Chapter One

I

He drives us through Culver City past glaring strip malls and empty storefronts, the sidewalks so bright they make me squint, and we catch a red light at the car wash on Overland where wetbacks stand in clusters, holding their rags and hoping for tips. They turn and glance in our direction, at my brother’s new Explorer, and I avert my eyes.

He takes us along Venice High down towards Abbot Kenny Street. On the threadbare lawn students sit with their backpacks and others lean into cars by the sidewalk and gather in groups by the fence. Hanging out. Next to it stands the apartment complex, with its phone number and orange FOR RENT banner furled across three windows. Little colored flags stick out of the lawn. I am sorry for the poor foreigners who are attracted to the nice building front and do not know what they are getting into. I lasted in Venice High a week until a black kid came running down the hallway, chased by some others onto a playground of bright, weeded concrete and was shot surrounded by a crowd of kids. He died the next day. The black girls were clustered and vicious and I avoided walking by them in the hallways and schoolyard. I’d spend whole breaks in the bathroom waiting for the sounds of feet scurrying into the classrooms to fade, and then I would come out into the empty hall and arrive late for class. I did not last long, but there are people I remember well and would not want to see again. Now, I duck low in Tomas’s new truck, but nobody from the school’s lawn looks in our direction. We are only a couple blocks from the Venice Hood, but also near Marina Del Rey, and you will find nice condos here among the older, weather-beaten bungalows with the peeling porches and the old black people who like to hang out on them. We get to South Santa Monica. Abbot Kenny Street’s New Age boutiques and artist’s stores look funky and bright with afternoon shoppers. At night here it is empty except for the black kids who hang out at the liquor store and the Lee Fan kick-boxing students who are not afraid of the black and Mexican gangs that come here to shoot each other and sometimes die.

Tomas hangs a left onto Westchester. The air here smells cool and salty. I catch blue glimpses of ocean between the buildings whose walls are wind-beaten; my brother turns in that direction and we pull into an alleyway between two apartments. It is narrow here, the walls above us chipped and faded by salt and wind, and the buildings stand on metal stilts above unsheltered asphalt crowded with nice cars.

Keep your eye out for his yellow Jeep, he says, not bothering to turn to me.

I sit in back, my fingers in Greta’s fur, because Tomas will not let me sit up front any longer. Greta can feel the nervousness in my hands. Beneath my feet lies the tire iron; I am to use it on Eddy Ho’s yellow Wrangler. I try to keep my trembling hands calm in her warm fur and concentrate on the cars we pass. They are parked close together, sometimes one behind another, so I have to strain my head to get an angle around the rear vehicle. Often, all I can make out is a glimpse, barely enough to let me know the color of its paint. Beside me, Greta breathes rapidly.

I try not to say anything, but feel sick. I open my window for air, but poke my head out so Tomas will think I am just getting a better view. Our mother thinks he has taken me to a movie. She did not ask me about it. She does not ask me about much anymore. Like always, it is best not to think about how she would feel if we got caught. The first time I went on one of these outings I shook real bad, but after the time we nearly got caught in Bel Air it hit me that she would have found out, and my stomach started twisting up even worse. Each time it gets sharper, and the last couple of times I vomited on the truck’s carpet. He got mad and ran a broken beer bottle across my skin. He made me pull off my shirt so he could do it on my chest where our mother would not see the damage he did to my nipple. The scabs are long and thin and hardened, and resemble the course of a dirty teardrop. I force myself not to pick at them. But each time Mom comes home or I start worrying we will get caught and she will find out, I get anxious and catch myself scratching at it through my shirt. When I undress at night flakes fall loose onto my white bedsheets.

Do we really have to do this? I finally say.

He hits the brake and slows. I jerk forward and steady myself and he turns to me. I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask me that, Junior.

I make a point of concentrating on the parked cars we drift past. My hand rests on Greta’s warm neck.

Sorry.

Man, I can’t believe you.

I said I’m sorry.

He shakes his head and speeds up again. At this rate you’re gonna still owe me when you’re an old man.

The cool air feels blustery in my face and hair. I’m just worried about how Mom would feel if we got caught, I say.

You thought about her feelings real hard when you took away Buster.

I told you I would steal her back for you.

You would steal her back.

Yeah.

He shakes his head.

I want to.

I would like to see that one, Junior.

Anyway, it isn’t like she was worth all that much, I say, then immediately regret my words.

He looks at me sharply and I face the window again. The apartments move by, some high and modern, though you also get glimpses of the sooty canals and weedy walkways that run between crooked old bungalows hippies lived in during the sixties.

