I see Luis for the first time in two years at five in the morning, cussing under my breath as I go to pick up our copy of the Tulsa World— the little asshole kid on our paper route always knocks Gabi's flower pots over with it, like he's playing some kind of carnival game. When I look up, he stands in my driveway like a housing developer, his eye appraising, ready to bulldoze the entire street to put up a new apartment complex. He stands in my driveway like he's holding court and expects me to bow.

I pick up the paper and flip through a couple of headlines— the police blotter catches my eye— before I deign to acknowledge his presence. Force my hand not to tremble like I'm a drunk coming off a three-day bender. "You need directions?" I ask with affected nonchalance. "You're a long way from home."

Swear I've managed to forget what he looks like, his features melding into Alberto's melding into my father's like I've got a terminal case of face blindness. The fact that he's completely revamped his fashion sense doesn't help; he's rolled up here in a silver Thunderbird, wearing a fur coat, for fuck's sake. It doesn't intimidate me as much as it embarrasses me on his behalf, same way I wanted to bury myself alive when he was trying to show off on the Curtises' front lawn. The stink of desperate bravado rolls off him like the sweat that must be staining his armpits, under that thing. Oklahoma winters don't get that cold.

"Your arrogance has always been through the fucking roof, you know that?" is his opening shot. "Standin' in front of this shack, with your mugrosa wife—"

"You call her that again, you're gonna be findin' out exactly what fabrics your dry cleaner can get blood—"

"Like you got shit to be proud of in this life. Like you get to look down your nose at me."

I'm not some teenager anymore, with a temper that pops off like a bottle rocket in the Safeway parking lot. Instead, I wrest enough self-control back to school my face, which I know will infuriate him more than anything I could say in response. "What are you doin' here?" A sharp breeze picks up, whipping hair into my eyes and obscuring my vision. Luis is a busy man. He wouldn't show up here just to call me a worthless disappointment, a pussy ass coward with no stomach for violence, a traitor to my entire family— that's a task he delegates to Curly, these days. "Might be a shack, but it's my fuckin' shack, and I'm lord and master 'round here. I ain't invitin' you for no drink with my woman and kid inside."

"You Kinging now, Timmy?"

The mask shatters like he brought the heel of his hand down on it. "There ain't no more Kings," I say shortly, trying not to reveal more than he already knows. It's a partial truth, anyway. Whatever Diego and his couple of friends out on parole have planned, they're never rebuilding that crumbled empire— and thank God for that, considering the real moneymaker Joe was pushing. "Even if I was still involved with that kind of shit to begin with."

"Then how come I heard that you and Diego Lopez was gettin' real cozy the other night, makin' all sorts of plans?"

"You got some kind of spy network set up all over the city now, you that paranoid?" I'm kicking myself for my lack of caution, my time out of the game's already made me dangerously careless. Luis, for all that he is, is very, very good at what he does— and nowhere on the Ribbon is a deserted truck stop on the outskirts of town. I shouldn't have been holding that conversation anywhere it could've been overheard.

"No, your dipshit cuñado was gettin' sloppy on the North, yesterday afternoon, braggin' about the crew he's started to assemble to anybody that would listen. Your name just happened to come up more often than anyone else's."

Five years ago, Diego might've been a rich boy in way further over his head than he ever expected, not raised on the devil's backbone like the rest of us, but he'd never be this stupid. This just cements my certainty that I can't get involved with whatever he's stirring up, that it'll be a one-way ticket back inside the four walls of Big Mac, which already succeeded at liquifying his brains into soup. "You got tired of takin' my orders, huh," Luis says flatly, not giving me any quarter to protest. "Figured you deserved to be in the driver's seat, you was all done ridin' shotgun. Like you wouldn't have ended up with everything I have eventually."

