-looking, and rich, and Papi was a fervent Snakes fan. Junior had dated some of the Valley’s most gorgeous young Christian women since he and his wife Desiree had divorced because of her avid pro-choice feelings, but, on seeing photos and videos of Ana, had pronounced her “off the scale.” It was his view that hers was the most beautiful body God had ever created. The kingmakers hoped she might come to feel no less close to God worshipping with Junior at Grace Episcopal than at Our Lady of the Pilar with Mami and Papi.
Compared to Los Angeles or New York, there are few paparazzi in the Valley of the Sun, but they all seemed to come (and to bring four or five interns and assistants) the first Sunday Ana and Junior worshipped at each other’s churches. When she came that afternoon to see Junior pitch for the Diamondheads against the Dodgers, a fistfight broke out near the box seats behind home plate where the players’ wives and girlfriends were seated, Ana’s presence having inspired several dozen young male fans to try to get past the lone security guard charged with keeping the WAGs safe. Becca Hilburn, who’d ruled the roost since her husband Jayden had joined the team halfway through the previous season, hadn’t inspired half as much gaping and gasping, and made clear that any WAG who was welcoming to Ana would forfeit her status as one of Becca’s besties.
Down on the field, Junior, who’d had a rocky month since the Braves had traded him to the Snakes, seemed to stand taller than in his last several starts, and allowed the Dodgers only three hits through seven innings.
The next night, four Snakes and their WAGs, including the Hilburns, met for dinner at Testy’s, where the Valley’s most celebrated professional athletes were known to enjoy dining. Becca had a great deal to say to two of the other WAGs — players talked to players, and WAGs to WAGs — and didn’t so much as acknowledge Ana’s presence. The players were accustomed to what they called Lookie Lou’s coming over to have a peek at them when they dined at Testy’s, but there seemed to be many more that night than ever before.
In his Ferrari afterward, Junior couldn’t have been more delighted. He attributed the proliferation of Lookie Lou’s to Ana’s having been his date. “You know what,” he happily informed her, “you fucking rock.” He wondered if she might enjoy waking up the next morning looking out at the breathtaking view from his bedroom window. She said, “Maybe another time,” thinking that reminding him of her, his, and Buxton’s arrangement might make him angry. She’d heard he took steroids, and that steroids could significantly shorten a man’s fuse.
She was to phone Buxton the second she got home. She did so, imagining her fiancé might ask pleasantly if she’d had a nice time. In fact, he was furious. He’d seen photos of her and Junior arriving at church together that morning, and wondered why she looked so happy. “Maybe because I was thinking of you, Danny,” she said, and that calmed him down, but only for a minute.
“I expect you to keep very firmly in mind whose fiancee you are,” he said. “Your old man enjoys working for me. He won’t be working for me if you step out of line, missy.”
Junior phoned Ana to tell her they wouldn’t be seeing much more of Becca and Jared. He couldn’t be blaming her, could he? She’d gone out of her way to be friendly to Becca! She’d managed to ignore Jared’s putting his hand on her leg under the table at Testy’s! It turned out, though, that Junior was anything but sad, and in fact ecstatic. “Who,” he crowed, as though addressing Jared, “has the hottest wife or girlfriend now, motherfucker? In your face, dude!”
Ana gently reminded him that she wasn’t his girlfriend, but rather Dan Buxton’s fiancee. “Which is the first thing we’re going to talk about tonight when I come over,” Junior said.
He’d never been inside Ana’s condo, which Buxton had leased for her. “But I haven’t invited you,” she said, without a trace of confidence. “And you don’t even know where I live.’
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” he laughed. “Expect me at around 7:00. Have some Tombstone IPA chilled for me. Have the Brewers/Yankees game on ESPN. Dress for suck-cess.” He laughed delightedly at his own pun and broke the connection before Ana could summon a tenth of the courage necessary to tell him to take a hike.
She didn’t get the beer, turn on ESPN, or change into anything special. On the other hand, she neither went over to Mami’s and Papi’s for the evening, as she’d at first intended to, nor refused to buzz him in when he rang from downstairs for the millionth time. What was the point when he seemed to know she wouldn’t have the nerve to go out?
She put on her best scowl as she opened the door to him, and he just laughed in her face. “Not exactly the kind of outfit I was hoping for,” he said, defeating the chain on the door with one quick, emphatic shove, and then stepping past her into the living room, “but you’re hot enough to look good anyway.” Before she could protest his having wrecked her door chain, he had one huge hand on the back of her head, and his tongue trying to force its way between her lips, and his free hand grabbing one of hers and forcing it down to his hard-on.
