Late on Christmas night, Angelo was sick of the theatre. He hated the smell of the popcorn, loathed the sticky squishing pad of spilled soft drinks the rug had become. He cursed the omnipresent bass thrum of movies in session.
There was no one in the lobby, so these wayward three were coming in late. There was a man with a face like a pancake, his tan skin shiny, with a mustache that flowed thickly from his nostrils. He had a little girl on his hip, her knobby knees scraped and textured by her protruding bones. By their side labored another skinny kid, his bowl cut in his eyes and his steps worth a quarter of all his father’s.
Angelo was sweeping up beside the counter, and hating the very sight of popcorn crushed into the floor, so the father didn't think twice about approaching. He dug into his pockets, and was still digging by the time Angelo moodily slumped his way over to the counter.
Hurry, Angelo thought, watching this incessant search. More and more coins came loose, stacked into tight piles. The little girl hadn't taken her eyes off Angelo yet.
Angelo finally met her gaze-for-gaze. She looked up at the board above his head, and then she looked back over at him, and smiled.
Angelo wondered about the last time he'd ever seen excitement in its purest form like that. She was so frail that she only trembled with excitement, adopting the glow of a child so repressed that she could not risk a whoo-hoo.
"I got it, man," he suddenly confessed, as surprised as anyone else, and dug a twenty out of his pocket. He tapped the keys on his register and was rewarded for his efforts by an empty drawer.
Of course. The end of the night. This put a kink in the plan, but then he saw missing teeth in that little girl’s smile and knew in some neglected corner of his inner self what he had to do.
"I guess maybe I'll just go with you. Uh." That was when he realized the father hadn't actually reacted to a word he’d said. "It's okay, it's okay," he said with a gesture at the pile of coins and a sudden accent that he found revoltingly offensive. "It's covered,."
The little girl had his back. She leaned over, exhaling a silvery, "Paaaapiii," and said it all in a way that finally made the light come to Papi's eyes.
He pointed at Angelo. He exclaimed, with widened eyes, and the little girl laughed into her hands until her cheeks were ruddy.
Papi adjusted the girl on his hip and offered his hand. Angelo found he didn't know quite how to smile in a situation like this, but tried anyway and gave the worst handshake of his life.
The little girl slid from her father's grasp and set upon him immediately. She was his greatest admirer, though with little competition from her brother, who only occupied the shadow of his father's leg.
But she was radiant, flashing her dimples, leading the way.
"We're going to see Frozen," she announced. It was said like a secret she could keep no longer.
"I know," said Angelo. "You got the tickets from me, remember?"
"Don't be a smartass," she replied cheerily, slipping through the theater door. Her father walked on, his ears out of tune with his daughter's potty mouth.
Angelo thought it was the cleverest, most devious thing.
Inside the theatre, the chill air set upon them immediately. He naturally extended his coat to the girl -- "Mini!" she'd proudly exclaimed -- and they bundled up and settled down to watch the movie together.
Angelo learned the boy's name was Rafaelo from the barked commands of his father. Their father had attempted an introduction as well, grunting out a strained, "Oscar," before they'd run out of things they could conceivably say to one another.
Mini, actually Herminia, Angelo later found out, and felt terrible for her upon learning it, was an exuberant translator. "Papi says thank you," she said between mouthfuls of popcorn. One of the staff had come round to offer the last batch of the night to the two waif troopers in movie staff jackets. Raffa slumped nervously into the oversized garment every time an usher brushed on by.
By the third act, Mini had fallen asleep on Angelo's shoulder, which Angelo took as another dastardly scheme. He reckoned this one could get her claws in deep.
By the time his girlfriend swung by to pick him up in their car, he'd proven his own theory. He was reluctant to hand Mini, slumped in sleep over his arm, over to her father. Before they left, he could not resist tucking his jacket up under her chin.
Oscar and Angelo exchanged another look and nod that they both simultaneously understood and couldn't understand, and Raffa gave him one more wary look out from under his makeshift cape.