Luis wanted a motive, when I left. Went digging for one like a homicide detective, trying to figure out when I'd reached the point of no return, if he could've done something— anything— to prevent it. And like I'm talking to a cop, I don't confirm or deny shit, let him believe he's got me dead to rights. "I have work soon, if you can imagine what a day of that looks like," I say, digging one hand into the pocket of my pajama pants. Find a stray cigarette, pick at the paper until dried-up pieces of tobacco crumble between my fingers. "Spit it out already. You didn't come here for no gossip session like we're a couple of viejas on the porch."

"You're right." I can tell even in the dim glow from the streetlight that what he's pulled out is a check. Third time in about as many weeks that somebody's waved money in front of my nose, and I'd be more likely to reach for this if it was a poisonous tarantula. "I'm here to buy you off." He allows himself the beginnings of a nasty smile. "Promise it'll be enough to fix that rust bucket you call a car."

"Get fucked."

"That any way to talk to someone offerin' you two and a half grand free and clear?" The smile expands when despite my best efforts, I can't keep my eyes from widening, as he flaunts the amount in my face like a peacock fanning his feathers out. Jesus fucking Christ, he's handing me a decent percentage of my yearly salary as easy as he tips his pool cleaner. "You always did love bitin' the hand that feeds you."

"Free and clear," I scoff like I'm trying to get a hairball out, cross my arms over my chest. I doubt I'm intimidating him, posturing in my drawers when I know he's packing under that coat, but it at least makes me feel better. "You think you was bein' subtle, sendin' Curly down here with all those mysterious envelopes? I know what you're—"

"I wouldn't let you back into the outfit if you begged me on your fucking knees." The sheer vitriol in his voice, the way it sinks down into a lower register altogether, manages to shut me up. "Don't flatter yourself, now. I want you to take that check, replace this beater in your driveway with somethin' that'll take you over the Arkansas River Bridge, and do what you should've done two years ago: skipped town."

I could've, after I'd gotten out of Big Mac and the halfway house and off parole, like Angela and Ponyboy had already long since taken off by then. Left behind all my old memories and mistakes, driven with the sunset at my back to become a new man; the great American cowboy myth and all that shit, getting to reinvent yourself. You might think that what tied me down to Tulsa, OK was not wanting to make Gabi have to choose between me and the rest of her family, hell, maybe a lingering sense of obligation to look out for Curly and keep the lights on over Ma's head. I wish I could say that too, instead of the honest truth, which is:

"Why should I have to go nowhere?" The demand spews out of me like I'm the busted pipe under Darry's sink, sprays him right in the face. "This city ain't your personal fuckin' kingdom, last I checked, you think you get to exile me like you own it? I stay out of your territory, sure, but that's 'cause I got nothin' worth doing over there no more."

I know better — I did know better— but Luis and I walk around with the nuclear codes for pissing each other off. "I tried the carrot, but I forgot you never listen to anything except the stick." He makes a sign of a gun with his hand, jams the tip of his pointer finger into the center of my forehead; he used to make the sign of the cross the same way, in the exact same spot. He's close enough I can feel the warmth of his breath against my face, see the pulse in the side of his neck— when did I get taller than him? "You sell so much as one bag of grass in my territory, Timmy, I'll put a bullet in your skull myself."

I almost burst out laughing, the threat is so fucking absurd, have to chew on the inside of my cheek to keep the sound from spilling out. Like the director is going to yell cut any moment now, acknowledge the script needs to be rewritten, tone down the melodrama. "You're gonna do what, now?"

It'd be easier if I could make a monster out of him, erase twenty-four years of history and tell this story any other way. His jaw is clenched hard enough to snap the cord of muscle, like if he opens his mouth again, he'll take it all back. "I let you walk, even though I had every goddamned right in the world to kill you, jump you out— not that you're grateful for it, you just reckon it's your due. But if you think you been playin' me for a fool this whole time, pretendin' to go straight…"

"You keepin' a hit list of your nephews now?" A wild, terrible recklessness runs my mouth against my conscious will; I'm too afraid to be afraid anymore. "You that worried you're gonna get overthrown?"

