I really have to hand it to Curly, for causing the maximum amount of devastation possible in a couple of well-placed sentences. Because ever since he dropped the bombshell that he's decided to move out, Ma's been about the craziest I've ever seen her, and I once had to grab this bitch's arm to keep her from jumping out of a moving car onto the highway.

"That woman's gonna come to my house with razorblades in her hair and kill me— you remember Luis's first baby mama, Cami?" She takes her hands out of the sudsy sink and points her finger straight at my face, like I could forget either one of them. "The one who rolled up here completely trashed on angel dust, wanted to know where her child support check was at— Lord, like I've got the first clue? Like I'm the president of Luis's fan club here?" She's so distressed once she's gotten all this out, she has to stop for a hard gulp from the bottle next to her. Last time she tried using the stove, she was sloshed on the 'cooking' sherry before the timer went off. "Why the hell didn't I just keep my fool mouth shut?"

Curly picks a real bad moment to slink into the kitchen, or a good moment, for the sake of me not getting a quick one upside the head. "If I have a heart attack from all this stress—" that finger's aimed straight at him now, chasing him away from the beer he was trying to sneak out of the icebox— "you're gonna have to live without a mother for the rest of your life. Though I guess that won't bother you none anymore, at the rate you're goin'. Montserrat can take care of you from now on, can't she?"

This is an improvement on a couple of nights ago, when she was screaming on the floor about this whole mess, but Curly still looks real crestfallen. He's not used to being the target of her rages, can't take it on the chin or with an eyeroll the way Angela or I can. That sad little look would normally make me jump to his defense— God knows Ma being pissed at me is just Tuesday, for me— but I'm not so eager to put my neck on the line for people who try to get Ed to beat me like a mule. "Montserrat don't even know yet, Ma," he mutters, "an' for the last time, it's not my decision, not really. Would you rather I lived in a boys' home or somethin'? At least this way I can visit y'all."

Ma's brain doesn't work like that, it's not constrained by the limits of reality like a normal person's— it's like talking to a toddler, she wants Curly here and she'll throw a fit if he isn't. She snatches a stray pack of smokes off the counter, takes the bottle with her, and goes to light up on the porch, leaving me alone with him. Curly goes over to the sink and starts doing the dishes she left behind. The room's silent, except for the drip of the leaky faucet that nobody ever bothered to fix.

"I didn't do it, man." I want to tell him to leave them, that I'll do them, but that's what comes out instead. "I let him walk."

"Good for you," he says flatly, making it clear he doesn't feel like being my confession booth, but the way he scrubs harder at the grease-coated plate in his hand belies his tone. "Figured as much when I didn't see your face under 'wanted dead or alive' on the cover of the World, though."

"I said I was sorry, you lil' shit, you want a bouquet of flowers too?" Like that's any kind of an apology— even I, somebody who ain't exactly well-practiced at them, know that. His jawline's still mottled with bruises, the purple and black lace pattern standing out stark against his skin, lighter than mine or Angela's. I'm not quite sorry enough to give him a real one, though.

"At least I know someone ain't gonna be cryin' once I'm gone."

"Damn straight, I'm excited to get a good night's sleep for once, without you talkin' my goddamned ear off." I'm not sure how I'm going to fall asleep at night without knowing where he is, actually. Like I trust Hector to supervise him. "Whatever game he's playin' with you now, Ma's right," I say for the first and last time in my life, splay my palm out on the counter as I lean my weight onto one arm. "You think his old lady's gonna be real fuckin' thrilled, he comes home and tells her he's got a bastard kid runnin' around, who he's about to move onto her turf? You ain't this naive—"

"Not everyone treats somebody else's kids the way your daddy did."

I look at a point past his head, out the window and into the backyard. Remember how he used to take Curly into our bedroom for punishments and lock the door, and tell me to go outside and play— Curly knew better, even as a grade schooler, than to cry and show him weakness, but it tore him up inside, hurt him a lot worse than it ever did me. I never protested on his behalf, too happy it wasn't me, too afraid of losing Papá's favor. Is that what he wants to get away from, by leaving this house, the one I've made a point of claiming as my dead father's? The memory of that room— the memory of me?

