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course, I do, too. Your father was very, very bright.”
    “It’s funny that’s he’s dead and we talk about him sometimes, but Mom’s alive and we never talk about her.”
    “I’m willing,” Grandma says. “We can talk now if you want.”
    I fall back on my bed. “Maybe tomorrow. I’m pretty tired.”
    Grandma is halfway out the door when I say, “Why do you think she left without me?”
    Grandma turns. “So we’re talking, after all?”
    I get up to go to the bathroom. “No. Forget it. I need to brush my teeth.”
    Ten minutes later, I get in bed and dial Colleen one more time. She doesn’t pick up. So I get to lie there in the dark and worry.
    It’s a long day without Colleen, who’s absent again. AWOL. MIA. But at least Carlos the Verizon guy shows up right after I get back from school. It’s not that hot in the San Gabriel Valley, but the weather can’t seem to make up its mind, and the sky isn’t exactly clear, but it’s not exactly cloudy, either. Blurry, maybe.
    None of it has put Carlos in a good mood, and it doesn’t help when Grandma asks him if he would mind taking off his shoes. Then she points to her moonlight-colored carpet.
    He follows me to my bedroom. “Your grandmother must have a lot of clout,” he says. “She just called this morning.”
    “She always knows a guy who knows a guy.”
    “You’re telling me. The usual wait time is two weeks.” He looks the place over, then reaches into his tool belt. He’s got a panther tattoo high up on his right arm. His huge right arm.
    I point. “Did that hurt?”
    “Not bad. You thinking about getting one?”
    “You saw my grandma, right?”
    He finally looks at me and grunts. “She can’t stop you when you’re eighteen.”
    “You want a Coke or something?”
    “A Coke would be great, man. I’d really appreciate it.”
    I meet Grandma in the kitchen, where she’s just hanging up the phone. “Everything’s fine,” she says.
    I reach all the way in the back of the fridge, where it’s really cold. “Who said it wasn’t?”
    “Thieves with technical know-how intercept the dispatcher, arrive ahead of schedule wearing polo shirts with the appropriate logo, then hit the home owner over the head, tie her up, and rob her.”
    “‘Thieves with technical know-how’?”
    “Better safe than sorry, Benjamin.” She reaches for the cold can of soda. “Let me put that in a glass.”
    “No way. I’m not Jeeves.”
    When I get back to the room, Carlos is down on his knees under the desk, so I set the can on a coaster Grandma makes me keep there. Then he gets up, pretty much collapses into my Aeron chair, and drains the Coke.
    He’s wearing a wedding ring, and I wonder what it’s like to work eight hours at a real job, then take two good arms and legs home to your family.
    Before Colleen, if some genie had offered me Carlos’s life or mine, I’d have taken his in a heartbeat. What did I do, anyway, but limp down the street to the Rialto Theatre? I spent more time in the dark than a bat.
    If I had to choose now, I’m not so sure, because Colleen —
    “What happened to you, anyway?” Carlos asks.
    I know what he means. “C.P.”
    He shakes his head.
    I explain, “It’s, like, a birth defect.”
    “So you’re stuck with it.”
    I say, “Pretty much.”
    “But your brain is okay.”
    I just nod.
    He looks at my framed posters (James Dean and Jeanne Moreau). He knows I don’t have to sweep the floor or clean my own bathtub. “And you’ve got money,” he says. “That never hurts.” He turns around in the chair and motions for me. I like it that he doesn’t stand up and offer me a seat like I’m some poor old guy with Velcro shoelaces and expandable pants. “Let’s get you online. You’ve probably got a lot of people you want to talk to.”
    Only one, actually. But I don’t tell him that.
    Ten minutes later, I follow Carlos to the door, Grandma appears and signs some paperwork, he and I shake hands.
    When we’re