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And so did Frida the Fiesta.
    Seriously, it was a terrible car. The vinyl seats were ripped and the transmission only had three working gears out of five. Carlos had stripped out the other two and, as he shifted from first to third to fourth, it wasn’t hard to see how he’d done it. Still, we weren’t walking and we weren’t going far.
    I live a half a mile from Ghetto Ron’s, so named because it used to be the absolute worst store in the Ron’s supermarket chain in the absolute worst neighborhood. Now the neighborhood was up-and-coming and the store had been completely redone, so it was the nicest Ron’s you could find. But the name stuck. It would always be Ghetto Ron’s.
    “Dog came over,” I said, as Carlos ground his way into first and pulled away from the curb.
    “Dios mio, Lynette, did you fuck him?”
    “No, I kissed him.”
    “Well, that must have been a terrible let down.”
    “That’s the thing, it wasn’t.”
    “Oh no, that’s not good. The lips are the window to the soul.”
    “No, Carlotta. The eyes are the window to the soul.”
    “Only for people who don’t like to kiss.”
    “He’s taking me to dinner tomorrow night.”
    Carlos gasped. “He wants to be your boyfriend.”
    “Well, I mean, I think he wants to get to know me. That doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to be my boyfriend.”
    “He wants to talk to you. You don’t have to talk to people to fuck them. Trust me, I know. Everybody wants to fuck me, but nobody wants to talk to me. He wants more from you. You wait and see.”
    I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Did I want more? Did I want him to want more? I was pretty sure I was just lusting. I wanted to have sex with him again, and as soon as I did I’d want him to go away. Maybe.
    “So Carlotta, when did you know you were in love with Donald?” I asked. Normally, I avoided talking about Carlos’ ex-boyfriend since it could cause a nasty tantrum, but I really wanted to know the answer.
    “I knew I loved him the minute he put his penis into my mouth. And then…I knew I didn’t love him the minute he put his penis into Roger Tyler’s mouth.”
    The breakup with Donald had been epic, lasting longer than the relationship. “That’s not what you said before. You said it wasn’t the sex that bothered you, it was the lying.”
    “He didn’t call me and tell me he was going to have sex with Roger Tyler before he did. It was a lie of commission.”
    As we pulled into the grocery store’s parking lot, I tried not to imagine what Carlos might have been like if Donald had actually called to ask permission to fuck Roger Tyler. I doubted it would have a reasonable conversation.
    We’d barely been inside the store for five minutes when Carlos said, “You really need to learn to cook. Everything you eat is processed.”
    I glanced over at his cart and said, “You bought half the same things I did.”
    “I can cook though. I buy crappy food because I’m depressed and hate my life. It’s entirely different.”
    “I could be depressed,” I said, though I knew perfectly well I wasn’t.
    “No, you—wait, you could be. You’re about to lose your job. That’s depressing.”
    “Chuckie Cooper is not going to get me fired. Oh look. Canned chili is on sale.” Carlos rolled his eyes. I explained, “You get shredded cheese, sour cream and corn tortillas and it’s just like you’ve cooked.”
    “Without the cooking part.”
    “If it tastes good, I say eat it.”
    “Lynette, how are you ever going to get a man if you can’t cook?” Carlos asked at the top of his lungs. A middle-aged woman and her elderly mother looked at the ceiling pretending we weren’t there, and then suddenly turned down the household cleaners aisle.
    I lowered my voice and said to Carlos, “I have plenty of other charms. I’m just not going to shout about them at the grocery store.”
    “Lynette, when you whisper you’re still shouting. You just have that kind of personality.” Carlos