Then he throws out like it's a real argument-winner, "besides, Dad says he's gonna buy me a motorbike once I'm old enough for a license," and all I can do is laugh.

Gabi eels out from under me on the bed, stills my hand before I can touch that tantalizing band of skin where her blouse rides up, exposing her slim waist. "What's wrong?" I ask, breathing hard. "Is it your leg?" We're pushing it, I know we are, she's just started walking around comfortably again. I think we might've both forgotten when she's supposed to take another dose of pain medication.

"Are you okay?" She searches my face. "You've hardly said a word to me since I got here. Did something happen?"

Yeah, 'something' happened all right. Guilt chews at my insides like a wild animal; there's no way she could yet, but I swear she knows what I did, how I let him walk. And despite what she said before, about not wanting me to do anything stupid, I'm wondering how much she really meant it. "Just some junk with Curly, is all," I say, though that's the understatement of the century on its own. Then I lean back in for another kiss.

She doesn't go for it, though, turns her head so I only catch the edge of her jaw instead. "You can't just try to distract me with sex every time you don't want to talk, Tim."

"Is it working, though?" I reach up her skirt this time, a risky move, but fortune favors the bold; she makes a noise that's a cross between a moan and a gasp, her legs falling open on instinct. Sex is probably out of the question, too much exertion when she's been on bedrest, but a little fooling around, well—

"Tim, did you see where I put my— oh, gross, what the hell?"

I have got to get a lock for this door, or at least quit bringing my girl back here.

Gabi springs away from me, sits up, and smooths her skirt back down her thighs faster than I think is healthy for her continued recovery. Angela's lurking in the doorway, glowering, for what reason I can't even fathom. Maybe just because she's thirteen. "You were supposed to be out with—" Hell if I can remember which one of her little girlfriends it is, they all kind of look the same to me, too much crooked eyeliner and safety pins holding up their hems. "Debbie?"

Her glower intensifies. "Debbie and I ain't never speakin' again, I'm goin' out with Betty." Okay, then. "I came back for my anorak, 's still cold out— wanted to see if you knew where it was, but I guess you're real busy, ain't you."

Whatever her problem is, I'm not in the mood to work it out. "Yeah, as you can see, a little preoccupied." Why is she still standing here? "Check the hall closet, reckon it's in there, unless Ma donated it to Goodwill already."

The corners of her scowl embed themselves deep into both sides of her face. "You can't just keep bringing all these broads around here."

Gabi gives me a look that digs into me like a drill bit, before I can remind Angela who pays half the bills around here, and her tone's no more friendly. "There's been a lot of them in the house?"

Now Angela smirks, as she crosses her arms under her chest, but there's no warmth in it. "One time, I was pounding on the bathroom door 'cause I had to piss like nobody's business, and what's he doin' but laying some pipe of his own with Darlene in the shower—"

"You shut your mouth—"

"Or was that Rita, knockin' the shampoo bottles over?" She gives me a poisonous, targeted smile. "I guess I just can't keep them all straight, since Bonnie. Do you even remember?"

I'm embarrassed to admit the anecdote's real, but the right name's a lot less quick to spring to the front of my mind. Gabi does the absolute worst thing she could do to salvage this situation, which is start to patronize her. "Look, it's real nice to finally meet you, Angela, I'm sorry it had to be like this," she says like she's introducing herself to a new CCD student. "Were you and Bonnie close, or—"

"We were." Angela's eyes couldn't flash more hostility if she could shoot laser beams out of them. "And I don't need another one of Tim's hook-ups tryna play mommy to me, thanks."

"Excuse me?" My voice snaps shut on the end of the phrase like a steel trap. "You apologize to her, right now— whatever problem you got with me, she has nothin' to do with it."

"Make me."

She draws it out, too, lingering on each vowel. I grab her arm to march her out the door, and I'm not real gentle about it, neither— she digs her heels into the carpet, but she's no match for me. Can't I have one lousy relative act halfway normal around Gabi? "Git out of here, lil' girl, before I decide you ain't so big for the chancla after all."

