“Who?” Amadeo wriggles out, lifting himself painfully over the gravel, and squints up, wiping sweat from his face with his bicep. His hands are slick with oil.
Angel looks at the sky. “His father.”
Fear scissors through him. “Whose father?” Amadeo is aware that he’s playing dumb, and playing it badly, because he doesn’t want Connor’s life to open up to include people he doesn’t know and hasn’t vetted. Somehow he’d allowed himself to forget that there is a father.
Amadeo is curious, too, however. Because who was this guy who managed to get his daughter naked? He pictures a charmer, a thick-lashed handsome boy.
“He’s coming in twenty minutes, so could you just be here?”
“You told him where we live?” He sits up. Angel tears the skin edging her thumbnail. She seems almost afraid. “Is he dangerous? Do you think he might—” Hurt her, he means, but not just that. Did this guy force himself on her? At the thought, a queasy fury passes through him, sharpening at the prospect of an actual target. He would kill this guy.
“No,” says Angel, catching his expression, and her face screws up in annoyance. “Just be here, okay, Dad? Like, in the room?”
Amadeo scrubs his hands and face. He’d like a shower, but he wants to be in position when this kid shows up. So he waits, smelling of body odor and engine grease, while Angel gets ready.
She looks no less nervous when she emerges in her maternity jeans and a tank top, the fat white straps of her nursing bra digging into her shoulders. She reeks of perfume, Yolanda’s Shalimar, a middle-aged lady smell. Across her cheeks the foundation is thick and matte like clay. Her lipstick is shimmery pink and sticky.
“You look good.”
“I look like ass,” she says bleakly. “Nothing fits.”
“Hey, no. You’re losing weight already.”
“Whatever. I can hide behind Connor.” She lifts the baby from his bouncer by his upper arms and swings him over to her lap. “Could you at least change your shirt before he gets here? And don’t you dare start drinking.”
He doesn’t even defend himself, just goes to put on a shirt that won’t shame her.
Ryan Johnson shows up in a beat-up dark green minivan. They watch in silence from the window. The kid looks around as if he doesn’t understand how he got here. They wait for him to approach the house, hunt for a doorbell, then squeak open the screen to knock.
Angel gestures impatiently for Amadeo to answer the door.
Ryan is not the handsome vato Amadeo pictured, but a skinny curly-haired blond with a yellowing whitehead swelling his nose. It seems like a character flaw that he hasn’t popped the pimple. “Hi.” The kid flashes an anxious smile at Amadeo and, behind him, Angel, revealing a lot of fleshy, pink gum. His teeth are small and a little thin-looking, as if he didn’t get enough calcium during some critical years. But it’s a sweet smile, and Amadeo is relieved that this kid is a harmless dork.
“Hey.” Angel starts bouncing Connor industriously on her hip as if to quiet him, except that he’s limp and asleep.
Amadeo reaches for the baby, but Angel elbows him away. She fiddles with the orange feet on Connor’s suit, straightening, smoothing. There’s always something to adjust on a baby.
Angel doesn’t offer him a seat. Ryan smiles again, this time more of a joyless grimace. He tugs at the misshapen hem of his blue T-shirt. Amadeo imagines that the boy’s mother chose it to match his eyes.
Amadeo watches Ryan watch the baby. The kid has the pallor and posture of an egg noodle. “I can’t believe it,” Ryan says. His eyes are wide with feeling.
“Can’t believe what?” Angel’s voice is surly, and no one replies.