Now, through Tita Dina’s French doors, I notice Tomas sitting on the diving board, the sun on his tank top brilliantly white and almost blinding, as he stares down into the pool. The reflection off the water moves over his face and chest like thin little arms of lightning. I return to the ball game. When I look out again my brother has disappeared. Mom has been glancing outside anxiously all afternoon, and I figure I should go and check up on him. I find him around the side of the house with Veronica, Mom’s little niece. He is showing her the Colt he likes to carry around and has the barrel open and shows her how you can look through an empty chamber and see sky through the other end. He also has a few bullets on the concrete and lets her handle one. She looks up at me, her expression turning from excitement to worry, and though I let my shadow fall across his legs, he pretends he does not see me. She sets the bullet down on an empty plastic lawn chair, the kind you can stack, its surface lightly filmed over with soot from smoggy dew that has dried. Tomas asks her if she wants to hold the Colt, and she glances at me, then shakes her head. Then she senses his annoyance and takes it into her little hand.

Do you think you should be doing that? I say to him.

He does not even look up.

I go back to my Bulls game. Later, much later, I hear some sort of commotion and notice Veronica’s mother kneeling over her, asking angry questions, and the girl avoids her eyes and only reluctantly nods. The mother keeps staring through the French windows at Tomas, who sits in the sunlight, indifferent, slouched on the end of a reclining lawn chair.

By six, everyone has left but us. Empty chairs sit on the backyard grass and on the wooden gazebo and on the concrete by the pool. Despite the vines and flowers my aunt planted on the backyard’s rear wooden fence to make it look tranquil, I hear faint traffic coming from the other side. I am picking up plates and taking them into the kitchen where Tita washes dishes, tossing the paper ones the kids had to use into a trash bag. When Tita goes upstairs to answer a phone call, Mom walks up to my brother.

What the hell do you think you were doing out there, mister? she says. Her hands on her hips. She is angry, not merely trying to look angry the way she usually does with Tomas when she wants him to take her seriously.

My brother’s eyes are not as bloodshot as they have been, and he seems a little surprised and off guard as he looks up at her from his chair.

What you so mad about?

I think you know, Tomas.