“Get out,” she said when he took a break from trying to get his tongue into her mouth. Not really said, though, so much as whimpered, inspiring him to sneer. “You’ve got two choices,” he said. “You can relax and enjoy the ride, which is the route I strongly suggest, or you can fight me and make it less fun for both of us. Comprende, señorita?”
She took a route not mentioned, neither relaxing and enjoying the ride, nor resisting him. The consolation being that he turned out to have no staying power. He came almost immediately, rolled over on his back, sighed, “That was fucking awesome,” though it had been anything but, and said, “Get me a beer, will you?”
“You raped me,” she getting off the bed. “You raped me.”
“Did I now? I think you’re going to find that I didn’t. Let me tell you why. My guess is you grew up thinking your mom and dad both being here is all on the up-and-up, that they’re both documented. Can you imagine how bad I felt when I found out that isn’t the case? Just awful!
“Your being born here doesn’t mean they’re legal, sweetie pie. Also, you’re not going to tell Dan Buxton that you and me are an item now. If you do, the media might find out somehow about the deal me and him made vis-a-vis you, and that would probably stop his political career before it even begins. I mean, the guy isn’t going to get away with the sort of shit President Trump could. He doesn’t have tens of millions of people wearing caps with his slogan on them, does he?”
Ana didn’t go to Buxton with what had happened, and the kingmaker she’d guessed would be the most sympathetic, Bob Logan, listened to her story as though she were telling him about having received a parking ticket. “It isn’t like I’m surprised to hear that,” he said, reading text messages on his phone as he spoke. “My understanding is that Junior is one of Major League Baseball’s main consumers of steroids. Be that as it may, though, we’re going to keep this quiet. I’ve never seen voters as turned on by a candidate as they are by Bux.”
He acted as though he didn’t notice Ana’s tears of anger and frustration. “I’m aware we’re asking a lot of you, honey. I can’t imagine being intimate with somebody as obnoxious as Junior is a day at the beach. But we pay our debts. You keep this quiet and your family might find itself a whole lot better off financially after the election.”
“Do I correctly understood that you pay for my silence only if Dan gets elected?”
Logan looked confused. “Why would we pay you if he loses? How would that make sense, babe? Take some comfort in his being almost 12 points up according to yesterday’s numbers.”
“I talked to your might-have-been-hubby on the phone this afternoon,” Junior said the next time he invited himself over to Ana’s. “He told me he’d hate to think that I wasn’t honoring our agreement and not touching you. You know what I told him? ‘Rest easy, dude.’ With a straight face. We were Facetiming.”
Ana was Junior’s date to the Valley of the Sun Conservative Club’s annual words dinner, at which various members of the community were lauded for their contribution to “the preservation of the traditional Christian American way of life”. Junior had been one of the most generous donors to the VSCC’s anti-pedophilia campaign, for which private investigators had been hired around the country to find evidence of liberal, progressive, and other leftist human trafficking of white children. Videos of the attractive young couple — Ana in the lowest-cut dress anyone had ever seen at a VSCC awards dinner — went viral on both YouTube and Vimeo. Ana had pleaded in vain to be allowed to wear something more modest. One of Junior’s agent’s female assistants had picked the dress out.
A website that a lot of the English-speaking Diamondbacks regularly checked out, hotjockwags.com published photos of and stories about the wives and girlfriends of famous athletes. It had come to list Ana as the fairest of them all. Becca Hilburn had dropped to No. 4 in the most recent ranking. Junior was ecstatic, and Jared Hilburn livid. There was a scuffle in the Snakes’ locker room after a game in which Jared’s fielding error deprived Junior of the win that would have tied him with the Cubs’ Yvgeny Roig as the league’s winningest starting hurler, as the pundits put it.
Word was that Junior had accused Jared of deliberately allowing the ground ball to go through his legs, in response to which Jared, who’d kickboxed competitively in college, kicked Junior, but not hard enough. In the hearing of the sportswriters who seemed at all times to swarm around him in the locker room, Junior expressed the view that real men use their fists rather than their feet to resolve conflicts. Apparently humiliated, Becca Hilburn was noticeably absent from the last three games of the Snakes’ home stand.
During the Snakes’ six-game road trip, according to players who asked not to be identified, Junior smirked mockingly and Jared glowered a lot, but no blood was shed, or teeth knocked out. The latest ranking of WAGs on hotjockwags.com placed Becca Hilburn at No. 6, with Ana remaining at No. 1. Dan Buxton’s popularity among Arizona Republicans held firm. He was frequently seen in news photos with Peg, who, old enough to be the mother of everyone else on it, probably wouldn’t have made hotjockwags.com's Top 40.