I never threw that at him like a bucket of acid before, no matter how bitter and violent things got between us— and in our family, you were the perp, the victim, or the bystander every day. I heard through the grapevine (Curly refused to discuss it, which is how I know it's true) that he's pinned a guy's arms with a tire, doused him with gasoline, and lit a match— shot him after maybe thirty seconds, but still. The fact that I can get him to falter, even for a moment, floods me with savage pride. "Mercedes was right," he says, the obvious comeback, but knowing that doesn't make it sting any less. "It should've been you. Santi never would've disgraced his family like this. Broken all our fucking hearts."

He punches a hole in his own windshield after he sits back down in the driver's seat. I'm still as strangely calm now, as I watch him wreck that sweet little Ford from my vantage point on the porch like it's a stranger having a fit, even while I half-expect him to come stab me through my traitor's heart with a shard of broken glass; he gives me one last look, whether of anguish or hatred, I can't tell. I wonder how he'll explain the damage, but I shouldn't. Luis could replace that windshield every time a bird shat on it, if he wanted, and he doesn't answer to anybody anymore.

When I was thirteen, I snuck out to try to find the man who almost killed me, like I ever stood a chance in no rematch. Maybe because I didn't stand a chance. The beating Luis gave me, after he dragged me home, was Biblical in its proportions; Alberto had to pull him off me, or else he probably would've kept going until he'd dislocated his arm from the socket. Crying and cussing the whole time, you don't think we've buried enough people already?; he's a menace in my memory, but he must've only been twenty-two or so, younger than I am now. I want to ask him if his violence is the only way he's ever known how to show me love, if threatening to murder me is the pinnacle, the inevitable conclusion. If the only people he can love are dead, since they can no longer surprise him.

I wait until he's rounded the corner to give the screen door a savage kick, on my way back inside.

I might as well be a wet leaf plastered to the wall of our leaky gutter, smoking from one of Tim's packs out on the porch. I swear the nicotine's seeping into my milk supply particle by particle, waiting to poison my now-sleeping baby, and I'll have to wash my hands and change my clothes before I touch her again— but right now, I just don't care enough to let that stop me, and considering what everyone else I know is getting up to these days, it seems like a pretty trivial vice. When I was a senior in high school, I used to sneak onto the roof with my friend Lainey, giggling violently as we passed a stolen cigarette back and forth and gossiped about who was pinning her skirt up, whether or not Sister Michaela actually stashed a bottle of single malt whiskey in her desk drawer, my dangerous new boyfriend, who I'd tell her about going all the way with so long as she kept it zipped. Flicking the butt onto the street below once we were done, like it might light the whole city block up, like we could do anything, before we went to go scrub our fingertips clean of the smell.

I stub this one out when it burns so far down, it singes me, making me yelp; it smolders against the damp wood, leaving a dark splotch of soot behind. Then I light another, and breathe in until my lungs crackle with the burn, until I can't possibly go any deeper.

What in the hell am I going to do, then?

I can't confront him in hopes of getting the truth, he'd just deny it. I made a half-hearted attempt at digging through the pockets of the jeans he slung in the laundry hamper, like he'd be obvious enough to leave a handkerchief with a lipstick kiss or a restaurant dinner receipt behind, and of course came up with nothing except lint and loose change. What cards do I even have left to play, showing up to his construction site, Neni on my hip, to see if he actually clocks into work every morning? Throwing his clothes out onto the lawn and dousing them in gasoline, hanging up a banner on the overpass, like I'm the narrator in a tacky country song? Going down to wherever Bonnie's staying and demanding answers, the most desperate, down-to-the-wire option of all? Even if she were willing to talk— even if it's her to begin with— it's not even her home to wreck.

What remains to me is what I'm really going to do about it, the inevitable conclusion I'm hurtling towards— nothing at all, just like my least favorite aunt. Maybe I'll learn some real valuable lessons about endurance and humility while I'm at it.