I only meant that I’ve already stolen a lot for you.

He keeps staring coolly forward. We pass an old aqua-green apartment, and beneath its peeling pastel paint you can make out older, darker layers, and sometimes the worn surfaces of molding wood.

Junior, if you don’t stop talking like this I’m gonna wrap a piece of kite string around your neck and pull it tight.

I tighten my lips and pull Greta closer.

After I got back from Oregon, when I still jammed a chair under my doorknob to keep him out at night, he started brooding over how we could steal Buster back from the celebrity. But there was always a maid or gardener or pool man around the house. Plus, the celebrity is too famous for the cops to blow a burglary off. Tomas knows these neighborhoods, places like the Palisades, Beverly Hills, or Bel Air, because many of his dog-owner clients live there. He says most of them leave their side doors open; they tell him to just walk on in. Sometimes he will come upon the kids alone at home smoking pot with their friends.

It kills him that we can’t go after Buster, because in some ways it would be so easy—she knows us, would walk right up to us, and since they now have a guard dog they are probably lax about security. But they know Tomas had not wanted to sell her, and when I brought Buster to them alone—early that morning—they must have known Tomas hadn’t given me permission, especially when I insisted on taking cash. My brother forced me to go over the words I told them. But finally, he decided if we stole her it would be too obvious that we were the ones who did it.

Later he got the idea that I would pay him back by doing him “favors.” Though I have always helped take care of the dogs and to train them, recently he has had me shampoo each of them twice a week, hose down and scrub the concrete cage bottom, and fix their storage shed where the roof is loose and the boards nearly broken. My fingers have become callused and blistered, dried out from so much water and soap. I feed them and wash out their porcelain dishes and walk them and spend a lot of time dog-training for customers. He has a professional dog training service now in which he will retrain dogs people bought from other sources, and his clients include two security services; sometimes they have him go to strange locations for on-site training, like department stores closed for the night, San Pedro shipyards full of imported cars drenched by the cool damp dew of midnight, large warehouses and fenced-in properties the dogs will run around in freely. Sometimes he takes me with him. He charges extra for problem dogs, the biters, the grumps, the touchy and abused and lonely and damaged ones no other trainer would dare handle. My brother is actually great with them. At first I enjoyed seeing the places the dogs guard, but then the fear got tiring, and it leaves me little time for homework.

The more I work, the more he wants me to do. Recently he has said that since I stole from him I should not mind stealing, and since my transgression was a crime, that is what I must do to pay him back. Each time we go out my stomach clutches and I have to step aside and lean over, palming my hands on my knees. I try not to vomit and make Tomas angry, so today I went without food since breakfast.

Now my blood sugar drops and my fingers tremble, though probably that is nervousness too. Beside me Greta’s hair feels clumped, my fingers oily. The wind that comes in above the window glass blows damp and cold and throbs like ice in my temples, the way you get after sipping a milk shake too fast. I roll it up. My brother glances my way, annoyed at my movement—which stills me—before he turns forward again. We bound over a deep gutter and the truck bottom scrapes against asphalt, and my brother swears to himself and curses the neighborhood. I begin to hope we will not find Eddy Ho’s car and even Greta’s breathing relaxes against my arm, but then his yellow Jeep comes into view, parked beneath a rectangular building. Sunlight catches the top story of its crumbling baby blue stucco side.

I don’t tell him I see it, but he spots the car and slows down.

Here it is, he says.

I nod.

I can’t fucking believe it.

What?

My brother shakes his head. Eddy must be getting soft. He didn’t even put on the hard top. He’s only got the canvas one on.

It has been cold and rainy today and over the past couple of days, though the sun came out this afternoon. I do not mention to Tomas that Eddy might have taken the top off after the clouds blew out of LA, east toward San Bernardino.

Get yourself ready, he says.

II

The first time I went on one of his trips, my brother picked a place in the Palisades owned by a speculator who buys houses, remodels them, and sells them for a profit. It stood empty whenever the workers left, and Tomas knew a guy who did carpentry work on it, so we knew when they would be gone. No one had even installed an alarm system yet. When we entered, I was surprised: the house had no furniture—just its intricately laid hardwood floors, in octagon patterns, still unsanded. Tomas seemed to know where he was going and went straight upstairs and found a brass sink and we broke up the marble countertop to get it out. The plumbing had not even been hooked up to the chrome faucets, so we took those too. It surprised me he would bother to break into a house just for a sink and faucets, and I assumed he could sell them for a bundle. But a few days later I went into our mother’s bathroom to find some Tylenol, and discovered that he had replaced her grimy old plastic sink with the brass one. In place of the worn plastic faucet knobs he had installed the shiny chrome handles.

