Houston, We Have a Problema

by Gwendolyn Zepeda

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

A plastic Virgin Mary and a fortune teller are a girl's best friends in this laugh-out-loud novel about a superstitious young woman who doubts herself when it comes to finding love and living her life. Jessica Luna is your typical 26 year old: she has man trouble, mom trouble, and not a clue what to do with her life (though everyone else in her family seems to have plenty of suggestions!) After a lifetime of being babied by her family, Jess is incapable of trusting herself to make the right choices. So instead, she bases all of her life decisions on signs. She looks to everything for guidance, from the direction her rearview-mirror-Virgin-de-Guadalupe sways to whatever Madame Hortensia, her psychic, sees in the cards. When her sort-of boyfriend Guillermo, a gifted unmotivated artist, disappoints her again, Jessica thinks it's time to call it quits. Just to be sure, she checks in with Madame Hortensia who confirms that yes, it is time for a change. (Who knew $20 could buy so much security!) Right on cue, Jess meets Jonathan; he's the complete opposite of Guillermo--of all Jess's boyfriends, in fact. He's successful, has a stable job....and is white. Jess isn't sure if Jonathan is really the change Madame Hortensia saw. Sure he gives great career advice, but is he advising her on a career she actually wants? And yes he's all about commitment, but is it Jess or her mother who really wants marriage? Jess runs back to Madame Hortensia for advice, but even she is out of answers. Now there's only one thing that's certain: no one--not her mother, her sister, her boyfriend or her psychic--can tell her what to do. For better or for worse, Jess will have to take the plunge and make her own decisions if she wants to have any future at all.

Release date: December 15, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 404

Sample

1

Dreaming of snakes means someone will die.

Dreaming of death means someone will get married.

Jessica Luna was dreaming of a wedding when the ringing phone woke her up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, chiquitita.”

She had snatched her cell from the nightstand automatically. Now she rolled and squinted at her glowing alarm clock: 1:17 a.m.

“Guillermo? What happened?” she whispered.

“Nothing, chiquitita.”

Was it still Wednesday? Jessica rolled onto her pillow. Through the window, between the gauzy lavender curtains that looked gray in the dark, the full moon peeked down at her. Her eyes adjusted to the moonlight and ran over the familiar objects in her bedroom — her tall white dresser; the ironing board stacked with clean laundry; the pictures on the wall; her walnut vanity covered with bottles and boxes and lucky cat figurines. She sighed.

She hated when Guillermo called in the middle of a weeknight. She should hang up on him. She would hang up. “Why are you calling so late?” she said instead.

“I wanted to hear your voice, corazón.”

“Okay, well, you’re hearing it. What do you want?” He had never called her corazón before.

“Are you mad at me, chiquitita? Don’t be. I can’t help the crazy things I do. I’m just a crazy mojado, right? Is that what you think of me?” As always, he sounded completely unhurried. And his accent — that slow, relaxed drawl — wasn’t the nasal singsong of the construction workers that yelled silly things at her on downtown streets. No, Guillermo’s voice came from someplace deeper, down around the mountains and plains west of Monterrey, where he’d been born. He sounded like a stream over smooth rocks. Like syrup on hot pancakes. Like warm fingers down her back.

“No, I don’t think you’re a crazy mojado.” She laid her head back on the pillow, untangling the phone from her hair and cradling it to her ear. Through the open bedroom door, she heard the refrigerator compressor start its soothing murmur. She felt her heart ease from middle-of-the-night panic down to listening-to-Guillermo calm.

“Soy loco, chiquitita. Loco para ti. Listen. I’ve been thinking. You and me, chiquitita . . . we should run away to Washington.”

“To Washington?” she said, like a kindergartner repeating after her teacher.

“Yes. Have you ever seen Washington in the summer, corazón? It’s beautiful. We should go there to pick cherries. You and me. Leave all those men who are too stupid to appreciate you and go away with me.”

“Mm . . . I don’t —”

“We’ll live in a cabin and have all the cherries we can eat. I’ll paint the cherry trees. You can bake a hundred pies. We’ll make love.”

She let herself imagine it for a moment.

