The production is low budget—in the background is a whirr of white noise and the shots are overexposed, and the editor has leaned heavily on canned effects for transitions （yet another picture explodes into a starburst）—but Amadeo is trying his best not to see that. Now a new guy in a striped polo shirt and gelled hair stares dead-eyed into the camera. “Not many people know that windshields are actually made of two panes of glass sealed together,” he says in a monotone. If the delivery leaves something to be desired, the information is solid, and Amadeo grabs a notebook from the coffee table. In the majority of cracks, the man explains, only the outside layer of glass is damaged. The key is to fill in and smooth that top layer, to restore the windshield to its original appearance, preserve its integrity.
Amadeo likes these words: restore, preserve, integrity. He jots them down. He’s always known he wasn’t the type to sit in an office or follow orders. An independent contractor, a small-business owner, that’s him.
Angel bangs into the house. “Did Santa come? What is all this crap?”
“Shh.” Amadeo indicates the TV. He’s taking notes.
“Simply scrape the excess resin off the windshield with the razor blade,” intones the man on the video, “and the repair is invisible.” It does look simple. Amadeo can’t tell from the video, though, how invisible the crack really is. It looks pretty invisible.
“Hey,” objects Angel. “That’s my math notebook.”
Amadeo looks up, hassled.
“It’s fine, whatever. Just don’t use too many pages.” She drops onto the couch and unties her sneaker one-handed around her bulk, grunting.
Amadeo explains the finances to his daughter. “So in a year, I can be clearing a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. That’ll be good for the baby, no?”
“If it’s such a great business opportunity, why aren’t more people fixing windshields?”
This stops Amadeo. Maybe people are doing it. Maybe the world is glutted with windshield repairmen, all of them working from the same kit they ordered from the same late-night infomercial, and he just doesn’t know it.
Angel nudges her chin at the pile on the floor. “How much was that stuff?”
“A thousand.” He intends his tone to be casual, easy, to convey how seriously not a big deal the sum is in light of the vast profits he’s about to reap.
“A thousand?” Angel toes the toolbox with her bare foot. The lid bobs precariously on cheap hinges. “As in a thousand dollars?”
“Angel, the average start-up cost for a small business is over thirty thousand dollars. Look it up.”
“Yeah, but that’s, like, for a store or something. Or a software company. Maybe that’s the start-up cost for whatever company sold you this crap.” She raises a skeptical eyebrow at the molded plastic mass on the carpet. “I doubt it even cost them that much, though.”
“It’s called an investment, Angel.”
“Where’d you get the money?”
“Mind your own business.”
“Oh god, Gramma. How’d you convince her this was a good idea?”
Actually, it was easy. He simply told his mother about the infomercial, and she nodded tiredly and gave him her credit card. Amadeo began to launch into his calculations, but Yolanda waved him away, saying, “Just stick with it.” Amadeo felt deflated as he typed her credit card number into the website.
Outside, his mother’s car trundles up the drive. From the window Amadeo can see her bend to root around for her purse and coffee mug and water bottle and the rest of the millions of items she drags along every time she ventures off the property.
Quickly, because he wants this sorted before his mother gets in, he sternly reminds his daughter, “You know, my mother gave you a pretty hefty sum not two weeks back. And I don’t see you starting no business.”