"You just try it, I'll bite your kneecaps off," she says the second after the threat flies out of my mouth. I guess I managed to forget our mama's white, too, and doesn't keep any lying around the house. Tía Mercedes threw one of those things with military precision, though, back when Cisco and Santi were younger. Swear it could round corners.

"Don't whoop her, Tim," Gabi insists as she watches the struggle unfold, "I sure don't want you doin' it on my behalf." She looks real hacked off about the idea too. "My daddy never gave any of us the belt or the chancla or nothing to make us behave, he just talked to us."

That's great for him and all, but considering the path Diego's headed down, I'm not sure if the old man ought to be held up as a regular Jim Anderson here. "Listen, I don't think you understand, they're real bad kids," I level with her at the same time as Angela comes in hot with, "who asked you, exactly?" She'd cut off her nose and both her ears to spite her face, a trait I wish the two of us didn't have in common.

"Angela Reagan—" The tone I'm taking with her once made Curly's little friend Pedro piss himself. Literally. She just raises an eyebrow at me, rocks back on her heel, like she thinks she's about to win this fight. "You better quit actin' like a jealous fucking three-year-old, 'cause you're not embarrassing me or her right now, you're just embarrassing yourself. I don't need your permission to date nobody, and if Bonnie's puttin' you up to this shit, you go ahead and tell her this is her most pathetic attempt at gettin' me back yet."

"You don't understand nothin', you never do!" She shrieks the whole sentence, throwing the kind of fit she hasn't since she was three and I wouldn't steal a Tiny Tears baby doll for her. I want to toss her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and haul her out of here, or cut this short with a good swat, but more than the prospect of Gabi's disapproval, what stops me is the wet glimmer in her eyes. Angela only ever cries to get her way. "You're as bad as Ma, except you're bringin' a brand-new 'Momma' home to us every other week instead of an 'Uncle', I guess. Who cares, if I don't like this one? She'll be gone soon enough anyway."

There's a lot I could say to her, that I'm sure as shit not obligated to marry the same chick I got with in seventh grade to make her happy— that it's real funny that when I was her age, I carried the burden of looking after her and Curly like Atlas, while she expects she'll be taken care of— but she shakes herself free from my grip and runs out anyway, leaving behind an all-consuming silence. "So, that's Angela," I say, with a feeble attempt at comedic delivery even by my standards. Grimace right after. "You oughta hear her when I try to make her do laundry."

Gabi's still looking at me, in that same strange way. Like she's trying to find something, and I'm coming up short.

"… So we're finally launchin' the band, yeah?" Nate hands me a homemade pamphlet that's a truly terrible feat of graphic design, advertising their 'gig' at Buck's tomorrow night. I think there's a smear of tomato sauce on one corner. Or blood. "I mean, we ain't gotten real far with writing our own songs yet, but I reckon we can do okay Kinks covers, once I learn a few more chords."

"It'll be an improvement on the usual music scene at Buck's, that's for sure," I say as I shove the crumpled wad of paper into my pocket. Nate beams, not catching on to how much I'm damning him with faint praise. Last time I hit up that joint, Buck was mopping his eyes to the tune of Loretta Lynn and waving the butt of his gun around like a lighter at a concert.

I'm sitting on the hood of my truck, a half-smoked cigarette between my fingers and a half-conscious Brumly boy at my feet, a thick black rime of dried blood ringing his nostrils. He'll get up in a minute, and have learned a valuable lesson about trying to push in our alleyways again, I'm hoping for the sake of his few remaining brain cells. It feels weird, getting back into the— literal— swing of things with my crew. Especially when there's a sudden, gaping hole in the leadership, that I've been trying to cover up like Stalin airbrushing photos with officials he purged.

Nate isn't exactly subtle, when he flicks some ash off the tip of his own weed and turns to me. "You know where Alex is at?"

