In the garage, Amadeo leans over the hood of Monica Gutierrez-Larsen’s car and begins to scrub. The toilet paper sticks, leaving fibrous white tracks in the paint. “Fuck,” he mutters, and tries to rub them away with his thumb, but they only become grubby and smudged. He tries to wipe up the mess on the windshield, but the resin has already dried. It looks like a jumbo tube of superglue has exploded.
Only now does Amadeo panic, looking around—for what? Help? Witnesses? He makes for the bright daylight at the garage exit, leaving behind the mess and his open toolbox.
In the glare of morning, he hoofs it downtown. The sky is blue and wide, the air cool. He needs a drink, but nothing is open except some breakfast places. Up and down the narrow porticoed streets, people are beginning to unlock their shops.
He’s jogging now, up San Francisco Street, through the Plaza, trying to outrun his failure. He pictures Monica Gutierrez-Larsen in her silk blouse, discovering what he’s done to her paint job. She squints at the streaks in the dim orange light, irate, disgusted. But no: it’s early still—only fifteen minutes have elapsed. The chief clerk won’t know what he’s done for a long time, and somehow this fact only makes the situation worse; for now he’s the only one who knows.
The blunt square towers of the cathedral rise beyond La Fonda. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be hearing confession. He likes the idea of spilling his guts to someone who is required to forgive him. When he pushes open the heavy door, though, he sees that an early and sparsely attended Mass is in progress. One or two old faces turn to look at Amadeo as he hesitates in the doorway, wild-eyed and sweating, and the priest drones on. If he joins them, and closes his eyes to pray, there’s a chance God will hear him, but there’s a better chance that he’ll have to sit with the intolerable, spinning anxiety that’s expanding in his skull and chest and throat. Amadeo backs out, and the door shuts with finality.
He cuts over to Alameda, runs, then walks back west through the narrow park along the river, breathing heavily. The light is so dry and bright, it’s like grit in his eye. Birds call to each other in the tall, drooping cottonwoods, and the leaves make rocking shadows on the dry grass. The river is just a concrete riverbed with a few puddles here and there reflecting blue. It should be peaceful, but it isn’t. It’s a pathetic, skinny little park, parched and studded with dog shit. A homeless man with a full blond beard sits on a picnic table in his drab-colored layers.
Whatever is building in Amadeo needs a release. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters, and he thumps his head with the heel of his hand over and over for the metallic jolt. He winds up and kicks the trunk of a cottonwood, but his foot bounces off ineffectually. Infuriated, he kicks again and pain shoots up his shin. “Fuck!” he shouts. At the intersection down the street, the man selling newspapers turns.
From behind his facial hair, the homeless man watches Amadeo with intelligent eyes.
“Take a picture, asshole,” Amadeo snaps, then feels sicker. The homeless man averts his gaze, as if Amadeo might be dangerous, and Amadeo’s eyes smart. He kicks the tree again, and for an instant the punishment is so intense he thinks he might have broken his foot. Feeling marginally better, he limps off.
The pain doesn’t last. Up and down streets, he walks, then runs, then walks again, fueled by vibrating self-loathing. In his mind, his crime balloons to fit his shame, and as it does, so does his pity for himself. He ruined a car, his prospects, his entire life. He’s a failure, an idiot, a fucking waste, his father’s son, and none of it is fair because he tries. He can never catch a break, can never dig himself out of this hole he was born into. He tried to do something nice—to fix some bitch’s window—for free! And here’s the thanks he gets? Monica Gutierrez-Larsen despised him, he could see that. She was patronizing him, the no-good son of her secretary. She didn’t even say thank you, just felt entitled to free work on her fucking BMW. She’s lucky he didn’t smash the entire fucking windshield.
He jabs at the scars on the front and back of both his hands, willing them to hurt, but they don’t. His life isn’t supposed to be like this. Good Friday was supposed to save Amadeo. He was supposed to be past the shame and failure and the mistakes that hardly seem to be his own and that unravel beyond his control.