Being a Major League Baseball team’s clubhouse attendant can be as lucrative as as demeaning. A guy could make $500 in tips on a night the team won and the highest-paid players did well, but his duties include collecting the players’ soiled uniforms and soggy jock straps and socks after the game, and keeping the post-game buffet table tidy..Returning from the road trip, a few of the Snakes noticed a new guy for the job, Salazar, though only a couple of the Dominican players bothered to learn his name. He looked to be in his mid-50s, with a round belly and a significantly receded hairline that a little round island of hair in the middle seemed intent on defying. He seemed shy and conscientious, and didn’t ask for autographs or try to become any of the players’ bestie, as a lot of clubhouse attendants did.
On the night Junior won his 14th game of the season, it looked as though something had gotten into Salazar. He picked up no soggy jockstraps, wiped up none of the spillage on the buffet table, and inserted himself right into the small mob of reporters crowded around Junior in front of his locker, dutifully recording his fervently banal expressions of bogus humility about having passed Roig among the league’s top winners. Junior noticed that Salazar had stolen the reporters’ attention, and said, “Don’t you have some uniforms to collect for the laundry or something, José?”
“My name isn’t José, boss,” Salazar said, with a Mexican cadence and lilt. “I am Salazar.”
The reporters exchanged looks of amused confusion. “What can I help you with?” Junior snickered.
“Your novia, boss — your girlfriend — is very beautiful. I would like to introduce her to my son Rudolfo. He is a mechanic, BMW-certified. He has his own garage in Mesa. I am sure your girlfriend will like him, boss. He is not rich, of course, but is guapo — good-looking — and kind. We are very proud of him.”
“Tell you what,” Junior said, playing to the reporters, hoping for their amusement. “I’ve got the Ferrari, and Ana looks really good in it, but if I get a BMW, I’ll have somebody take it over to your boy’s garage to change the oil.”
Everyone except Salazar chuckled.
One of the reporters asked Junior what pitch he’d thrown a particular batter in the seventh inning, when the Pirates had the bases loaded with one out. But Salazar wasn’t having it. “I think you don’t understand, boss,” he told Junior. “I don’t think you deserve a young lady as lovely as Ana. I think you are an arrogant hypocrite and bully, boss — a pendejo. An asshole, if these gentlemen will forgive my saying so.”
One of the reporters guffawed in delight, which by no means delighted Junior. The clubhouse had fallen silent, as the players realized something of interesting was happening in Junior’s corner. “Listen, José,” Junior snarled, “if you want to have any teeth left to eat your fucking refried beans with, you’ll get far away from me as fast as your stumpy little beaner legs’ll carry you.”
The only sound in the clubhouse was the faint music coming out of the earbuds the few players not already invested in the confrontation now removed. “I urge you to think this over, boss. You are going to embarrass yourself,” Salazar said, not moving an inch.
The reporters marveled, “Ooh!” in virtual unison, and stepped back to allow Junior a clear path to his unlikely antagonist.
“Have it your way, José,” Junior said. He pretended to be turning away, but then whirled back around and threw a haymaker at Salazar, who ducked it. He threw another punch, with the same result, and then a third punch, identically unsuccessful. Salazar’s neat little jab broke his nose, with an awful sploshing sound. Junior withdrew the hand he’d held up to his nose, saw it was covered with blood, and whimpered, “You motherfucker!” Salazar, crouched slightly in a boxer’s stance.
“I’m going to fucking delete you, motherfucker!” Junior said, with all the vehemence in the world. But there could be no mistaking that the fight was finished now as the reporters, not one of whom Junior hadn’t intimidated or humiliated at one point or another, extended their cell phones, with voice-recording apps activated, toward the unlikely giant-killer, wanting to know who he was.
Salazar winked at one of them. “I am the Lord, thy God.”
The winked-at reporter was duly amused. “Hey, dude, the sweetness of that right jab of yours suggests you’ve done some boxing in your time, but let’s not get carried away, huh?” The other reporters chuckled. Salazar chuckled right along with them. His eyes twinkled with mischief as he made his outrageous, hilarious claim again.
*
The former automobile dealer Dan Buxton was elected to the United States Senate by a margin large enough to get himself immediately anointed a future presidential candidate. His advisors insisted that he keep his eye on that very prize, and remain married to the dreadful Peg, freeing Ana to go out with Rudolfo Salazar. After two dates, the first one blind, they decided that they’d probably make much better friends than a romantic pair.
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