Angelo couldn't figure out whether or not he wanted to talk about this with Nicole. He knew she would most likely laugh at him; even if she was impressed with what he did on the inside, she'd throw out a comment about trying to make up bad karma at the end of the year instead, and Angelo felt this was bigger than all that.
Angelo shot her a weak smile as he spied her and the car. It was technically his car, but one didn't really argue over ownership of a vehicle like this. You could hear rust rattling inside the muffler, your hand dared not venture far into the cracks in the seats lest it come back sticky or not at all, and lately, it had been exhaling gray smoke that fogged up the windshield and made driving a risky endeavor.
Never mind that the inspection sticker was bad and Nic's license probably was too. Or maybe she’d straightened it out. It was a never-ending cycle Angelo could never keep up with.
The gray smoke was exactly the foe Nic was contending with the moment Angelo walked outside and lit himself a cigarette. He pulled his hoodie sleeves up around his fingers, free hand tucked under his arm while he assessed the damage.
Nic looked dressed up for something and moody. Her makeup was smeared, her dark hair come undone in that jagged way that thick, heat-straightened hair did.
"Why do you look so happy?" she asked. "We still have to live through the ride home."
"I don't wanna say," Angelo confessed, looking over his shoulder. He could still make out the family, huddled around each other for the walk back.
"Who're they?"
"Just some customers. Hey," he said, suddenly brave, suddenly moved. "I gotta tell you something--"
"Can it wait?" Nic asked. "The car's broken."
"What do you mean?" Angelo hated this fucking thing. A glimpse under the hood always brought with it a sense of vertigo, a whiff of uselessness that Angelo always felt opening his eyes underwater and realizing how out of place he was in the ocean. "Aw, Nic, don't say that."
"I am saying it," Nic replied. "This thing ain't moving."
"Great. It's only a five hour walk home." Angelo sat down on the sidewalk. He was going to have a moment, no matter what, where the world would just crush down on him and he would either violently implode or explode. The jury was still out on which.
Nic knew. She sat next to him and lightly leaned her head against his shoulder. She breathed calmly, and now Angelo couldn't help but do the same.
"... Okay," he said finally. "What now?"
"Sleep in the car," she said. "Not like it's a first for us. It wasn't even that bad when we were out in Massachusetts."
"Because you had the coat," Angelo reminded her, not unkindly. "Hey, what are you doing here?"
"Who?" Nic lifted her head off Angelo's shoulder, and there she met Mini for the first time. Mini gestured with the floppy sleeves of her jacket, her father and brother waiting behind her.
"He says come on," she informed them. "Car's not moving. His cousin will come get it in the morning."
"What?" Angelo caught Nic by the hand, Nic who was searching out his eyes like she could divine some sense there. "You don't have to take us in on account of a dumb--” Angelo knew better than to finish that sentence, with the look Mini was giving him. “-- because I spotted you for a movie. Tell him thank you but--"
"No. You'll die out here," she informed him matter of factly.
"I don't think I'll die out here," Angelo protested. He looked at Nicole, shivering, night ruined. "But okay. We'll... I'll figure some way to repay you."
"No. Our house isn't all that great anyway," Mini confessed, walking by them rather than beside her family. Her boys would look back at them every so often, but those glances were fleeting, even panicked at times.
"It's got a roof, don't it?" Nic asked. Her tone pleased Mini, who would resume the rest of the walk balancing precariously atop the stone outcropping of the surrounding corporate lawns. Her father hissed "mini" every so often, but her course never erred.
"An okay one. It keeps most of the water out. Not like the last place. It's my father's cousin's. Tio Javi. He rents it to us."
The corporate buildings fell away, leaving rust and discord. Lawns were escaping all over the neighborhood, piling mutinously against the creaky steel fences lining each residence. Every home had a lopsided door, at least one window boarded in wood. There wasn't a functional screen door in sight and the porches boasted uniformly tilted stairs.
Ascending one of these stairs, Angelo was first acquainted with the house. It sagged and leaned like it couldn't go on much longer. The floorboards underfoot were dappled with cracked paint and squealed like a pig at the butcher with every step you took. Angelo squeezed Mini's hand and stood by her shoulder.
