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the doughy circles. Rolling the tortillas into dripping tubes of oleo, Winston chewed and tried to think of a name for the fish. Yolanda’s voice rushed into the kitchen, demanding obedience like God talking to Abraham. “Turn off the stove, wash your hands, then bring me some Kool-Aid.”
    “Dustin,” he said to his pet. “Since you’re a survivor, like Dustin Hoffman in
Marathon Man
.” Winston dipped his finger in the water and began poking the fish in the head. After each jab he’d lean close to the water and ask his light-headed pet, “Is it safe?”
    Y olanda was sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed breast-feeding their eleven-month-old son, Bryce Extraordinaire Foshay, Jordy for short. Upon hearing his father enter the room, Jordy released Yolanda’s nipple with a loud, wet smack. A bridge of drool sagged between the tip of the mother’s teat and the baby’s chin. As Jordy turned toward his father, the link of saliva snapped and the spit rope swung into the baby’s chest. Winston looked at the clock radio on the nightstand; it was two-thirty in the morning. A happy little gurgle bubbled from Jordy’s throat and the males greeted each other with puffy-cheeked smiles. “What up, little nigger?” Winston said, bussing his son on the forehead.
    “I told you about that. Where you been … 
big
nigger?” Winston sheepishly opened his mouth to speak, ready to unravel and inflate his prefab excuse like a passenger jet’s emergency slide. “Don’t even feel it, Tuff.”
    Winston closed his mouth, offered Yolanda the Tupperware glass of Kool-Aid and a bite of his tortilla. She waved him off. He sat next to her. She had the gruff look of a cop standing two steps away from a car pulled over on the highway, one hand on her gun, asking to see a driver’s license and inquiring how many drinks were had this evening. Winston sobered up quickly and told his story, spraying tortilla crumbs over Yolanda and the baby. Whenever he reached a turning point in the tale, he illustrated the episode by removing the appropriate item from a pocket, then tossing it on the mattress: first the gun, then the empty bag of pork rinds, followed by the bubble-gum fortune, and lastly a thick rubber-banded roll of bills. Winston finished his tale, stuffing down the last of his tortilla. He licked his oily fingertips and waited for a reaction. Yolanda examined each piece of evidence carefully, looking for a flaw in the story. She read the bubble-gum fortune, snickering at the comic: “Bazooka Joe’s hilarious.” She placed the bag of pork-rind crumbs over her nose and mouth and inhaled, testing it for freshness. Whipping the bag behind her back, she snapped, “What’s the expiration date?”
    “Yolanda, please.”
    “I know your ass, you always check.”
    “July nine.”
    Yolanda examined the date and grunted. She inflated the bag with a quick breath of air and loudly popped it against his head. Handing Jordy to Winston, she picked up the gun, expertly ejected a bullet from the chamber, aimed at her reflection in the bureau mirror, then, with cowboy élan, spun the firearm around her finger. Anticipating a misfire, Winston tucked Jordy into his chest and ducked beside the bed.
    “Baby, what the fuck you doing? That thing’s loaded!”
    “Don’t worry, I put on the safety. You been running around with a loaded gun in your pocket with the safety off. Lucky thing hamburgers don’t have legs, ’cause you might have had to chase one down and shot your dick off.”
    “Take a bigger gun than that—magnum maybe.”
    “Yeah, sure.” Yolanda put the gun underneath the mattress, then yanked the rubber band off the roll of money. Licking her thumb, she quickly counted the money into neat little hundred-dollar stacks. Winstonwas whisking a giggly Jordy through the air and making airplane noises. “Stop it, you going to keep him up.”
    Winston sat back down on the bed, bouncing the baby on his knee.
    “You mean to tell me Smush