Even as I second-guess myself, worry the fabric of my skirt with my free hand, I've got nobody else to run my thoughts by except the rabbit scurrying across the lawn. My friends from convent school, like Lainey, they got married right after graduation to plumbers and dental hygienists and accountants— and Tim proposed, and I turned him down, and then he went upstate, and I waited for him, and when I finally managed to bob my head above the choppy waves, they were gone. No dramatic falling-out or hair-pulling fights, just phone calls spaced farther and farther apart and plans for visits that didn't materialize. And I could never, in a million years, tell Lucy or Eileen or the other women I'm friendly with now. There's nothing more embarrassing than having a man who steps out— even worse than a man who hits, drinks too much, sleeps the day away in front of the TV. I can just hear Lucy now, behind my back, her voice a cross between pitying and smug: Harvey might be a lazy bum, sure, but at least when he's popping the tab on a Budweiser and sitting down to watch All in the Family, I know exactly where he is. Unlike poor Gabi. Honeymoon's really over for her, huh?

As for my family… Ximena and I aren't on such great terms lately, and if I let her get so much as a hint of what's going on in my marriage, I'm afraid I'll put her off the concept for life— and besides, I don't confide in her that way. Diego likes Tim more than me. I'd rather prop my eyelids open with toothpicks than have to tell Papi, accept all his self-satisfaction and listen to his I told you so's until his tongue fell out of his mouth. What would I even do with myself afterwards, if I went crawling back to him with my tail between my legs? Get a divorce, and never be able to step inside a church again? Try to negotiate custody with a seventh-month-old, who can barely support her own head? Would it really be so much worse to—

I just don't want to be my aunt, either, searching for the speck of dust in every other family as she ignores the log stabbing straight through her own eye. I'm not that pathetic, not that much of a pushover— I left Tenoch, he hit me enough times, I left Tim for lying to me, heck, I turned down his first marriage proposal flat. It's not all about love, bein' with somebody. I can't trust you.

"The trouble is," I tell the rabbit with a bleak laugh, as he sits up on his haunches and surveils me with suspicious eyes, "puttin' aside all the practical stuff, the real issue is that I still love him. He's about the first person in my life that's thought I was worth looking after."

"I'm fine," I tell my sister, despite the fact that about twelve hours ago, I was bleeding out on an operating table with my organs strewn across my stomach. Even manage to add half of an eyeroll to the end of the sentence, though moving anything right now sends a fresh shockwave of pain through my body— worse than that is the visceral, caged animal discomfort of being trapped in a hospital bed, the fluorescent lights feeling as bright with my eyes closed as with them open. "Really. It could've been a lot worse."

Her face bears the ashen tinge of a three-day-old corpse, like she's the one who almost died; if she squeezed my hand any tighter, I imagine it disintegrating into dust, blown away by the ventilation system. I was coming out with the same gems right after I got shot, convincing my frantic siblings, my enraged daddy, even the cops who interviewed me that it was no big deal— a flesh wound, a kid messing around, an almost-tragedy that ended up playing out more like a farce. I'm just exhausted at this point, grease caked deep into my scalp and hair, reciting lines with a mouth made drooly and slack by the lingering effects from a morphine drip. Maybe I'm a terrible person, sure, but I'm sick to the plaque-caked teeth of dealing with her right now, having to reassure her that of course I'm okay, of course nothing could ever hurt me or kill me like Mami. I want them to bring back my baby already, a primal itch I can't scratch with empty arms, and then I finally want—

"Do I get to come in now, or am I still supposed to be smokin' cigars in the fucking waitin' room?" and I have never been so happy to hear Tim be rude to somebody in my life. Stray curls stick out all over his head, as he bursts into the room like a bear chased him the entire way downtown; the hollows underneath his eyes are cavernous, and he's wearing an overlarge t-shirt stolen from Curly that I've definitely tried to turn into a dust rag before, a hole ripping through Altamont 1969 in cracked letters across the front. He turns to Ximena with annoyance so thinly-veiled, you can see right through the tissue paper. "Can we have a damn moment? Finally?"

