Ofelia Ch. 01 Pt. 04-06

Ofelia smiled and waved back, "Good morneeeen." she said, with her sweet, bubbly accent.

"Busy as usual, huh?" Daniel said, coming up beside her. He folded the clipboard under his left arm, leaving his right arm free.

Ofelia shouted back, "Yeah! Workeeen hard, not hardly workeeen!" and laughed as if she had invented the joke, even though she said the same thing every day.

"That a girl!" Daniel shouted out, and started off, but not before giving Ofelia a playful swat on her taut little behind.

Ofelia smiled and waved at Daniel as he went back to his business. A few minutes later Beatriz Garcia came waddling over from her machine next to Ofelia's. She was a very heavy-set woman from Chile, around fifty or so.

She wagged her finger at Ofelia, "You tell that man to stop doing that every time he sees you, or I'll do it!"

Ofelia snickered, "Oh man, it doesn't bother me, Beatriz. It's just like, like a friendship thing."

Beatriz shook her head and rolled her eyes, "Dios mio, nina. Are you stupid or what?"

"Hey!"

"Hey nothing. He's a jerk! Tell him to stop touching you like that or I will! He could lose his job over something like that, and he knows it, hija."

When Beatriz went back to her machine she scowled at Ofelia and continued to do so for the next twenty minutes. Ofelia thought to herself that the old lady was just jealous that no one would pat her on the bottom.

Daniel had heard some things about his pretty little subordinate around the mill, things which didn't sound like they could possibly be true. For instance, he heard that Ofelia was engaged to be married, and yet he also heard that she had "fooled around" with a few of the guys at the mill, both before and well after she had announced her plans to get married. One of these fellows was a young machinist named Raul, or so Daniel had been told; and so Daniel sought out Raul on other business and managed to turn the conversation around to Ofelia. At the mention of her name, Raul's eyes narrowed.

"Ah, that one." he said. "Sure, she's pretty cute, but she plays games. I'd leave her alone if I were you."

"Like what kind of games?" Daniel asked him.

Raul grinned, then shrugged dismissively, "She's just a cock-teaser, that's all. I saw her one night at a dance, you know, those ones for latinos that they hold once in a while at the skating rink or the High School?"

"Yeah, I've heard of them."

"Well, this was after she was already engaged, but she was known to go to these dances without her fiance, I guess because he works nights, or whatever. She was all dolled up. She looked hot. I danced with her and stuff, 'cos we knew each other from work, but not all that well, just to say hi and bye. Anyways, I ended up taking her for a drive and we sat for a while. She let me kiss her and everything. Well, not everything, but just about everything. But when it came to taking things a step further, she said she wouldn't cheat on her fiance. I told her she already did cheat on him, but she didn't see it that way at all. I think she's kind of crazy, if you really want to know."

Later in the day Daniel had the chance to talk to another employee who worked at the mill who had pretty much the same tale to tell as Raul; except in this case, the man was in his early fifties and was married to a cousin of Ofelia's. This older man wouldn't give out any details but apparently what had happened between him and Ofelia happened over a period of several weeks. She hadn't been engaged at the time but was definitely going "steady" with her current fiance, and a good deal of what went on occurred virtually right under her fiance's nose.

"I think he likes it." this individual told Daniel, "He likes to see a man coming on to his girl, even getting somewhere with his girl. And Ofelia likes to give him what he wants. But she don't do it because it's what he wants, she does it because she likes it. See what I mean? The perfect couple, right? Thing is, they both think their shit don't stink, so they won't even be honest with themselves about it."

Daniel found all of this intriguing. The last thing the man said was not terribly surprising, since he had seen the way Ofelia dressed:

"Let me tell you one sure thing about Ofelia. That little girl is an exhibitionist if there ever was one. She's been that way ever since she was a kid."