1. Plastic surgeons who say procedures will ‘sting a little’ or suggest ‘some slight discomfort’ will occur. The kind of ‘sting’ and ‘slight discomfort’ he’s going to feel when I boil his head in a vat of hot oil
2. Nosy medical receptionists
3. Paco and his three amigos for their constant eating of my Pop Tarts, laughing at unfunny TV shows and shitting in the upstairs toilet. The smell sticks to the walls.
4. That blood pressure bitch nurse who squeezes my upper arm. Never an accurate reading, always has to try again. Sadist.
5. People who do that cling film challenge thing to their dogs

As time went on, with the help of painkillers, I ventured downstairs more, usually when Paco and the Chipmunks had left. I’d go out to see my flowers, water and deadhead them and stroke the leaves. Or I’d sit beside the pool listening to my radio, chucking monkey nuts at the rock squirrels who’d snuck in beneath the fencing. It brought me back to myself, a little bit more, each passing day. The smells of chlorine, lavender, the pozole cooking on the stove or Tenoch’s Deep Heat on his knees became the scents of my life.

Still just temporary scents though. I was still on the conveyor belt ride to Fuck Knows Whereville.

Paco was Tenoch’s eyes and ears on the cartel and, according to him, there were no more immediate threats to the Hacienda. So life became quite samey for a while. It gave me endless time to think. To wonder.

Though Paco was still deathly irritating – goading me and laughing at me and poking me playfully in eye-wateringly painful places whenever Tenoch was out of the room – sometimes, I could glean useful information from him, like what part Tenoch had played in the cartel before life at the Hacienda.

‘They called him El Mago. The magician. He could make things disappear.’ He sat at the kitchen island when I was mixing a carrot cake one morning, dipping into the bowl of crushed walnuts for the decoration.

‘Like what?’

‘What do you think, chica?’

‘So what was your business in the cartel?’

‘I was a lieutenant.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I was a bad guy. We were bad people. Psychopaths. Actually, we make psychopaths look like pussycats.’

He took the opportunity to stare at my pussy when he was saying that – he took most opportunities to stare at it, either as a threat or a promise. The only thing left for him to do was to grab it but maybe he wasn’t that much of a psychopath.

‘So what kind of things did you do?’ I said, taking a handful of crushed nuts myself and knocking them back.