He’d been thinking of the boy. Vicente Jesús. The boy that might be his. But he would never be his, that boy he was already in love with. And anyway, boys weren’t belongings—boys weren’t something you owned. He remembered the harshest words Grace had spoken against his wife. “She thinks she owns you. Tell her you’re not a car or a pair of jeans.” Boys and girls and men and women and husbands and wives and sons and daughters, they weren’t something you owned.
He drove through the streets of downtown, through the streets of Segundo Barrio, catching glimpses of a mural here and there. He loved this part of the city. He headed south on Campbell, then headed down the César Chávez Border Freeway. Grace would hate the fact that he was driving around and thinking about things. “Don’t think and drive. You’re going to die in an accident—and all because you were thinking about something. What if you kill someone? What will you do then?” Grace was great at worst-case scenarios.
Grace, I want to be a father. You disapprove. I can tell. You disapprove of so many things, Grace. She was always there, in his head. And Grace, you’re wrong about Liz.
He stopped at a gas station. He felt the slap of the hot air as he stepped out of his truck. This is the kind of light that makes people sad and tired. That’s what the old priest had said, the one that used to come over for dinner when Sam was alive. The priest was long dead, but there was something of his death in the punishing light of the afternoon.
On certain days, the sun was in no mood for mercy.