“We’ll make love and you’ll have my babies. Strong sons to help with the work. Beautiful daughters to help cook the food. They’ll be strong, like you, with big feet.”

“Hey —”

“Big, beautiful feet. We’ll name them Jennifer, Heather, Amber, Taylor . . . Madison, Dylan, South Dakota . . .”

She knew he was just being silly. But it was a nice kind of silly, coming from him. “Have you painted a portrait of me yet?” she asked suddenly, remembering the last conversation they’d had the week before.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I’m working on it now. It’s a painting of a bottle that is shaped just like you are, on the hips.”

Before she could protest, he went on. “Something else made me think of you today, chiquitita. A surprise I think you will like. Hunter had kittens.”

“What? I thought Hunter was a boy.”

“Yes. You and I both thought the same thing. But Hunter had a secret. Era una mujer,” he said.

“So are you going to change her name now? To South Dakota, maybe?” she murmured drowsily.

“No, chiquitita. I could change her name, but it wouldn’t matter. She’s still a Hunter, and she probably has a secret name that we’ll never know.”

No matter how outrageous his words were, his voice always made her feel the same. She could probably keep warm on the cherry farm with his voice alone. “How many kittens did she have?”

“Just enough, chiquitita, to eat me out of my house and my home. Come to see them.”

Sometimes she suspected Guillermo was just pretending that he couldn’t speak or understand English so well. She couldn’t help but think that this was a little game he played so that he’d have one more excuse for not doing what she expected him to do. For instance, he could pretend not to understand when she said, “Call me tomorrow,” or hinted that she would love to go out to a new restaurant for dinner instead of eating tacos at his place, as good as his tacos were. And she was convinced that he didn’t call regularly because he wasn’t ever clear on if and when he should. He simply said, “We’ll talk soon, chiquitita.” She could have made a list of things he said or didn’t say, and what he had “misunderstood,” but then she’d be denying that his accent turned her on.

She sighed. “Okay. I’ll visit you and the kittens. When?”

“Right now,” he said.

“Guillermo, you know I can’t come right now. I have to work tomorrow.”

“Come tomorrow, then.”

Jessica concentrated. The next day was Friday, she figured out.

The thing was, Guillermo lived out in the boondocks, and there was no such thing as just dropping by for a visit. Once she was there, the minutes would time-warp into hours, and the next thing she knew, she’d be forced to spend the night. Plus, the weekend before, she’d wanted to come over, but he’d been unavailable. His phone had been turned off — whether because he was ignoring her or because he’d forgotten to pay the bill again, she’d never found out. “I don’t know, Guillermo. I’m really busy.” If he really wanted her to come over, she decided, he’d have to try harder.

“Please, chiquitita. I miss seeing your beautiful face. I’ll cook for you. Stop being mad at me and come over. I promise to make you happy again.”

Jessica sighed. It was frustrating, the way he expected her to just forgive and forget, over and over again. This time she was mad at him because two weeks before, she’d invited him to accompany her to her friend Marisol’s birthday party. He’d promised to meet her there. Then, as so often happened, he’d failed to show up. A week after that, he’d left her an airy voice-mail apology, with some lame excuse about his truck breaking down. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this sort of thing, either. It was just the last in a long series that she’d put up with it.

She knew what he had in mind as far as making her happy, if she were to go over to his place. And it wasn’t cherries or kittens.

“Okay . . . ,” she told him, feeling equal parts resignation, shame, and wicked excitement. “Maybe.”

2

Hello, Jessica? Are you awake, girl?”

“What? I’m sorry, Rochelle. What did you say?” Jessica dropped the pencil she’d been idly twisting through the ends of her hair. It fell onto a pile of papers and big blue files on her desk. She’d spaced out and wasn’t sure if it was a result of a restless night after Guillermo’s call or because her insurance job was far from stimulating. She turned in her rickety orange tweed office chair to give her co-worker full attention.

“I said it’s almost lunchtime. Are you going out or staying in?” At a faux wood desk exactly matching Jessica’s, Rochelle stretched her purple-polyester-clad legs and idly looked over the instant soup packets in her desk drawer.

