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Margaret and Enrique while further whitening Bernard’s pastiness and deepening the gloom of his sullen silence, Bernard brightened. He straightened his narrow, slumped shoulders to an artificial stiffness while his great head and unruly halo of tight curls wobbled. The impression this change of posture gave was of a puppeteer alerting the audience it was time for the dummy Bernard to speak. “Yeah, that can’t be right. No way the city would have two 173s.” His small brown eyes, bloodshot at the moment, fastened on Enrique disdainfully as he mumbled with certitude, “You must have your number wrong.”
    Enrique then revealed something to Margaret that he would rather not have, his short temper. “I don’t have it wrong!” he snapped and tipped violently on the wooden chair. He grabbed the pine table for balance, sloshing coffee over the sides of their white mugs. An image of Guillermo, Enrique’s father, a man too big in size for many rooms and too big in spirit for all, came into his mind while, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Margaret grab her coffee mug to prevent it from upending and reach for a napkinfrom the adjoining table to mop up the overflow. Her movements were an obvious warning that he was displaying too much anger to remain attractive to any woman, much less one so cheerful. Her good humor was remarkable. They had been talking for almost eight hours and she hadn’t so much as frowned, a streak of pleasantness which was extraordinary considering that she wasn’t an idiot. But fear of losing her admiration didn’t restrain his vehemence: “Jesus, Bernard, I lived across the street from 173! I went there until sixth grade. I was the first student council president, for God’s sakes. I haven’t made a mistake about the number!”
    Enrique had a deep and resonant voice, a lucky asset considering that although he was tall, six foot four, he weighed a Buchenwald one hundred and thirty pounds beneath his too long, straight black hair, which often fell across his face like a drape, narrowing it even more. It was hard to see past all that thinness, hair, and large tortoiseshell glasses, to his warm brown eyes, high cheekbones, strong chin, and full lips. The voice was his sole attractive feature that was also manly enough to excite. But when he was angry, its muscular pronunciation made him sound intimidating and full of contempt. It led Sylvie’s list of what she didn’t like about living with him. He apologized profusely for his verbal fits and proclaimed that he wanted to curb his temper, but the truth was that he remained essentially blind to how scary and excoriating he could be.
    It baffled Enrique that his barbs drew blood. He felt his attacks were rare and always occasioned by self-defense. Perhaps if his victims had prior notice that the seemingly charming and agreeable Enrique was also armed and dangerous, they wouldn’t have been so hurt. But warning was hard to come by when the attacker went to such pains to conceal his grievances.
    Enrique took a deep breath to shut himself up and anxiously glanced at Margaret to check whether his flash of fury had revealedthat he was the sort of angry man who could drive his live-in girlfriend into the arms of another. At the same time, Enrique was confident that if Margaret was provided the right information to challenge Sylvie’s accusations of “adolescent rages,” she would see the error of that characterization. He told himself that if Margaret had heard Sylvie state that Enrique was “too involved with his parents,” Margaret would conclude, as he had, that his ex-girlfriend was repeating the canned wisdom of a bourgeois shrink. A shrink Sylvie needed, in Enrique’s view, because her parents had divorced when she was six, permanently damaging her; and she was blocked as a painter, unable to produce a canvas for months on end, another proof to the prolific Enrique that her judgment of him was distorted. Yes, his carefully reasoned