“Hang on here, will you?” he asks, and Angel pulls over to a curb.
Amadeo chases the flyers, stoops to catch them—this early in his business he must be frugal—and places them under the wipers of the parked cars. This time he doesn’t just target the cars with dings, because maybe the owners have cracks in the windshields of cars in their driveways at home. Maybe their relatives drive around with their windshields refracting light.
“Hey,” calls a security guard, shuffling toward him. “You can’t be doing that here.” The man’s walkie-talkie crackles at his waist.
“I’m just trying to make a living, man,” Amadeo says in his most charming tone. “I’m not bothering no one.”
The guard shakes his head. He’s sweating, the drops sliding beneath his black crew cut. “No soliciting.” He puts his hand to his walkie-talkie, ready to call for backup.
“Excuse me, sir,” says Angel, who has appeared at Amadeo’s side. Behind her, the truck chimes its incessant reminders: key in the ignition, door open, baby in the backseat. “I know you’re doing your job, but please look the other way? Just to be nice? We’re trying to start this business and it’s been hard to get customers.”
The guard considers Angel, and Amadeo does, too: her green hoodie, her long straight hair pulled into a crooked ponytail, the loose strands framing her round face. She smiles sweetly. Pink cheeks and chapped lips. Her demeanor is genuine, as if she isn’t trying to get away with something.
“Sorry,” mumbles the man. “Unless you’re here to gamble, you gotta go.”
Defeated, they get into the truck. She slams her door and clicks her seat belt with emphasis, glaring at the guard’s broad retreating back. “Dick.”
“Hey now. Don’t talk like that.” Amadeo pivots in his seat to check the baby. When he reaches back, Connor seizes his grandfather’s hand and shakes it, crowing with loopy joy.
The guard, halfway across the lot, seems relieved when Angel starts the engine.
“Screw that guy,” she says. “We’ll come back at night. We just have to go stealth.”
Amadeo looks at her admiringly. “Stealth. I like that.”
“We can’t take no for an answer. No one’s responsible for our happiness but us.”
Amadeo is oddly comforted by these corny platitudes that she clearly believes. She believes them because she hears them from Brianna, delivered with the young woman’s enthusiasm and seriousness. He thinks of the work Angel is doing for his business, thinks about her admiration for her teacher. It occurs to him that Angel is giving him permission. Briefly he imagines himself and Brianna, married, living in a big house somewhere green and lush, sunlight streaming though large windows. They could have another kid, start a real life, the kind of life recognizable from television commercials, all of them living together in a house with a lawn and a porch with pillars, the kind of life you were supposed to get, not this half-formed humiliating thing he’s been living.
He reaches out to touch Angel’s wrist. He looks at his hand on her wrist, then drops it back to his lap.
She turns to him with surprise.
“Eyes on the road,” he says. “You’re right. Let’s come back tonight.”
The other girls are doing Vocabulary Building when Angel shuts the classroom door and goes down the hall to the nursery. Connor is having his Tummy Time on the blue mat, swimming his arms and legs through the air like a beached sea mammal. His little neck strains to hold his head up, and his face and the parts of his scalp visible through his patchy hair redden with his exertion. Finally he drops his face into the mat, and Angel has to stop herself from rushing to sweep him up. But he doesn’t cry. Instead he lifts his head once more, his focus as strained as constipation. He starts paddling again.