Jessica glanced to the corner of their little room, at Mr. Cochran’s dusty grandfather clock. It had finally hobbled around to noon. “I’m going out. Will y’all be okay without me?”

“Sure we will, honey.”

Jessica balanced the last file of the morning on her out-box, then picked up her ancient, blocky phone and dialed the company’s most popular three-digit extension.

“Tech Support,” said the man at the other end.

“Hey, sexy,” she whispered. “We still on for lunch?”

“Of course.”

“Meet me at the elevator in two minutes.”

She hung up and reshouldered her bag and violet mockcroc laptop case, leaving her monitor to lapse into its Hello Kitty screen saver. “I’m going to lunch, you guys. See you in an hour.”

Across the room, Olga looked up from her game of online bingo, a half-eaten SpeedSlim bar at her lips. “Already? Gosh. The morning went by so fast. Who are you going to lunch with today, Jessica?”

“See y’all! Have fun!” Jessica was out the door.

At the elevators, Xavier Flores stood waiting in his uniform of blue button-down, slightly clashing striped tie, and black Dockers and wearing his unstylish wire-framed glasses. He stood out among the executives littering the hall, given that he was one of the few men at McCormick who didn’t have gray hair. He was also among the very few people in the company who were under thirty. He would have been really cute if he ever took Jessica’s advice on his clothing, which she offered him all the time for the sake of their friendship. But, as he’d explained more than once, his job wasn’t worth being fashionable for. So she settled for teasing him instead.

“Nice outfit,” she whispered to her friend. “You look like my old chemistry teacher.”

“And you,” he whispered back, “look like you busted out of Catholic school.”

She looked down at her sedate skirt and pastel twin set and laughed. He was wrong, of course. Catholic school students didn’t wear awesome ankle-strap heels like hers.

The elevator bell rang and they stepped into the tiny mirrored chamber, where one of the younger partner-wannabes was already waiting.

“Hey, X-Man,” he said. Xavier nodded in return. Jessica saw the freckle-faced broker’s reflection as he looked her up and down from behind and then gave Xavier a sly thumbs-up. Xavier ignored him.

“We can’t take too long this time,” he told Jessica quietly. “I told Dunson I’d have the new network up and running today.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll eat fast.”

Once they were safe in Xavier’s Subaru, Jessica brought up the subject that had been on her mind for two days. “Guess who wants to see me tonight.”

“The salesmen at Macy’s?” he guessed, eyes on the road.

“No. Well, yeah, probably, but guess who else.”

“Hopefully not What’s-his-name. The guy you’re supposed to be finished with. What’d he do, show up with a dozen roses?”

“Well . . . ,” Jessica said. “Not exactly.” Not unless you could count the handful of wildflowers he’d left at her apartment door the week before, while she’d been at work. Sometimes she regretted ever having told Xavier about Guillermo. It was hard to explain her attraction to Guillermo without going into cheesy — or X-rated — details.

Xavier made a gesture that invited her to come out with the rest of the story.

“Look, it doesn’t matter how it happened. The point is, he called to ask me out, and I can tell that he’s learned his lesson.”

“Oh yeah? What lesson is that?” His expression was teasingly skeptical.

“That I’m the most awesome woman he’s ever met, and that he’d be stupid to let me go.”

Xavier shrugged. “Oh, okay. Well, there you go, then.”

Jessica had expected a little more resistance. She’d already had her argument prepared, in fact. No use wasting it.

“Like you can talk, Xavier. You’ve been trying to get back with Cynthia this whole time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t even. I saw you at her desk last week.”

Cynthia was Xavier’s ex-girlfriend, who worked on the forty-fourth floor, where they kept the prettiest, most useless assistants for the biggest big shots at McCormick. Jessica had gone upstairs to pick up a file and seen Xavier hovering over her desk like a fly. Although he’d dated her for only two months and had been broken up with her for three, Jessica could tell by Xavier’s perplexed face right now that her suspicions were correct. He wasn’t over Cynthia yet.

Instead of replying, he got out of his car and walked around to her side to open her door. They were at Taqueria Aztlán, a hole-in-the-wall where they could talk as loud as they wanted about their corporate colleagues and everything else.