In her younger and brattier days, either she would've protested his tone or I would've protested him cussing her like she's Angela, but this is a special occasion. My nose is already starting to sting once she's out the door, the effort to keep from crying radiating into my fingertips; I can't maintain the façade of nonchalance any longer, as he reaches for me, gentle like I could shatter if he applies too much force. Or at least detach from an IV. "Hey, baby, c'mere," he says, low and soothing, as I begin to unravel. I try to loop my arms around his neck and don't have the range of motion, end up burying my face into one of the holes, tears falling on bare skin. "I got you now. My brave girl."

It's only an encounter with Luis that has me so off-kilter, like a toy sailboat tipped over in a bathtub, that I'd consider it. There's no other explanation for why I'm greeting Dave fucking Hayes, approaching me at the end of a particularly godawful workday, with anything but a raised middle finger when he asks, "are you sure you don't want to head out for a drink with some of the guys?"

I'm struggling to think of anything that would fill me with more soul-crushing, existential despair than pounding shots with 'the guys', on some random Tuesday, in the kind of dead-end bar that has weeknight specials on pitchers of beer. Listening to them bitch about how their wives give them chore lists and won't put out, how the electricity bill's going to be late again, how their snot-nosed kids whine around the clock for new toys when they can't even afford to replace their school clothes. Just one big festering pile of human misery, and I can already smell the stink coming off it. "I'll pass, thanks." My fingers curl around the handle of my truck door, tug slightly until I feel the latch give. Christ, that thing's almost about to break off, ain't it. "I gotta get home."

I don't really want to, if I'm being honest with myself, but I can't put off the inevitable much longer than a twelve hour shift, either. Without making it look like Daddy went out for a pack of smokes and never came back, anyway.

"Just one drink." He gives me the kind of smile Curly always used to get me to let him have another beer, play the role of Snarling Thug #2 on jobs, come to a party long past what should've been his damn bedtime. It worked more often than I like to admit now. "Then I'll forever hold my peace, promise, you decide you can't stand me: I will never bug you again. But you need enough exposure to me to make an educated decision."

I'm ready to ask him if he's expecting a happy ending to our date tonight, once he's finished talking me into his backseat, but then my mouth contorts into a 'yes', and I let go of the handle.

I've never spent much time in this kind of honky-tonk place before, even Buck's has a thicker coating of seediness, underneath the cowboy hats and spurred boots. The tinny jukebox plays old Elvis hits, Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Can't Help Falling in Love on repeat, while a few teenage couples stumble around, giggling, on a makeshift dance floor; some guy in uniform, regulation gun still hanging off his belt, dribbles Heineken all over his front in the corner— what is this, a fucking cop bar? I've got it, the perfect theory. Dave's an undercover who, by their standards, is both a Juilliard-worthy actor and master of espionage. His mission is two-fold: to try to get me to narc on anything I might even be thinking about doing, and to drive me insane.

"Can't stay too long," I say, cutting this all short once more as I slide into a barstool that sways beneath my weight, "Neni's teethin'."

It's the second time in a row I'm using my daughter as a convenient excuse, passing myself off as the kind of upstanding family man I've only ever seen on TV, and it's making me itch under the collar. I didn't want to have her, or at the very least, I needed some serious persuasion to get down to it so quick— and not just because I'd earned a damn break from wiping ass and breaking up catfights over Play-Doh. I spent my whole life raising my mama's kids, but when they went wrong, I had bare minimum three other suspects to blame for how they turned out. My own? I don't get to sit up on no high horse, point fingers like it had nothing to do with me. Like that sign on Truman's desk: the buck stops here.

