"Okay," she said. "A glassa wine."
He poured, his mangled pinky arched away from his other fingers. They clinked. Ziggy smiled. Angelina didn't.
"Hey," he said, "I'm the mopey one, remember?"
Angelina shrugged so that her flipped hair rested briefly on her shoulder, then looked off at the sky. Ziggy started eating pizza, a long string of topping stretched between his fingers and his face. After a moment Angelina said, "I never should've come down here."
Ziggy chewed, sipped some wine. Then he said, "Jeez, and I've just finally decided I'm glad you did."
Angelina didn't look full at him, kept his face on the edge of her vision. "My reasons," she said, "I thought they were pretty simple. Find you. Make love. See what happened."
Ziggy said, "Sounds good to me."
Angelina kept on going. "But it was much more complicated than that. The whole family thing. I see it now. If I'd seen it then, the complications, I never would have come."
Through pizza, Ziggy said, "People, I don't think they ever see how complicated something's gonna be. If they did, nobody'd do nothing."
Angelina finished off her wine, held out her glass for more. "My father," she said. "My poor, loving crook of a father. You gonna make trouble for him again?"
Ziggy stalled, refilled glasses, didn't answer till he'd tossed down some Chianti. "I'm not mad at anyone, Angelina. I want for you to know that. But I'm gonna do what I gotta do."
The rim of her glass was resting on her teeth, it rattled when she spoke. "It's gonna be my fault."
"Nothing's your fault."
She looked off at the stars. The brightest ones throbbed through wisps of cloud, the dimmer ones struggled not to be smothered by warm vapor. "Something weird?" she said at last. "I really thought I had a happy childhood. The greatest parents, all of that. Now I look back . . . Ziggy, d'you think it's possible for a person to be unhappy a lot of years and never even know it?"
Ziggy cocked his head. But before he could frame an answer, she went on.
"Or get everything exactly wrong? Like love. Like imagine something is love when it isn't really love, it's part of that same thing of pretending things are peachy when they aren't, wanting to believe that something's impossibly romantic when maybe it's just impossible?"
That made Ziggy nervous. He said, "Ya turn these things over and over and round and round, I don't see where it gets ya."
Angelina looked away again, was gone what seemed a long, long time, and when she turned back she was smiling. The smile made Ziggy more nervous than before, it seemed to him there was something in it that was moving on, that was leaving him behind. "Ziggy," she said, "I wonder what would happen if we didn't know each other from before, if we just met now, as strangers?"
He looked at her, the ears he knew were ticklish, the neck that would grow pebbly and as moist as steak, and he was tweaked once more by a lust that swam so deep it had scars for eyes. "What would happen," he said, "is that I'd try to get you into bed with me, and you'd say yes or no."
She looked at him, the thick strong hands, the lips she barely recognized. "I'd probably say yes. 'Cause then it would be simple."
"Yeah," said Ziggy. "Then it would be simple."
* * *
Muffled by escarole and melons, the guns for Cuba barely rattled as the produce truck proceeded at a legal crawl down 1-95.
In south Jersey, the guy who wasn't Italian said, "Burns my ass, the way Funzie talks about spicks."
"You getting paid?" the other guy said.
"That ain't the point."
"That is the point. Shut up."
Two hours later, just outside of Baltimore, the Italian guy said, "I hate the fucking speed limit. Fucking government. Everything they do, I hate it."
The Hispanic guy agreed, but for spite he didn't say so.
At Richmond, three hours farther down the road, there were tolls. The Italian guy picked up his line of thought. "See what I mean? Middle'a fucking nowhere, the fucking government puts in tolls."
The Hispanic guy stayed silent, but some time later, near the Carolina border, he brightened, saw his chance to be the star. "This Mendez," he said, "I speak to him in Spanish. You'll see, he'll treat us good."
* * *
After leaving the garden of Carmen Salazar, Michael took a long walk on nubbly Smathers Beach, then went downtown and stopped off at a dance club, then had a couple beers at a leather bar and watched some guys shoot pool.
Around two a.m. he realized he could stall no longer, he should head off on the second of the errands he'd said he'd do for Ziggy. His stomach milky with nervousness, he hailed a pedicab and went to the motel where Keith McCullough stayed.