They sat at their usual table and ordered their usual chicken quesadillas. A handful of chips with salsa later, Jessica was ready to pick up where they’d left off. “So tell me. Did you beg Cynthia to take you back?”

Xavier sighed, but patiently. “Jess, I was at her desk giving her tech support. You know — that thing they pay me to do here?”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days? Did you install some hardware?”

“No. I was checking her system for a virus.”

“Can’t you do that from downstairs?” Jessica asked, breaking a chip neatly in two.

“Normally, yes. But she said she had a problem that I had to come see.”

“I bet she did. And did you see it?”

“It was nothing. She’d unplugged her monitor by accident.”

Jessica raised her eyebrow. “Xavier, nobody unplugs their monitor by accident. She just wanted you to go up there. What did she say? Do you think she’s trying to get you back?”

He shook his head as he finished off the last of the red salsa. “Seriously? I think she really is that technologically challenged.”

Like a genie, the waitress showed up with their chicken quesadillas. Like a devil, Jessica found herself wanting to press further into Xavier’s personal business. She peered at his face over her iced-tea glass. “If Cynthia did want to get back together, would you?”

“No. I’ve learned my lesson. No more pathetic office romance for me.”

Jessica remembered when he’d first broken up with Cynthia and spent weeks avoiding her floor altogether. That was when he and Jessica had first started going to lunch on a regular basis, instead of just striking up conversations about coding whenever they met in the break room.

Jessica knew better than anybody how reluctant Xavier would be to hook up with Cynthia again, or with anyone else at McCormick. However, Cynthia was one of those evil little doll women, with long, long hair and flowery size four dresses. The kind who seemed stupid but were extremely clever when it came to wrapping men around their petite little fingers. Jessica worried about Xavier, because even though he was smart, he was also too nice for his own good. He was always opening doors for women, even if they didn’t appreciate it. He was always incredibly polite and charming with all the secretaries at McCormick, even when they drove him crazy with their ridiculous tech support demands. He was the kind of guy who obviously loved his mother, and therefore he always treated women like gold — even when they didn’t necessarily deserve it. Jessica had the feeling that if Cynthia wanted him back, Xavier might have a hard time saying no.

Not like she could call his kettle black, though. Not with everything she’d been putting up with from Guillermo. All the times he’d completely flaked on their dates . . . All the times he’d promised to take her somewhere exciting but then failed to follow through.

Suddenly, as she sat there looking at her sad friend Xavier, the sun streamed through the window and hit her in the head, making her think clearly.

She wasn’t going to see Guillermo tonight. Deep in her heart, she knew it’d just be more of the same. He’d act as though he cared about her. They’d have sex. She’d go home and he wouldn’t call. Or he’d flake on their next date and give her some lame excuse. It was time to move on. It was time to change the subject, too, Jessica decided.

“So, what’s been going on with you outside McCormick and Cynthia?” she asked.

“Same old nothing. I got a new contract, setting up a system for a drywall company. I’ll probably do the whole thing over the weekend.”

Being burned by workplace love wasn’t the only thing Jessica and Xavier had in common, it turned out. They both did freelance computer work on the side, too.

“Oh, well, that’s good. Finish it early so you can party with the hotties, right?”

He ignored her obvious baiting. “Yeah, right. More like go to my parents’ and help my dad clean his gutters.”

Jessica loved to tease Xavier about the fact that he almost never went out. Secretly, she admired the way that he wasn’t interested in the bar and meat market scenes. Although her clubbing definitely made for some fun and wild moments, Jessica had to admit that it got old after a while. Clearly, Xavier was secure enough to do his own thing. She wished she could be more like him sometimes and be happy with quiet weekends.

When they’d finished eating, Jessica cleared a space near the quesadillas. “Here. Let me show you what I’ve been working on.” As she pushed her own plate over, a hidden jalapeño fell off of it. “Oh, there was one more. Did you want it?”

“Now that it fell on the table? No thanks,” he said, polite as ever.

Jessica picked up the pepper before any germs could stick and handed it across the table to him. “No, it’s still good. Here. Eat it.”

“Jess, I don’t want it.”