I breathe in deep, through my nose. Besides the all-consuming stink of nicotine, the air smells like cold metal and ozone, promising snow soon. "No." Past state lines, if he knows what's good for him— Texas, Colorado, somewhere I'll never find him again. He'll find a way to make himself disappear.

"It ain't at the bottom of the Arkansas, is it?"

I suck too hard on the filter and manage to swallow an ember, which hurts like a sonuvabitch. "And how would you know anything about that?"

Nate gives me an unimpressed look that reminds me that before he made 'wake and bake' his guiding philosophy in life, he used to be pretty sharp. Sat next to me in A-level English, freshman year, even if we spent most of our time there passing notes that ranked the racks of every girl in the class. "You threatened to kill him in front of a room full of people, man. I guess word gets around."

"I didn't do it, after all." The butt's starting to singe my fingertips. I toss it onto the ground; Brumly Boy twitches as a spark hits him and lets out a breath like a deflating pool toy. "My one good deed of the year, huh?"

At least there's one positive to come from this, alongside the death of all of my self-respect: an increased certainty that unlike my old man, I'm probably not going to take a bullet to my vitals Julius Caesar-style anytime soon, now that I've given up on doing my own personal assassinations.

"That was real big of you, man, lettin' him walk," Nate says, and I almost fall ass-over-teakettle down my grill. Guess Curly's analysis of my popularity wasn't flawless. "I couldn't have done it. Shooting a girl? What a fuckin' coward. Gabi never did nothin' to nobody."

"Wasn't so much bein' noble," I say uncomfortably. I'm not great at accepting sympathy or praise. "Can't call myself so innocent in all this, neither. Figured someone had to show throat eventually, might as well be me, for once in my life."

Nate shrugs. "Big of you to admit, too."

I can't take any more of this without puking. "This better shut up no talk 'bout how I don't care about y'all, deep down in my frozen heart. Look, if I ain't even lettin' people get away with attempted murder now."

"Spent so much time with them Curtises, you've started goin' soft on us now, huh? Fixin' to introduce us to some of his old Soc buddies next, get us all cultured?"

The sneaky sort of grin on his face melts the ice crystal that was starting to form around my guts; I elbow him hard enough in the ribs, he's got to scrabble at my fender to keep from falling off the hood. "Greaser for life, and don't you forget it. Just look at that little Brumly fucker, if you want proof."

Nate snickers, at the same time as 'that little Brumly fucker' manages to get up on all fours, shoot us a look of unfathomable hatred, and start half-crawling, half-limping out of the alleyway. But I can't shake the feeling that all this has a creeping expiration date, that I'm definitely not going to be a greaser for life, that this scene isn't going to be part of my future. Maybe not even his. A mixture of sadness and nostalgia, for something that's not even gone yet, hits me harder than my sense of relief.

I don't let myself dwell on it. "You want to get a drink?" I ask, sliding my ass off the hood. "It's on me."

When I break into my uncle's apartment, I don't really expect his illegitimate daughter to come running up and grab me around the thigh while I'm holding a loaded gun. "Timmy, do you wanna play?" she begs, and I can't stop myself from grimacing as I lay the heater down on his coffee table, make sure the safety's on. I know she's a little kid, but I swear I hear Luis's voice straight out of her mouth with that 'Timmy'. Maybe he puts her up to it.

"Hey, preciosa," I say as I try to break free of Claudia's sticky fingers. That's getting real sentimental by my standards, but considering that her own daddy won't even claim her, I feel kind of obligated to add a quick kiss to the top of her head, too. I'd say she reminds me of Angel, at a younger and much more manageable age, but five-year-old Angela had one hell of a biting phase, come to think of it. "Play what?"

"Mama and Daddy," she says, leading me over to her dollhouse for Barbie and Ken, "you can be the daddy, okay?"

"Is he comin' home from work, or—"

I don't know if a kindergartener should be able to roll her eyes yet, but she definitely could be more impressed by my creativity. "No, that's boring. Mama caught Daddy with another woman named Carmen, and she's barely legal," she informs me, raising Barbie's painted-on blue eyes up to mine. "She's fixin' to put him out unless he says he's sorry and promises to never do it again."