Oscar fumbled with the door. The house smelled like good, zesty cooking inside, with a bottom note of settling architecture. The couch did not match the chair, white leather and rough plaid respectively, and the TV set was riddled with fingerprints and ages old. The dining room was not far, with matching wooden chairs that might have once been a part of a proud set, a mismatched table with a glass top and a black steel frame, and a short, squat lamp in the center. Someone had their school books splayed over the surface.
Oscar took Raffa upstairs and Mini unfolded blankets from the closet. She coached Nic and Angelo through the unfolding of the couch bed, and it was only by miracle that not one of them lost a finger.
She set their bed with the ease and professionalism of a five star maid, fluffing their pillows and crooking the TV toward their estimated line of sight. She disappeared only momentarily, and then returned with fresh drinks, lemons slumped over the rims of their glasses.
"Wow," Nic remarked, tugging her into bed. "Classy. You've done this before?"
"Nope. But I always wanted to." Mini looked charmed, rolling over in Nic's lap. "Nobody but Tio comes over anymore."
"That's sad, kid," Nic said. "This place is a good home. Good people live here."
This was better than explaining his day. Mini explained it for him anyway, more theatrically and so much more compelling than he could have.
"He took a stack of bills out of his pocket. Like this!"
And Mini wasn't afraid to exaggerate. Angelo resolved not to deny any of her claims, answering each surprised look from Nic with an impassive shrug.
Mini showed no signs of going, and Nic had ended up wedged into the nook between the back of the couch and its armrest anyway. Angelo had his distance, over on the opposing side of the couch, but it still felt warmer than his apartment ever had.
His eyes had just barely closed, listening to a formidable tempest of questions from Mini's drowsy, yet rapid-fire inquisition, when she asked, "What's it like to have a boyfriend?"
"Boyfriend?" Nic echoed. This was too weird a subject to broach with a little girl. Mini already suspected she was wrong and looked back and forth between them, reassessing.
"Brother?"
"Friend," Nic supplied. That wasn't it either, and Angelo pretended to sleep to hide the hurt he felt at her not just agreeing with the kid in the first place.
"Do you live together?" was Mini's next question.
"Yes."
"So you never ..." Mini betrayed them both by being as wise as children usually are. Nic took it in stride; Angelo could not help his eyes widening.
"That's none of your beeswax," she said, drawing Mini's hair away from her face. There were little red spots on her cheeks, symptoms of some kind of ignored allergy. Angelo didn't miss the tender way Nic brushed her fingertips across them. "You'd tell."
"I wouldn't!" Mini protested, but that was enough confirmation for a smart girl like her. She and Nic were closer now, some kind of savvy female unit that by default made Angelo feel dumb as a brick.
Of course, Mini ended up sleeping with them that night and waking up before they ever did. Mini had breakfast made and her little brother dressed and out of bed. Angelo was too surprised and too humbled to stay in bed that much longer after, but Nic was a different story.
Eventually, Mini had her little fingers buried in Nic's armpits and there was no way she was sleeping through the scratching, if not the tickling. Nic wasn't a morning person, but she managed to smooth over a smile and accept a cup of coffee in bed.
"You don't have work?" Mini asked, always wherever Nic was and never far away at that. Angelo had taken up residence at the table beside Raffa, who was toying with a bowl of sugary cereal, contemplating all the marshmallows that floated to the top.
"We work at night," Nic explained. "Ang works at the theatre and the restaurant. I work at a different kind of theatre, the one with the big stage where people put on plays."
"Have you ever met anyone famous?"
Oh, did Nic have stories for her. Even Raffa was compelled to look up, recognizing a Miley Cyrus here or there. Nic knew how to put on a good show too, having both a firm grasp of characterization and as much integrity as Mini when it came to loyally recounting the events of an evening.
The front door opened before Raffa even got a mouthful of that cereal, revealing a man so clean cut and polished that Angelo couldn't believe it when Mini introduced him as Tio Javi, a mechanic from the shop down the street. Actually, Javier owned the place --and this house, and a couple of ambitious duplexes throughout the neighborhood. This one was the loneliest, Mini proclaimed, while Javier stood by stoicly. "It has the least families."
