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think they call it? Haven’t seen them in years.”
    “That’s a world apart, South Tucson.”
    “Like L.A. isn’t?”
    It was for him.
    How much more for her?
    Or for this child that came staggering sleepily out of the bedroom.
    “Yours?” he said.
    “These tend to come with the apartment. Place is overrun with roaches and children. Probably want to check your closets, look under kitchen counters.”
    She stood, scooped the child up on one arm.
    “This is Benicio.”
    “I’m four,” the boy said.
    “And very stubborn about going to bed.”
    “How old are you?” Benicio asked.
    “Good question. Okay if I call my mom, check in with her about this?”
    “Meanwhile,” Irina said, “we’ll get you a cookie and a glass of milk out in the kitchen.”
    Minutes later, they returned.
    “Well?” Benicio said.
    “Twenty, I’m afraid,” Driver told him. He wasn’t, but that’s what he was telling the world.
    “Old.” Just as he’d suspected.
    “Sorry. Maybe we can still be friends, though?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Your mother’s alive?” Irina asked once she’d tucked the boy back in.
    Easier to say no than to explain it all.
    She told him she was sorry, and moments later asked what he did for a living.
    “You first.”
    “Here in the promised land? A three-star career. Mondays through Fridays I waitress at a Salvadoran restaurant on Broadway for minimum wage plus tips—tips from people little better off than myself. Three nights a week I do maid service for homes and apartments in Brentwood. Weekends I sweep and vacuum office buildings. Your turn.”
    “I’m in the movies.”
    “Sure you are.”
    “I’m a driver.”
    “Like for limos, right?”
    “A stunt driver.”
    “You mean all those car chases and stuff?”
    “That’s me.”
    “Wow. You must get paid good for that.”
    “Not really. But it’s steady work.”
    Driver told her how Shannon had taken him under wing, taught him what he needed to know, got him his first jobs.
    “You’re lucky to have someone like that in your life. I never did.”
    “What about Benicio’s father?”
    “We were married for about ten minutes. His name is Standard Guzman. First time I met him I asked, ‘Well, is there a deluxe Guzman somewhere around?’ and he just looked at me, didn’t get it at all.”
    “What’s he do?”
    “Lately he’s been into charity work, helping provide jobs for state workers.”
    Driver was lost. Seeing his expression, she added: “He’s inside.”
    “Prison, you mean?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “How long?”
    “Be out next month.”
    On TV, beneath the looming, half-exposed breasts of his blonde assistant, a stubby dark guy in a silver lamé frock coat performed parlor magic. Balls between upturned cups appeared and vanished, cards leapt from the deck, doves flapped up from chafing pans.
    “He’s a thief—a professional, he keeps telling me. Started off burglarizing homes when he was fourteen, fifteen, moved on from there. They got him taking down a savings and loan. Couple of local detectives happened to walk into the middle of it. They’d come to deposit their paychecks.”
    Standard did indeed get out the following month. And despite all Irina’s protests that this would not happen, no way in godalmighty hell, he came home to roost. (What can I say? she said. He loves the boy. Where else is he gonna go?) She and Driver were hanging together a lot by then, which didn’t bother Standard at all. Most nights, long after Irina and Benicio had gone to bed, Driver and Standard would sit out in the front room watching TV. Lot of the good, old stuff you only caught then, late at night.
    So once, along about one on a Tuesday night, Wednesday morning really, they’re sitting there watching a cop movie, Glass Ceiling, and a commercial comes on.
    “Rina tells me you drive. For the movies?”
    “Right.”
    “Have to be pretty good.”
    “I get by.”
    “Not like a nine-to-five gig, huh?”
    “One of the