But Gabi wanted a baby. Hell, let's rephrase that— for some reason, she wanted my baby. And I'd put that poor woman through so much of my shit over the years, I figured for once, she deserved a sacrifice from me in return. If I knew the sheer amount of trouble it would cause, worse than any diaper blowout or case of cradle cap, would I—

I shove that thought down deep, along with a patterned bar napkin into the pocket of my jeans. Love ain't about want or don't want, sometimes, you just have to do it.

"Were you in Nam?"

"What?" Hell of an opener from him, he could've at least waded into the shallow end with a question about the Sooners, or if I'm thinking about getting any pets. I take a swig of my beer— ice-cold, this place has that much going for it— to brace myself for whatever he's got coming down the pike next.

"You keep watchin' the doorway like somebody's fixin' to burst through it with a machine gun."

Oh, hell, this is priceless, a real Kodak moment. Dave here's no smooth undercover operator— he thinks I'm a veteran. Next, he's going to hand me a flyer from the VA advertising discounted rates for group therapy. "When I got sentenced, the judge thought he was bein' real generous, offered me the chance to do a tour." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, as I recall the thrilling conclusion to State v. Timothy Shepard, one of those Robert Frost-type forks in the road. I'm the kind of drunk that talks, and he becomes marginally less annoying with every gulp. "I told him to just send my ass to jail. Better the devil you know."

It seemed like the better end of the Faustian bargain at the time— I figured whatever they did to me in the slammer, it couldn't be worse than having all four limbs blown off by a landmine, or getting black syphilis, or whatever turned Sodapop into the worst strung-out junkie I'd ever seen. It just sounds so cheap and tawdry explaining this to some cornfed All-American, who wouldn't know the score around here if it slapped him in the face. When you're in Nam, you get to come back to a ticker tape parade and a veteran discount at Howard Johnson's; I've seen and done a hell of a lot of violence, in my life, but I don't know if anyone would be willing to give me a medal for it. I'm no hero. Just a washed-up gangbanger, long past his expiration date, hanging around bars like a high school quarterback who blew his ACL out senior year 'but could've gone pro'. Reduced to twitching at shadows.

I didn't have a single fucking clue what big boy prison was like, either, for the record.

"Did you get a felony deferment?" He doesn't sound too judgemental about it; sort of interested, in fact. He leans forward like we're about to compare jail ink, war stories of a different kind.

"Nah." I don't know what's compelling me to tell him the truth, when I could've gone with anything, including the excuse he just dropped in my lap. Pretended to be a Quaker. Told this rubbernecking hick to fuck off. Any secret you keep long enough— even one of mine— starts demanding out like a kitten trapped in a suitcase. "I got a 4F."

In the circles I ran in, we pretty much exhausted every possible draft exemption known to man, from 'injected speed between my toes' to 'wore lingerie to the medical exam'. There's a number of reasons why I could've made them regret ever taking me on as a cadet, but there's only one they actually scrawled down in my file, a real catch-all term— not physically, morally, or mentally fit for military service.

"You flat-footed or somethin'? Heart murmur?"

Shot, chaser. I smile at him, look down at the thick, ropey scar on my forearm. "I'm completely batshit insane."

Manic depression has a strong genetic link. Tell me some more about your mother, Tim.

You're saying she would stay in bed for weeks at a time, drinking heavily and taking prescription sedatives. Couldn't hold down a steady job because of her depressive episodes, either. You were largely responsible for looking after your younger siblings, in her absence—

We don't call it 'drunk' or 'crazy' anymore, Tim. I don't like those terms— or 'bitch', for that matter. She abused substances and suffered from severe, unmedicated mental illness. Let's call it what it is.

Then at other times, she would have fits of energy, even aggression. Become obsessed with religion and the salvation of her family. Bring home strange men, not even come home at all, again, for weeks at a time—

Let's not use 'slut', either, please. Hypersexuality is a very common symptom of mania.

You stopped sleeping?

Your brother thought you were on amphetamines? Cocaine, specifically?

You saw your cousin's… body? Am I getting that right?

Tim? Are you still with me?