They’ve continued to meet up, he and Brianna, every week or so, nearly always at her house. Once she made him dinner—quinoa salad, tofu stir-fry—and once they watched a raunchy buddy comedy （his selection—he immediately realized it was a bad choice, but she laughed along） on her laptop. Dinner in Espa?ola is out: “Someone might see us,” she said.
The gulf between them—educational and aspirational—seems to make her more uncomfortable than it makes Amadeo. Once, lying in bed after sex, she chatted merrily about the Obama administration’s new federal grants for social programs in disadvantaged communities.
“I’d love to design something even better and more comprehensive than Smart Starts!, you know, that looks at the health of whole families. I’m applying for MPH programs, either in New Mexico or back in Oregon.”
“What are those?” Amadeo asked.
“Master of Public Health?” She reddened. “But it’s not like everyone needs to go to grad school.”
“I know that.”
“I mean, yeah. And it’s not a given that I’ll get in. It’s a total privilege that I even get to consider it. Not everyone has the luxury, and I totally recognize that.”
“Okay.” The silence lay between them, morphing into a kind of discontent. Amadeo was about to say, “I could have applied to MPH programs, too, I just never wanted to,” when, thank god, she stood, clutching her discarded shirt to her chest, and slipped into the bathroom, indicating that this date was over.
The uncertainty between them has allowed Amadeo to dodge the question of whether he should tell Angel. A few times, she’s asked, “Where have you been? Another hot date?”
He said he was out with a friend, and she asked, “You have friends?”
When he’s finished fixing the chief clerk’s car, Amadeo decides, he’ll walk around the Plaza until noon, then get a good lunch at Tomasita’s, in celebration of the Creative Windshield Solutions launch. He imagines a cold beer sweating circles on the tabletop, then catches himself.
He sticks the largest adhesive rubber donut seal he has around the crack. The hole in the rubber isn’t big enough to encompass the bull’s-eye, but he figures he can repair it in stages. Then he places the clear suction cup over the seal.
He likes pressing the trigger of the syringe, likes watching the liquid resin squirt, its chemical acetone smell. He puts a little extra for good measure.
But he’s put too much, and because the seal is too small for the bull’s-eye, there is no vacuum. The resin oozes under the seal and pools around it like mercury, a shining, quivering meniscus. Also, his hands are shaking, probably from the coffee. The light in the underground parking structure is flickery and orange. He places the sheet of plastic film over the resin to contain it. The liquid spreads. He swabs at the excess, but it’s begun to drip down the clean slope of the windshield, and soon Amadeo’s fingertips are tacky.
Also a bit of resin drips on the hood. Amadeo swipes at it with the heel of his hand, but it only smears across the black paint. The quick-dry formula is drying quickly.
He needs paper towels. He tries to get inside the building, but the lock requires an ID, so he bangs on the door until someone pushes it open.
“Yeah?” asks an old guy in no-iron pants and a bolo tie.
Amadeo explains himself, but the guy, bored, waves him through and continues down the circular hall.
Amadeo doesn’t know which way to turn to find the nearest men’s room, so he jogs, eliciting dirty looks from women in their frumpy office wear.
Apparently the State of New Mexico, in a push to embrace green technologies, has done away with paper towels, opting instead for low-energy hand dryers. Amadeo grabs a wad of toilet paper from the stall, then, pleased with his good thinking, grabs a second, which he runs under the tap.