door to let Christoff know.

"I'll get your money." Eighty dollars. "And I'll take you back in the car. I can drop the stuff off at the resale shop myself first thing tomorrow." Silvio peered inside trying to figure out if anyone else had been home. He wondered about the roommate but didn't ask because he didn't really care in the first place.

"So you got anything else you need to take care of."

"No." Silvio could see that Christoff had been removing some of the old cabinets in the kitchen. The walls had been primed and the floor stripped down to the cement. "How's everything with Maria."

Silvio's furrowed brow arched at that line of questioning. "Good."

"You been back to the park?"

"Who me? No, I don't get a lot of time to. Work, Maria, the kids. You know, I don't really do guys." Silvio looked at the ground, then off into the distance. "That's not exactly true" he said and went into a subjective recount of the events in the suburb. He hadn't wanted to be so direct or even mention it, but it was the only way he knew to be at times, he opened his mouth and one of the voices started coming out.

Chris listened with intrigue, jealousy, and a bit of excitement. The telling became an exchange of mishaps and sly laughter as Christoff in turn relayed his tale of the two brothers exaggerating the way Gerardo had pawed at his ass. Silvio returned an understanding smile and looked at his prey from head to toe pausing in the middle. He hadn't noticed how attractive and exotic a prize he'd had before him. Chris was in a word, beautiful.

"You want to shower before I take you back?" Silvio's eyes widened as Christoff stepped aside to let him into the house. He imagined Chris face down ass up, licking at the heel of his boot.

Maria slammed the phone down and listened to the sound of the bell resonating inside. The spiral chord hung to the floor stretched and tangled in various knots. The jack sometimes needed to be jiggled in order to get a good connection or to make sure that it hadn't fallen out of the wall all together. She started to pick it up again to see if maybe he was hanging out at his cousin Alvaro's, but Silvio had said he didn't like Alvaro. She felt like everything around her was falling apart, the phone, the relationship. She turned the idea over again in her head that maybe he had gone to his cousin's house for some reason, any reason at all but could think of none. The dread was that he'd been picked up and sent back to Mexico.

He hadn't answered his cell when she called, and it wasn't like he had any friends other than the occasional drinkers that binged at Los Noches. The workers had said he'd left in a gray truck. She paced back into the living room dragging her feet on the linoleum floor. She was convinced then that he'd gone to see Lisa and grabbed the keys from a dish she kept on top of the TV. The kids were sleep and Nana was home. It would only take her twenty minutes, she'd just see if his van was there, and if it was... She decided not to think that far ahead.

Her head was spinning. It was almost 11:30,