“You must have, or it wouldn’t have fallen off the plate. C’mon. You have to eat it now, or you’ll get a fever blister.”

Xavier laughed as he took the jalapeño from her hand and dropped it onto his napkin. “Where do you come up with these crazy superstitions?”

“What? Didn’t your mom ever tell you that? About the food cravings and the fever blisters?”

“No. She was more into spilled salt and holy water. Come on. Show me what you wanted to show me.”

“All right. Here it is.”

Jessica reached under the table and unzipped her laptop case to show him her latest web site.

Later that afternoon, back down the beige halls at her beige desk, Jessica meditated on her theory that four to five p.m. was the longest hour of the day. Especially on a Friday. The longest of her life, it felt like, today. She’d done all the work she could stand and was now checking the clock every five minutes.

Although it wasn’t as though she had a reason to be in a hurry. She wasn’t going anywhere. Was she?

If she saw Guillermo again, it was true that they’d repeat their same old pattern. But now she had to wonder, what was so bad about that? Whether he called her afterward or not, she’d still be doing the same things in the meantime: Working. Shopping. Going out dancing with Toby. Working some more. Why not switch things up a bit and have a little fun, even if the price was a little drama?

Her body sank lower in the antique office chair, trying to find some comfort. Her head, however, floated thirty miles away. Far, far away from McCormick, to a little house in a field on the edge of town where everything still grew wild. And to the person who lived in that house, waiting in its bedroom, lying across the bed.

Naked.

She shook her head and forced herself to focus on the wind damage spreadsheet on her desk. She had to stop thinking about Guillermo. She had already decided, once and for all, that she wasn’t going to see him again.

Hadn’t she?

Toni Braxton sang mournfully from Rochelle’s radio, as if in empathy.

Why had Guillermo called? Why did he always have to call just when she was almost totally ready to give him up?

Unfortunately, Madame Hortensia hadn’t been there during his phone call to help her decide what to do. Jessica always sought her advice because Madame Hortensia took the ways of the universe into consideration and made Jessica aware of signs she was sure she’d miss otherwise. But now Jessica had to decide on her own.

She sighed and stared at the Hello Kitty on her screen saver.

Give me a sign. Should I go to Guillermo’s tonight, or should I forget about him and move on?

Hello Kitty’s cherry print outfit morphed into Gothic black as Jessica waited, eyes closed. Behind her, the radio spat out a burst of static.

“Jessica,” called Fred from his office, “if a gentleman calls, tell him you won’t be going . . . that is, tell him that I won’t be going to the GlobeCo happy hour this evening, would you, please?”

Jessica closed her eyes and concentrated. Give me a sign. Should I go to Guillermo’s or stay home and work?

“Did you ladies read the news?” Rochelle said. “Another girl turned up missing the other night. Police said she was on the way to see her boyfriend. She should have been going to church instead.”

Just one sign! thought Jessica as loudly as she could. Please!

“Yes!” squealed Olga.

Jessica opened her eyes. “What happened?”

“Oh, nothing. I just won this solitaire game, finally. It took me forever to figure it out.”

Jessica exhaled the breath she’d been holding into the last sigh of the day. She couldn’t deny it, could she? The answer was clear.

3

She hadn’t always been so superstitious. No, back when she was young, Jessica had no use for the superstitions people would share with her. When her mother had offered to light candles for her college finals, Jessica had waved her away. When her friend Toby’s mother had warned her against wearing so much unlucky black, Jessica had scoffed. When her friend Marisol’s parents told her about the chupacabra footprints they found at their ranch back in Durango, Jessica had laughed.

Not anymore. Now she knew better. There were things in this world that went unseen. Things that couldn’t be explained. She knew now that it was safest to protect herself, with traditional knowledge and sometimes a little salt over the shoulder. And a Virgin Mary overlooking it all.

Three years ago, Jessica had learned this the hard way.

It was about a year after she’d graduated from the University of Houston with her BA in art history. She’d gotten a job in a run-down neighborhood just east of downtown, at the Centro de Artes Culturales (formerly the Centro de Arte Cultural de Aztlán, until Jessica had pointed out that the acronym, CACA, didn’t spell what they wanted to represent). As curator for the Centro’s new gallery, it was her job to discover and coordinate exhibitions for local Latino artists. The pay wasn’t much — barely more than minimum wage, actually — but Jessica had felt incredibly lucky to land such an opportunity at her age.