I then realized where the new couch had come from, and our mother’s new bed that replaced her musty old hand-me-down futon.

On the next trip we singled out an old Hungarian lady’s house in Brentwood Park. It was the only house on the block that had no fence or gate, and its lawn sprouted unruly tufts of grass that bent like cowlicks. Apparently, one of my brother’s gang buddies delivered drugs for Vincente Pharmacy and brought her her Prozac. She was sixtyish but dressed years younger; her tight dresses and silk robes looked grotesque on her shriveling, suntanned body. She was famous for making passes at delivery boys and house-sitters. Tomas knew she had gone away for the weekend to her Palm Springs condo with her current house-sitter. I thought my brother would go for something like the china or silverware, but he headed for her bedroom. He checked her bathroom and, not finding what he wanted, stood in her bedroom scoping it out. He noticed her vanity—a piece of furniture I had not heard of before—and hurried over to it. On the mahogany surface she had set out a mess of things, including jewelry boxes. But Tomas reached for the perfume bottles and started smelling them and holding them up to the light, as if by looking at the amber liquid he could know which was the most expensive among them, or what would most please our mother. He seemed to know what he was doing, and that seemed strange to me then.

Search the drawers.

What am I looking for?

Find the pearls.

What?

You heard me. Look for the pearls. Or anything with gold on it. Forget the silver stuff. It wouldn’t look good on her brown skin.

He was standing there, with his tattoos and shaved head, the cool hard look he’d adopted ever since he got to Saint Dominic’s, holding those perfume bottles, and it reminded me of a time we had gone shopping with our mother. This was in Fedco. Back then she used to bring us there, and we loved it. The place was huge. We would run up and down the aisles among the crowds of shoppers, pretending we were pirates in some far-off Caribbean port city. We were friends then. After an hour or so we always grew tired and started searching for her, among all the people, and sometimes this could be difficult. That day it took longer than normal, and I was getting hungry for pizza, which we always got after she paid. I was feeling weak from not eating, and Tomas sensed this, so he had me wait on a chair in the shoe department and searched for her. When he could not find her he came back with a slice for me. He had bought it himself. We finally found her at the makeup counter. She had taken a number—you had to get a ticket and wait for them to call you, because there were so many people—and she was sitting in a chair, practically crying. It turned out they had passed her number without calling it out and she had been too timid to tell them, so she got a new one. I am still not sure why she was so upset—at the time I thought it was all the waiting, but now I suspect she was upset with herself for not speaking up. Tomas put a hand on her shoulder. Then he reached down and uncupped her loosely clenched fingers and took out the old balled-up ticket and brought it to the counter and got a saleswoman’s attention and our mother bought the perfume she wanted. Or, anyway, one she could afford.

III

He keeps the motor running. Eddy Ho’s Wrangler is less than fifteen yards away, in the open garage.

Don’t look so sick, Junior.

I’m not sick.

He studies me. You look like you’re about to vomit. You better get outside. If you mess up my upholstery I’m going to add it onto your bill.

I clench my teeth and try to let the angry feeling pass. How many more times are you going to make me do this?

You worry about getting into that Jeep before someone sees us.

You could tell me real quick.

He ignores me and studies the alleyway. A large mutt—unaware of Greta—works an overturned trash can.

Why don’t you just tell me now? I say.

Because I don’t feel like it, Junior.

I glance at the door to the apartment and also the little door inside the garage right next to the Jeep. Over the last few minutes, riding through the alley, we have seen a lot of people getting out of their cars, returning from work, all potential witnesses. My hand finds the chrome car-door handle, warm and slippery with my sweat. But I hesitate.

Do you really think it was a smart idea to come during daylight? Maybe we could come back after it’s dark.

A smile comes across his face. Junior’s scared.

Fuck you.

Greta gets nervous beside me and I pet her to calm her as I reach over with my other hand to open the door. I almost stumble as I step onto the crusted asphalt.

He calls back to me. Take it with you.

What?

The tire iron, he says, grinning.

I was going to grab it.

Sure.

Wind flaps my shirt and the fabric feels stiff against my skin. I lean into Tomas’s Explorer, my ear brushing against Greta’s leg fur. The shaft is heavy and cold in my hand and I almost stumble as I back onto the crusted asphalt, trying to keep it out of view by letting it hang by my leg.