Well, if that ain't a pretty solid recap of the sorry state of Luis's love life. I crouch down on the floor and level with her, wielding Ken. "What if Daddy throws in that real pretty silver bracelet she was looking at in the Tiffany's window?"

She holds Barbie up to her ear like a phone receiver, then squints at me. "She wants Cartier."

"Deal."

Now she's smashing those dolls together in a way that's not allowed to be shown on broadcast television. I resist the urge to plug my fingers into my ears, as her newfound silence lets me discover why she's been left alone in the first place— Luis's second baby mama is making the same noise as one of those squeaky toys you give dogs to chew on, every time he thrusts. Sharing a little more information about the size of his equipment than I ever wanted to know, too. And I guess it's the Valium in my blood, or maybe just an orneriness that's all my own, that makes me bang on the wall with my fist. "Y'all busy in there?"

Luis does not look too fucking thrilled to see me in his living room, a minute later, as he throws his bedroom door open. Neither does Sofia, who's wearing his discarded t-shirt and nothing else. "Can whatever this is wait, Timmy?" he says through gritted teeth. "Was it really necessary to break into my house for, d'you reckon?"

"Sorry, Tío— it's great y'all are makin' this whole family thing work again." Now Luis looks like his dearest desire in the world is to pick up that gun and shoot me between the eyes; Sofia's busy trying to yank that t-shirt further down her behind. I just smile. "Came to drop your heater back off. Even throwin' a free silencer into the bargain."

Luis's eyes gleam like a tiger's, hungry and predatory, though he keeps his voice even. He's in his element a hell of a lot more now than he ever was pretending to be a family man. "Listen, whatever you did with the body, I can get a crew together." Acting on muscle memory, he's already heading over to the phone. "Just tell me where and when."

"What body?" Claudia asks. "Can I come see?"

Sofia finally remembers she's got a daughter and claps her hands over her ears. "Not in front of the kid," she hisses as Claudia tries to squirm free, marching her into Luis's bedroom and shutting the door, "what the hell is wrong with y'all?" I can't wait to see what kind of detective show baby girl's gonna be staging with those dolls once this sinks in.

"Ain't nothin' to clean up," I say once they're out of hearing range.

He's already eyeing me suspiciously. "I don't know how much I trust you and the cast of The Delinquents to take care of a crime scene properly, no offense meant—"

"I mean, there ain't nothin' to clean up," I make sure to spell out nice and clear for him. "I didn't pull the trigger, yeah? I told him to get out of town, get on the next bus outta here."

"You lil' fucking fool." He says it with a quiet kind of mockery that's more threatening than if he'd started to holler at me. It's testament to how threatening he is, period, that I can take him seriously in his drawers. "And what, you just took his word for it, that he's gonna leave you alone from now? I know you did, your arrogance was always through the goddamned roof. Didn't even threaten him with nothin', did you?"

"I guess I did." I shrug. "Reckon I can always escalate further if I have to, y'know? But once he's dead, I can't just bring him back like Jesus raisin' Lazarus up."

Luis looks even less impressed by my theological references than my mama ever was, and she seems to think the phrase 'even the devil can cite scripture' was coined to describe me. "C'mon, what were you tellin' me, when you was puttin' me at the front of the bar?" My smile's getting downright beatific. "I'm workin' on my social skills. Tryin' out some nonviolent solutions for a change, before I really do end up with all the charm and charisma of a raccoon that's been run over by a semi."

Judging by the color his face is turning as I throw his own words back into it— that of uncooked liver— I've got all of five seconds to split before the ass-whooping he gave me after Santi died becomes a pleasant memory. "That's Buck's silencer, by the way," I make sure to mention as I head out. "In case he starts askin' for it back."

Once I'm down the stairs, outside the building, is when I start laughing. Christ, was that pushing my luck, and Christ, do I need to get off these pills before I really write a check with my mouth that my ass can't cash— but the memory of his expression, that's going to keep me warm at night for the next ten years, about.