As it turned out, her job description had included a little more than enjoying art. She was also expected to serve as accountant, receptionist, and personal chauffeur to artists-in-residence while she planned, organized, publicized, and cleaned up after all the exhibits, all on her own. The hours were insane, and on top of it all, no one gave her credit for the work she did.

At first, she didn’t mind. She was servicing her community, wasn’t she? Also, she was dating Robert Fernandez, one of the Centro’s most successful artists. No matter how much work they gave her, she always managed to find time to steal away with him in one of the supply closets or under the fire escape stairs. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t help herself. There was something about Robert that made her want to throw caution to the wind. He’d been her first. In retrospect, she now realized that he hadn’t been all that. He hadn’t even been a very good artist. But still . . . To this day, the smell of turpentine turned her on.

One morning, after she’d been at the Centro for a year and sleeping with Robert for about six months, Jessica had gotten annoyed with the little plastic Virgin Mary hanging from her rearview mirror. It had been a gift from one of her aunts, and it kept swinging back and forth, hitting her windshield as she drove over potholes on the way to work. Fed up, she pulled over and took it down, feeling a little guilty but putting it away in the glove compartment all the same.

That turned out to be the mistake that led to the worst day of her life. With one careless action, she ended up bringing bad luck into every aspect of her life. First, at work, Jessica’s boss dropped a bomb on her.

“Jessica, I can’t afford to keep you here anymore. Not unless you can work on these grant numbers and make a way for us to get more money.” She was shocked. The timing of his news couldn’t have been worse.

Jessica was preparing for the unveiling of Robert’s newest mural that evening. On top of getting everything organized for the big night, she now had to think of ways to raise extra money, not just for her own salary, but for her community. For Latino art.

But all these concerns were shoved to the back burner when Robert’s other girlfriend — the one carrying his baby — showed up at the unveiling that night. Jessica was floored. She had never seen any hints of him leading a second life. Suddenly, she was one of those women on daytime TV that she criticized for being so oblivious. But there hadn’t been any clues, ever. She wanted to figure out how she could have been so blind and what the hell he’d been thinking. But she didn’t even get to hear his excuse, because his babymomma dragged him away by the hair before he could explain.

“Is this the skank you’ve been two-timing me with?” she’d screamed. “Oh, hell, no!”

As Jessica had stood there with tears oozing down her face, her boss had walked up and ordered her to clean up the vomit of a drunken gallery patron. When it rains, it pours. And Jessica was stuck without an umbrella. And soon to be without a job. She’d decided to take matters into her own hands.

She’d quit her job on the spot, then gone out with her friend Toby and gotten drunk.

“What in the world am I going to do?” she’d asked him and the club. “My life is ruined. I can’t believe I was so stupid about Robert. I’ve been humiliated in front of the art community, and now I don’t have a job. What am I supposed to do now?”

“I have an idea,” Toby had said, “but you have to promise not to laugh.”

“Do I look like I feel like laughing? Tell me.”

“You need to visit Madame Hortensia.”

Before that night, Jessica had believed that fortune-tellers were just con women who told sad housewives what they wanted to hear. After an hour with Madame Hortensia, though, Jessica had become a believer.

“Hello, m’ija,” she remembered the old woman saying the first time they’d met. “You look sad.”

Madame Hortensia had known things about Jessica that a stranger had no logical way of knowing: that she was tired of living with her parents; that she used to be Catholic but had stopped going to church soon after her quinceañera; that she had been unlucky with her career and in love.

That night, Madame Hortensia had made three eerily correct predictions.

One: “A life-changing opportunity will come to you from an unexpected source.”

Two: “Someone important to you will help you get over a bad relationship.”

Three: “Another tall, dark artist or musician will have an impact on your future.”

The first thing Jessica did after leaving Madame Hortensia’s was to dig the Virgin Mary out of her glove compartment and hang it back on the mirror, where it be. . .