Unfortunately the little eye exchange between Domingo and Sofia did not go unnoticed by the gossip comadre who raised an eyebrow about it. Being a bean farmer she muttered an old dicho meant for Domingo under her breath, “Semos como los frijoles, unos pa’ ’riba y otros pa’ ’bajo …” We are like beans boiling, some are going up and some are going down.

Both Domingo and Sofia heard it clearly and gave her a deserved dirty look, so the comadre decided to say no more and got up to fill her coffee with a loud sigh, letting Domingo know by that, that for her part she only wished he would get out of the kitchen so they could go on making their campaign plans.

But Domingo, who usually wasn’t of the temperament to get into tangles with neighbors, especially not his women neighbors, and who almost always tried to make light of a tense scene by coming up with a joke, at this moment did not find nothing funny with what was going on. His wife was obviously experiencing some psychological breakdown because of all the pressure she’d been under: Esperanza missing in Saudi Arabia, probably kidnapped or worse, the accounts at the butcher shop not adding up and the business going down, one thing or another needing repair, La Loca spending more and more time wandering down by the ditch so that he had to check in on her in the evenings since she sometimes spent the whole night outside …

So, from someplace very deep inside him the idea of this metiche noseybody comadre coming around to brainwash his wife was more than he could take. Maybe it wasn’t the woman’s idea for Sofia to run for mayor of Tome, nobody in their right mind would think to convince nobody of something like that. But here she was, egging Sofia on, probably with the idea of convincing Sofi to run Domingo out of the house! And then all of a sudden he said, “¡En boca cerrada no entra mosca!” In a closed mouth no fly goes in. Domingo blurted out this dicho in return, not looking at the comadre, but just kind of saying it, as she had uttered hers.

Of course, the metiche caught that it was intended for her and knew that in so many words she had been told to shut her trap. But why should she? she thought. La pobre Sofi needed someone to stick up for her now and then! Sofi’s metiche comadre stopped at the stove. Her eyes were wide and her mouth did not shut up as Domingo’s dicho suggested but on the contrary dropped wide open; and in fact, she looked as if she had just swallowed a fly.