I told you I was going to grab it. Can’t you listen?

That makes a lot of sense, Junior. It was lying right next to you.

I didn’t want to hurt my back.

Yeah, you’re so old and have worked so many hours in that suit behind your important desk.

Father Ryan says you should watch out for straining even when you’re young. He has back problems. He doesn’t work behind a desk.

Junior, you hang around old people too much.

Yeah, old people like you.

I back off ready for a blow, but he smiles and shakes his head, then goes all cool again and stares down the street and peers up at the apartment’s window. You’d better go, man, he says.

Greta stares at me from the front seat, not sure if she should follow, but I do not call and she sits back down. I raise the iron from its hiding place against my leg, its weight straining my arm. Greta watches it carefully.

I cross the alley. My knees are weak. I barely seem to have the energy to keep the rod from falling out of my fingers.

Above I see his lit window—a sliding kind, the type without a pane—crusted white with salt. Like a shower door it is steamed up, so probably they cannot see anything but a blur. I duck into the garage, sheltered from the wind. I peer in the Jeep to check for a red alarm light. Nothing.

I have seen Tomas do this before. He always swings at the front window real quick, so it will smash on the first try, then he gets in and out and we are back in his truck. Alarms do not faze him.

Something rubs against my leg. I jump, but it is only Greta’s warm face pushing against my jeans.

Hey, girl, I whisper to her.

Though she seems glad to be near me again, her panting is not as eager as usual. Her eyes are focused, still and alert.

I tell her to stay, and grip the iron tighter, lifting it behind me, pausing, then swing it forward against the glass.

It thumps off and falls from my hand and clatters against the concrete. I freeze—ready for the alarm—but its blaring never comes. Greta starts rapidly pacing, her ears perked. I avoid looking over at Tomas as I bend over to pick up the rod. My trembling fingers, in their hurry, miss it. My nails graze the concrete and it takes me a moment to get a firm hold and finally lift it again. I try to keep calm and not allow Greta to become too excited, but she spots a dog hurrying along the alleyway and goes off sniffing and disappears. I glance at the apartment door, wondering if I should give this up. But with my brother waiting I lift the tire iron to chest level and get ready and decide I have to do it now.

I swing harder. The impact vibrates my bones, but the glass only cracks.

I take it back—in two hands like a baseball bat—and swing again, and this time a few pieces of glass crumble and fall inward. I knock enough glass in to reach through and open the lock.

I find the stash in the glove compartment where Tomas said it would be. I cannot believe it. It does not seem like it should be so easy. I am so relieved I barely bother to unwrap the foil to make sure I have got it, then crumple it shut as I back out.

When I look up the apartment door is open.

I freeze. The doorway is empty. I look around hurriedly and, blocking me from the alleyway, stands Eddy Ho, over six feet tall and half Samoan, in a faded UCLA Law T-shirt. He appears barely more than a silhouette with the daylight behind him, and seems cold and angry. A knife hangs down from his hand. I notice he is squinting to make me out and realize he has not recognized me. In a strange way I start dreading that he will. He was four years ahead of me at Saint Dominic’s, though he graduated and takes classes at Santa Monica College now and lives in this apartment his parents bought for him because they still live in Taiwan and want him to get a US citizenship. He lives with his sister, who goes to law school, though they barely talk. Tomas says the parents are Mormons and eventually want to move to Salt Lake City. He is not really a dealer—he only sells to friends—and gets money from his father. I used to watch him play pickup games with some black guys on the basketball court across the street from the church. Although most of the older students did not know who I was, he was still friends with Tomas then, and used to call me Gabrielito and Little Brother.

I can’t see my brother behind him, and Eddy senses me looking and knows I am looking and this seems to give him more confidence. He takes a step forward and I wonder if Tomas is going to leave or help me, but he does not come up behind him.

Then Eddy stops. He leans closer, squinting.

Gabe?

His face starts to relax and he looks bewildered. Immediately I remember the heavy tire iron hanging from my left hand and I try to ease it behind me without drawing his attention. My other hand still clutches the foil, warm and damp and too big to hide in my fist.

Is that Gabrielito Sullivan?

I say nothing.

What the hell are you doing here? he says, beginning to smile, but then notices the foil in my hand. His smile fades and he glances at the broken glass and I can see the gears of his mind working it out. He looks at me. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

I’m sorry.

What the fuck, Gabe, he says, then sees the tire iron dangling behind me. It is all I can do not to drop it.