"That's good. All to yourself, like I promised Papi when he moved out here." Angelo did not miss the strain in Javier's smile. "And you are the strays."
"And we are the strays." Javier couldn't have been older than Angelo himself, both of them waffling between their twenties and thirties until one of them finally gave in and surrendered the youth they were squandering with ceaseless, back-breaking labor anyway. Javier had a presence too old for the smooth lines of his face and the trendy haircut he sported like a second, perfect skin. His clothes were ironed and pristine, a troubling sight in the company of Angelo's wrinkled work clothes and moth-eaten hoodie.
Nic didn't care, though. She had a kind of sexy lowborn appeal when her hair was a mess and her shirt was sagging off one shoulder. Javier, like Mini, warmed to her immediately.
"As long as it's not the alternator," Javier explained, smiling for Nic, "we should have you back home in a few hours."
"It's the alternator," Javier said, letting the hood of the car slam shut with a cough. He wasn't the only one; the car had also hacked and wheezed until Javier couldn't fiddle anymore life out of her. "I can drive you back home."
"I actually work right around the corner," Angelo said, panicking internally. As much as he didn't want to impose: "Would it be cool if I hung here til then?"
"I gotta go in a bit, but I don't mind. I'm sure my cousin won't either. It's good to see someone with the kids."
This was it. Nic and Mini were doing their own thing on the lawn, a cartwheel competition with no rules that Angelo could confidently deduce.
In this kind of seclusion, Angelo couldn't help himself. "He still hasn't come down from his room."
"Yeah, and he won't," Javier said, as forthcoming as it came. "Their mother ain't around no more. He gets tired."
"Maybe it's good that Nic watches them. She's good with kids, no matter what you might think." The gothic taint that stuck with her from her formative years always put parents on edge around her, even if it was just in the subtle frankness of her nature.
Javier didn't seem to mind though. He saw through, to the same gap-toothed smile on Mini's face that Angelo was stuck on.
"It is good. I gotta be out though, okay?" Javier welcomed Angelo into a handshake, one Angelo performed remarkably better at, and Javier whispered as he pulled him in, "You fuck with my family and you die, son."
"Please," Angelo replied, looking him in the eye. Javier just shrugged and walked away, but not before he was mobbed by a sobbing goodbye from Mini. One got the impression they went through this ritual every time they parted ways.
That night at work, Angelo was excited to go home for the first time in a long time. Not just because he got to take a load off, but because he was genuinely excited to meet the people there.
This was compounded by a moment at the very end of his shift when he looked through the glass windows of the foyer and saw Nic and Mini peering at him from the other side, with a mischievous smile apiece and Raffa hid securely behind them both. Angelo ached, his skin burned under his uniform, and his feet screamed with every step, but he felt light on his toes when he saw them.
Outside wasn't good, the wind agitated into a screaming frenzy. He ushered them in and set them up with a huge mug of hot coffee to share and three straws to argue portions by. They made quick work of the syrupy concoction and Nic and Mini quizzed him on movie theater minutiae.
"Do you have all the tickets for tomorrow?" Mini asked.
"The computer does that."
"Have you washed the windows?"
Angelo yawned. "Kind of. I'm gonna leave most of the work for evening shift."
"Angelo is wildly irresponsible," Nic explained. "That's why I don't work with him."
"I like movies better than plays," Mini professed. "Why don't you work here instead?"
"You wouldn't like movies better if you got to see what goes into making a play," Nic replied.
"Could I?"
"Maybe if you're good, kiddo. We gotta ask your Papi."
"He'll say yes." Mini looked at Angelo for help. "He won't say no."
"We'll ask Tio Javi instead," Angelo decided. "I'm ready to go."
"You're done?" Mini looked around skeptically.
"I said I'm ready to go, not done. At a job," Angelo told her, "your work is never done."
