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family?” she asked one of the soldiers.
    “Yes, I do, ma’am,” the soldier said.
    Roberto came and sat beside me on the sofa.
    “But I have to do what I have to do,” the soldier said. He had blond hair, blue eyes, an upturned nose. If not for his twang, he could have been a California surfer. Night-vision goggles were propped on his forehead.
    “Are you afraid of dying?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Any day now,” the reporter said, turning to us.
    “Any day now,” Roberto repeated. The sentiment seemed poignant. I draped my arm around his enormous shoulders. I was in a forgiving mood.
    “Let’s go get a DVD,” I said.
    Outside, the cobbler was closing up for the night. He was trying to pull the grate down over the shopwindow but was having trouble because he was old and fat. Roberto ran to his aid as if rescuing a child from the water’s edge. “Wait! Wait! Stop! Stop!” He reached up with wide forearms, and in an instant the gate came crashing down onto the boiling sidewalk.
    “Ah, you good man,” the cobbler said.
    At the video store we browsed the titles. We agreed, finally, on one of those funny buddy road movies. Then Roberto picked a porno that he said he was going to watch alone. And then he picked his favorite gangster movie with Tyler McCoy.
    I paid for all three.
    Back at the apartment, there were about forty flies walking over everything, including the dishes.
    “Maybe you should close the window,” I suggested.
    He complied, trapping the heat and trapping the flies. Then he went to the refrigerator and took out some bread and cheese and tuna fish and put them on the counter where the flies were. He took out a jar of mayonnaise, and while his back was turned, the flies landed on the bread and cheese and tuna fish. When he was done making the sandwiches, he put one on a plate where the flies had been and handed it to me.He sat down on the sofa bed and pressed play. The trailers ran and the sofa sagged. After that, the movie with Tyler McCoy began. I pressed pause.
    “I thought we were going to watch the other one,” I said. “The buddy one.”
    “Let’s watch this one first.”
    “I’ve seen it three times,” I said.
    “So what,” he said, “I’ve seen it three
hundred
times.” This was no exaggeration.
    He pressed play, and so began Tyler McCoy’s rags-to-riches story through violent and immoral means. When the characters spoke, Roberto spoke, every word, soundlessly mouthing in perfect unison.
    He pressed pause. “Why aren’t you eating your sandwich?” he asked.
    “I think I saw a fly land on it,” I admitted.
    With irritation he said, “You are
opulent
,” and he took the sandwich from me and bit into it, a huge, obvious bite so that I could see the food in his mouth. “And I am
indigent
.”
    Which was true. I’d had a DVD player for ten years.
    On the Fourth of July, Roberto and I drove downtown to see the parade. There was nowhere to park, and we had to walk twenty minutes up a hill in 105-degree heat. The turnout was extraordinary. The largest ever, people were saying. Other people were saying that each year the turnout should be the largest ever and that people shouldn’t wait for a war to become patriots. “I keep my flag out year-round,” one man said. “And you can pass by my house anytime to see if I’m tellingthe truth.” The fountain was going, though we were supposed to be conserving water, and the parks people had somehow managed to get it to rise and fall in alternating colors of red, white, and blue. Up and down it went, hypnotically. Roberto and I stood shoulder to shoulder, transfixed by the spectacle. Children played along the edge, and parents screamed at them not to drink the water because it was poisonous.
    The sun was straight overhead, but the heat felt as if it were coming from down below, from the asphalt, emanating up through my shoes and legs and out through my scalp. I had brought along a container of sunblock, SPF 45, which I kept