Look. You can have it back.

You broke my fucking window, he says, shaking his head. You broke my fucking window and you think it’s that easy?

I’m sorry.

You’re sorry.

I’ll fix it.

You think it’s that easy? He shakes his head again. You seemed like such a nice kid, Gabe.

Here, have it back, I say, and toss the foil on the ground between us. It tumbles off his shoe. He looks at it and shakes his head, and though I expect him to pick it up, he gently kicks it under the car. His attention never really leaves me.

Suddenly I realize he is serious. I stiffen, not sure if I should threaten with the tire iron or drop it and throw up my hands. I want to toss it and run, but there is no way to get around him to the alleyway.

I hope he might simply be scaring me and will put the knife down. Then he lifts it and starts towards me. I swing the rod backwards but the end seems to catch on something—it hits the car, I think—and my elbow folds awkwardly. He sees this and leaps forward, one arm extending the knife and the other reaching to pin my wrist that holds the iron. My eyes catch the blade flash, then vanish, and I curl back, hiding my face and shoving my shoulder in his direction. I wait to feel the clean stab that will break my skin and stop against my cartilage or bone. It could tear and rip and slice muscle. I stare at the side of the car—not daring to look—but catch a second flash in the side of my vision and the blue sky behind the descending Samoan. For a second I worry he will scar my face, and my eyes shut as if this could stop it.

But then I feel Greta scramble over the Jeep’s front hood, and hear her growling fevered barks as she leaps towards him fangs first, eyes bulging, and then the open mouth aimed like a snake fang at his knife arm. His eyes widen—surprised—and he tries to back off and point the knife at her. She catches his forearm and elbow and the weight of her slams him against the neighboring car.

As I stare at him I wonder why he is not screaming or calling for her to stop, and then I realize he cannot. There is a clicking sound, like a coin in a drier, and I realize it is his metal buttons clanking against the car.

I notice his knife lying on the ground and pick it up. I call in German for Greta to stop and she lets his arm go and backs off. She eyes him, growling low and deep, her black lips drawn away from her fangs. One of her eyes is milky with a cataract, which makes her look rabid and evil. Eddy, who has collapsed into sitting, stares at her and hardly notices his mangled arm.

Now I can see over Greta’s head. The sun has come out and the daylight nearly blinds me, and my brother stands there over Greta and Eddy. His arms crossed, the stubble on his shaved head giving a rough edge to his silhouette.

I get up and stare down at Eddy.

Let’s go, I tell my brother.

Tomas doesn’t move. Where’s the foil?

What?

The foil.

He does not seem in any hurry to leave. I think it’s under the car, I say. Let’s just go.

Get it.

I stare at him. He’s lying in front of it, I say, nodding towards Eddy, who eyes the dog again.

So move him.

He’s bleeding.

If you don’t lick him you won’t get the AIDS.

I shake my head. I’m not touching him.

He picks up the tire iron I dropped. He hands it out towards me. I’m not telling you to touch him, Junior. I want you to beat him out of the way.

I shake my head. Tomas gives me a look but steps towards Eddy and sets the sole of his foot against his shoulder and begins to shove him over but Eddy quickly crawls a foot or two out of the way. My brother reaches under the car and grabs the stash. Then he looks down on Eddy.

You were going to knife my brother, he says to him.

No I wasn’t.

Eddy, he shakes his head. Don’t even try.

My brother has a steel-toed boot. When he descends on him, Eddy is all curled up against the corner, and for a moment I see Eddy’s eyes pleading for my help. Then he covers his face. Tomas kicks the back of Eddy’s knuckles and they look crooked and broken, bleeding, the skin torn off the thumb. The sound of his boot slapping into Eddy’s back and legs sounds like a hammer thumping into raw meat.

IV

We don’t talk as we bound over alley gutters, our tires slamming into potholes and the front bumper scraping asphalt. Beside me Greta pants, her tail thumping excitedly against the seat as I hug her. She looks back and forth between Tomas and me, then scrambles to the window and watches people and dogs we pass, then comes back to nuzzle me so I will scratch her face. The fur about her mouth is damp with blood, and a piece of tattered shirt sticks to her gums. But I hug her tight.

On the window she has left red smudges which glow like translucent rose petals clinging to the glass.

Don’t look so deflated, Junior.

I’m not deflated.

He gives me a long looking-over.

Okay, sure.

I try to sit up straighter, without letting him notice I am moving. We pass a black retriever and Greta leaps at the glass, her nails clicking against it like pennies.

Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?

He looks at me and shakes his head.

Man, I can’t believe you, he says. He was going to knife you.

Out on Windward the boulevard’s wide, and the buildings low, the sky opened up. Low, enormous clouds move not far above us, and their insides glow with sunlight though the undersides are dark with shadows.

I don’t really care about him, I say.

He ignores me. He pulls out the foil and uncrumples it and looks through it and crunches it up and hands it over so I can put it under the carpet. In the past we have often been pulled over, though this has not happened since he got his new car and started wearing straighter clothes (he says too many white kids dress like gangsters now). We pass the Santa Monica cop station, with its ordered rows of police cars parked next to the civic center dome that looks like something out of The Jetsons. I am worried.

V

We come up along Main Street towards the nice part of Santa Monica. Posh stores. Artist’s galleries. The pier’s archway passes on our left. This is not the quickest way home.

Where we going? I say.

You hungry?

I guess so.

You want Fat Burger or pizza?

My fingertips rest on my jeans. Isn’t Mom going to have made something for dinner?

She’s working late, he says.

That’s not what she told me.

He frowns. You want to eat her tired old paella?

It might hurt her feelings if we eat something else first.

We’ll tell her a client made us eat some of her food, he says after thinking a moment. Mom loves it when we do education and work kind of shit.

It sounds like a stupid excuse to me, but my brother seems irritated, so I keep quiet. Lately he has been increasingly inconsiderate towards her. I don’t exactly know why. Maybe I notice it more now, after what happened in Oregon. It has been a gradual development, and maybe it has been coming on as Tomas has grown taller and more confident, and found more friends.

At Shakey’s we go to the bathroom and splash water over our faces and dab napkins over our face and hands and pat our shirts. The paper comes away damp and pink. I run a few matted napkins through my hair, even though it is so dark you could not see any blood on it anyway. He orders a pizza with lots of meat and pineapples and green peppers, then we go over to the drink bar.

Pitchers of beer are cheap, he says. You want to try it?

No thanks.

He grins. I didn’t think so.

He gets me a diet Coke and a beer for himself and we make our way towards a wooden table. I try not to let Mom get into my mind as we watch the game on a TV that hangs from the wall up by the ceiling. After a while my eyes wander and I notice a lady sitting at a table across from us eating her pizza. She is fat, like a Mexican mother, and it seems sad she should have to eat alone. She catches me looking at her and I look away, embarrassed for her, but a few minutes later her kids come up and sit across from her and she cuts them pieces and they start eating off folded paper napkins.

When our pizza comes Tomas cuts me a piece and folds it over the New York way, like he used to, and passes it over on a napkin. We lay out napkins on the wood instead of using plates because that is how we used to do it before Shakey’s started supplying dishes and utensils, back when we used to come with Mom. It steams in our faces and we eat the crisp slices on our napkins, though my fingertips can still feel the hot crust through the thin oily paper. The crust is warm and crisp in my mouth as I chew it and swallow. It makes me sicker that it tastes so good. I put my slice down and look up at him. Do you really think Mom didn’t cook us dinner?

He shrugs.

I told you. We’ll tell her we ate at a client’s.

Ever since I can remember, Mom has been making the dishes Dad’s mother used to cook, even when we were still living in the Philippines and she had not been to the States yet. Back in the barrio she used to cook a rice dish for her father and brother and something American for Dad. When he was around we ate whatever he did. We were always picking off other people’s plates, though, and you could get baked bananas and nuts on the streets and at the markets. Sometimes Tita tells Tomas he should get rid of his girlfriend, who does not get along with Mom, and find a wife who will want to live with her when she gets older, but he does not listen.

In the dark car he glances at me. Don’t worry so much, Junior. You can have it for lunch tomorrow.

When we get home the kitchen light is on—she is awake—and I keep behind him as we go up the walk. She is at the counter and the place smells like tomato sauce and baked cheese. The food has been left out. Obviously, she wants us to see it.

She doesn’t look at me.

Where have you guys been?

Just kicking about.

I made you dinner.

Oh that’s okay, he says. We had pizza at a client’s.

A client made you pizza?

He pauses. It was takeout, he says. Anyway, we sort of had to eat it.

She appears not to believe him. He pauses there, uncomfortable for a moment, then walks into the other room, leaving me with her, and it seems too awkward to follow him. She says nothing to me. I think about saying something or taking a piece of the food—though I am not hungry—but I do not and finally she gets up and wraps it and walks past me and goes into the other room.