Angelo had two sides. There was his Father's side, thankfully absent, a void that he could fill to no limit with imagining. Angelo's last true memory of his father was actually a keepsake of a memory that wasn’t his. He had been sorting through his mother's cookie tins, time capsules, really, that concealed napkins with phone numbers and browning polaroids with faces Angelo never saw outside of these tins. He recognized his father only because of the disheveled tuft of hair atop his head, the deep lines in his dark skin, and the funny, entirely inappropriate face and stance he'd adopted for the photo. Somewhere inside, Angelo felt his father had to have known that this would be his son's only clear image of him, and he had consciously tampered with that as much as he had tampered with Angelo's sense of identity and heritage.
His mother's side was a weaker side, the side that didn't get away. She was flighty and ignorant to everything serious in the world. People might have thought her brave for rearing a mixed child in a single parent household on lowly tip wages from a network of shitty diners all across the state, but Angelo knew she was only in this position because she hadn't yet realized she oughtn't be. Joan grew up privileged and curiously delighted by her Steinbeckian second life, content at night with the knowledge that she had existed another way, and could again if she really wished it so.
As it goes, Angelo made friends exactly like her, and so he considered Danny as much a part of his heritage as the lightness in his frizzy hair. These weren't friends he made, they were friends he was genetically obligated to maintain, though Danny was always a little too dweeby for his bohemian sensationalist mother to handle.
Being around Danny, Angelo felt his missing half that much harder. He was never sure of who exactly he was supposed to be, a common malady among guys who never caught sight of the full picture and didn't know any concept of family beyond the ones who acted polite in his presence but obviously left him off the family roster in their minds. Danny had all that and more -- an enterprising father setting a good example by his work ethic, a flawed mom who truly cared and kept it together for the kids, even if just barely, a car of his own by the age of sixteen, and the kind of pride that you only found in guys who never had to wonder whether they were supposed to succeed or languish.
Often, Danny annoyed the shit out of Angelo for just these reasons. It would be about a haircut gone awry -- no barber truly knew what to do with the fuzz that grew out of Angelo's skull -- or the cleanliness of the apartment -- a formidable beast, considering work schedules, the physicality of Nic and Angelo's prescribed professions, and, yes, a mounting laziness and sense of futility. It was hard to spend all day fixing up shit when you knew that at the end of the day it'd still be piles of shit, so Nic and Angelo often opted to play video games instead. It was a topic Danny often delighted in, much to Angelo’s chagrin.
But Danny was also the deepest connection Angelo had ever had to another person, so when he asked what was wrong, Angelo didn't cut corners.
"I'm scared," he admitted in front of the only person he felt safe saying those things to. "I don't know what's gonna happen. With the car, with..."
"I could help you."
"No. No, it's not about that, sorry. Please don't. This is my mess. Well, and Nic would always forget to change the oil."
"I don't think that has anything to do with the car exploding," Danny said, and Angelo got the point. But he still wasn't having it.
"There's a family out there too." Danny went quiet; Angelo kept talking. "They're Spanish -- Mexican maybe. I don't know. It really discourages me, seeing how sad their life is. How sad mine is. But, you know--"
"You take a lot of things for granted, yadda yadda." This was exactly the kind of shit Danny didn't have time for. "If anyone has any right to complain, it's you, so don't feel bad. Last winter you didn't even have any heat."
True to his humble beginnings, that didn't seem so big a deal to Angelo, and he found himself embarrassed that Danny had mentioned it for the wrong reasons. It seemed a little hyperbolic and unjustified, comparing it to Mini's situation.
"I had an okay childhood though. These kids I met, they never will. They're really skinny, you know."
"You should call child services."
"Are you fucking kidding? Better there than a foster home any day. Their father isn't so bad--"
"Except he won't get off his ass and feed his kids."
There it was. The generalization. Danny and his ilk were known for that, and it was the wedge that always cropped up between them.
Angelo fought back the same boiling anger that made him sit down on the sidewalk that fateful night, when Mini had come to scoop them up and take them home. He tried to talk as little as possible as Danny drove him back to his shitty apartment, which would continue to be shitty no matter how many grand ideas Danny had about how everyone could be doing better.
They could, Angelo reckoned, walking alone back to his place, but coming from this, who would really believe it?
