She tapped me a few times on the knee once she got back on the highway, unable to stop smiling and talking.

“Aren’t you happy for me? Don’t you just love his paintings? Did you see how many he had? It was absolutely amazing for me to see all that undiscovered talent in one room. A virgin painter. Untouched. Untapped. Unexploited. A natural genius and he does a lot of it in his head. I mean, he sees something and goes home and paints it. Amazing. Absofuckinglutely amazing!”

She was fascinating me. Her enthusiasm was contagious.

“What?” she said, glancing at me.  “What? What are you thinking?”

“You’re absofuckinglutely amazing.”

“Okay! Can you relate? Did you ever discover a place that was off the beaten path, that you wrote about in your travel section and suddenly everyone wanted to go there?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, when you do, you’ll know how I feel right now. People will want to buy his paintings. We’ll get him a green card, he and his little brother and we’ll bring them to the states, set them up in a decent apartment, yes and we’ll……..”

She went on and on, all the way to our hotel where she parked and looked over at me as she took in a deep breath.  Then she tilted her head, reached over and turned my head with her hand on my chin, her smile fading. “What’s wrong sweetie? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, really, what’s wrong?”

“I guess that smell got to me.“

“What smell?”

“In that shack. Didn’t that bother you?”

“No, I love the smell of oil paint.”

I shook my head and laughed softly. “There was more than oil paint in there. It was more like the city dump.”

“I guess I was more interested in seeing than smelling.” She opened the door on her side but looked back at me over her shoulder. “Hey,” she added with a wink. “Help me carry the paintings up to our room and then we can take a warm shower together. I’ll help you get those terrible smells out of your head. I’ll wash them all away with a little bit of soap and a lot of lovin’. Okay?”

I smiled my approval with a nod. “You sure know how to make a girl feel better.”

We ran into Alli and April in the lobby and after explaining the paintings, we reminded them to meet us in the bar at six p.m. for cocktails. Patty was also going to be there so we looked forward to getting to know Tijuana at night from an insider’s point of view.