"Don't freak out," was the first thing Nic said to Angelo that morning. Instantly, his blood ran cold.
"The theatre was late getting our checks out."
Angelo listened with burning ears. This was about rent. It was always about rent.
"They came in today, which is good, because the rent's due."
Ah, there it was. Klaxons crooned away in his mind.
"Came in today... At the theater."
Nic nodded. "We'd have to cash it...at a bank."
"And we have no car." Angelo pressed his hands to his face as hard as he could. "Danny's on his way to Virginia for a school thing. And mom won't be able to get down here because her back or her license or whatever great fiasco is happening now."
Nic snickered. "Mine are conveniently out of state. Taxi?"
"Don't have it."
"I will, but not until I have my check, and no driver's gonna take us around like that on good faith."
"Sure they would. Call Loco Taxi," I begged.
Nic rolled her eyes. "What about Javier?"
"I'd feel bad bothering him."
"You'd feel worse evicted, believe me. Please give it a shot. Don't be a wimp."
"I'm not being a wimp," Angelo explained as patiently as a losing man could.
They were out of options officially a minute later, when Angelo hit Javier's voicemail.
"He's probably already scrapped our car," Angelo moaned, and didn't get away with it. Nic pounded a nice, smarting bruise right into his shoulder.
"You dick."
"Whatever. What do we do now?"
Appealing to the landlord was the plan. They heard him nailing up the notice on the door and mutually agreed that Nic should do the begging. The landlord assured them that it was their responsibility to make sure the rent was paid and remarked that if they weren't out within thirty days, their stuff was going on auction. They had an alternative: make up the bill, with $50 tacked on for every day they spent checkless.
Angelo had just collapsed on the couch, his head in his hands, when the alarm on his cell phone went off, reminding him that he had about an hour to secure a ride to the diner. Nic phoned Loco Taxi and listened to a few rates, opting to hang up without a goodbye.
"No car, no home." Angelo repeated over and over to himself as Nic kissed his hair and held his hand.
They both felt as if their insides had been washed out with fire, their muscles torched, their skin singed tight. It was the crippling effect of losing so thoroughly at adulthood, and it tired them both out significantly.
In the end, they woke only for the sound of knocking on the door. Both of them were dressed to go other places, slept in their wrinkled uniforms and slacks, covered in the sweat of an impromptu mid-day nap. By now, the sky was dark through the bare windows they couldn't afford treatments to cover, the heat on too high even with the winter wind roaring outside.
Angelo patted himself down and opened the door. There was Javier, reading the note they'd forgotten to take off the peephole.
"Mini had my phone," he explained as he took a seat on the couch. "She called my office but I couldn't reach you guys. I thought I'd come over and see if you need a ride."
Angelo bit down the 'too late,' moved as he was by Javier's thoughtfulness. He just smiled and drank the beers that Nic got them, opening up his arms so she could slide in against him. She was feeling just as lousy, just as exhausted, or she'd never venture this close in mixed company.
"You're welcome at the house," Javier was quick to assert. "Oscar don't pay rent. There's a room upstairs I could fix for you."
"It's close to work," Angelo reasoned, but he really thought of Mini and Raffa. Nic, too, knew all about it.
"We'd have to put all this shit in storage," she reminded him, referring to the Frankensteinien medley of mixed furniture they'd picked up from well-meaning relatives and the various garbage dives featuring in their long history of apartment hopping. This was part of the reason why their home was never at its best; it was hard to develop a relationship with this heap that amounted only to other people's discarded, unwanted shit.
"I say we just throw it away. Toss it out the window." Angelo paused. "Just kidding about that last part."
"Nobody would actually fucking do that," Nic protested. "Deal. We take the TV and that's it."
"Maybe the futon," Angelo reasoned. "It just brings back good memories for me."
Nic stared across the room at the bowed, sagging heap of steel too and conceded with a noise. "Guess there's no helping it. How much do you want for rent?"
"I'll take whatever you can afford," Javier said. "Just make sure the lights stay on and the heat works."
"Oh, we're never letting ourselves go without heat again," Angelo replied. "We made a pact."
Javier smiled because he understood, and it felt good to have that.
This was that other side, the part Angelo had no idea about, but that was his birthright. It was a shared struggle, a fatherless existence of just barely scraping by, and it was good to find family.
Family was exactly the feeling that New Year's. Javier managed to make it back from the shop in time to catch the ball touching down on Times Square, ushering in an armload of takeout with him. Oscar even joined them on the couch, patiently abiding by the nest Nic and the children had made on the floor out of all his blankets. Javier sat between him and Angelo, sharing sauces between all three.
By the dawning of the New Year, the old TV had been replaced with the modest flat screen Nic had been able to haggle a guy out of through Craig's List. The futon was, as promised, now cramped into a corner of their shared room. Nic and Mini had officially traded off the three recipes that they each knew, Raffa now said hello when he saw Angelo in the morning, and Oscar was wielding a new monosyllabic English word a day.
Nic and Angelo were the ones whose tongues converted after all. There was no longer bathroom time, but el baño. Tissues weren’t the answer to snot bubbles, but mocos. Surprising statements were nearly always replied to with de verdad? Angelo even knew a Miguel Bose song, which he and Mini turned into a nighttime ritual duet.
On the official dawning of New Year's Day, Mini disappeared into her room as Nic popped the champagne and ordered Javier to chug. She returned with a catalog full of girls her age in ornate white veils and laced bodices.
How could Angelo forget?
"Mija..." Oscar began. Angelo finished for him.
"Those are very expensive, you know."
"I know," Mini said, "but it's MY first communion. You only get one, and I'm going to make it special. Javier got me a job at the shop."
Javier was turned upon instantly. A part time gig smiling uselessly at customers might buy Mini a dress, but certainly not one of those. Angelo only picked a few words out of the harsh litany between Oscar and his cousin, but he was very much in tune with Oscar's inconsolable displeasure.
"Maybe I'll help," Angelo offered. It was barely an offer, considering his paltry income since the loss of his diner gig and the funds that went straight to Javier and his dwindling savings for the new alternator, but he made it anyway. "Match you, dollar to five."
"Really?" It was worth it for her smile. Mini even let Raffa have her precious catalogue, as she'd evolved from such trifles to the astounding new heights of hope and reality.
Hope was a good thing. There was no telltale wince, no knowledge visible in her eyes of the looming disappointment awaiting her. Angelo made a vow then not to let that disappointment get her like it got him the day she came into his life.
The process was easy enough. Danny's mother knew the owner of a shop in town. Angelo stopped by there with Danny and the catalog that Mini had been lusting through, pointing out her choices. The seamstress agreed, and Danny talked her into a shameful layaway program that'd have Angelo and Javier pouring funds into envelopes for her for the better part of three months.
They took Mini to visit her dress every so often, her supervising its slow creation with wide, wondering eyes. It was tough to come across work so exquisite in daily life, especially daily life on their side of the tracks. Her excitement, once again, was worth the sacrifice.
And then the rains came. Nic saw them on the news first, up late and watching intently when Angelo finally trudged home from the theatre. She shook her head at him and they watched a whorl of green creep its way along the east coast. Angelo had remembered that during his childhood, it was a rarity to fear the rain. Now, it brought with it talk of tsunamis, images of whole townships turned into less scenic Venices. They knew it was bad before it came.
Three days before Mini's first communion, the rains struck the hardest. The whole house moved up to the second floor with all of the electronics. They survived, though the living room now sported a perfect dirty watermark across the walls.
The seamstress's shop was not so lucky. There were thousands of dollars worth of damages, a fraction of which belonged to little Mini.
To her credit, Mini did not cry. She sat on the couch, quiet, and processed. Angelo hated watching that, watching her make sense of her absent mother, her jobless father, her shitty house, her loser roommates, and a dream that had been established, worked for, and literally washed away with little rhyme or reason.
"Baby doll," Angelo said, sitting next to her. She quickly threw her arms around his sides and buried her face against his chest.
"Thank you," she said, "for trying."
The word she chose, 'trying,' had echoes of a thousand other agonies in it. There were unspoken things there. Mini, Angelo felt, was thanking him for trying to protect her from the inevitable: from her realizing that this was all she could ever have.
As most kids do, Mini snapped right out of it. Angelo, on the other hand, was relentless. He took more shifts, much to Danny's chagrin, and cut his mealtime rations in half. If he was killing himself, it didn't matter. If he could teach Mini one thing, he didn't want it to be that a hard enough storm could tear everything away. He wanted to teach her that people cared enough about her dreams to see them flourish, regardless of the cost.
He knew he wouldn't have the dough by the time that her communion rolled around, so he resorted to calling Danny in for a favor. This was the one thing he liked least, not because Danny was stingy or made him feel uncomfortable about it. It was because people like him forfeited a part of themselves when they took money from people like Danny, who understood its value only in a philanthropist way and never as the agonizing motivator that shoved them through one painful job to the next.
Danny didn't let him speak on the phone.
"Mini's thing is today?"
"Yeah, look--"
"What's it called again? This kind of thing doesn't really come up in the synagogue."
"First Communi--"
"Right. You guys probably need a ride. I'll be right there." Danny was so on his own wavelength, occupying his own plane, that he probably had no idea how flustered Angelo was.
Angelo couldn't trust him to understand anyway. Danny pulled up in a sparkling coup that reminded him painfully of this fact, stepping out with a smart pair of shades and a white, impeccably manufactured smile.
Mini saw something Angelo didn't, and ran out of his arms with a scream. She bowled into the back of Danny's knees, nearly crippling him.
"What is that?" Angelo asked of the long, flat-sided bag in Danny's hands. He should have known better.
"I heard what happened," he explained as he handed over the dress and Mini fled to her room. And then, like he did from time to time, Danny said the thing that Angelo least expected him to. "I know it was shitty of me to do."
Angelo tried to smile and tried to speak, but he ended up laughing and letting loose a little sob all at once.
"It was a good thing," he insisted, wrapping his arms around his friend. Danny wasn't good with physical contact, but he was getting to be a natural with Angelo's embraces. Slowly.
"Thanks. I just..." Danny glanced over his shoulder. "I don't know what to make of her, but she's a good kid."
"You should try her out sometime," Angelo said, knowing Danny was far too skittish for such a venture. "She won't trap you in a locker or anything."
"Fuck you," Danny laughed. They kept close until Nic rounded them all up into the car, reserving the space at the front beside Danny for Mini.
She came out last, resplendent in her gown, her hair brushed to silk and her eyes accented with Nic's makeup. She looked timeless, a beauty transcending age. Angelo linked arms with her and led her to the car, where Mini politely informed him that she would die of embarrassment if he did that near the church.
Oscar sat beside Angelo, for the first time not keeping his distance. When the girls swept out from the back and moved along the pews, Oscar grabbed his hand. The censers and the flickering votives cast echoes of smoke and fire in his glassy, wet eyes. Their fingers stayed linked throughout the entire ceremony.
Mini did nothing without a flourish that night. Her path to the altar was a sashayed romp. Only her amen was heard clearly from their seats in the back, while the priest had barely finished proclaiming the body of Christ in his hand. They couldn't take pictures outside, the blame of which landed squarely on the rain that refused to abate, but they got some in the hall and plenty more in the restaurant they went to after the ceremony.
Here was the real moment. Mini, still glowing beautiful, accepted unacquainted admirers in her seat at the head of the table. Raffa and Angelo picked through arroz con pollo, teeth stained orange with sazón. Javier and Danny bungled their way through a conversation, not quite ready for that step in their inevitable friendship.
And Nic surveyed it all, ordering more plates when people were still hungry, waving for new drinks when cups were low, her hand always on Oscar's shoulder to offer him comfort. He hadn't quite recovered from the sight of his little girl and her grown up, rouged smile. Angelo, never a father but contemplative enough to make up the difference, suspected he never would.
The night dragged on until Mini was asleep in his arms again, as she had been the night of their first meeting. And nothing had changed, but everything had at the same time. The only thing Angelo had faith in now, the only thing he felt he could count on, were these seven around the table.
