Eddie felt wonderful. He had the sensation of having found a small, exclusive, and rather unbelievable treasure much more to be prized than the mundane one of money. Karen belonged to him. He belonged to her. It had happened on the front porch of a house being built in an unknown part of Altadena. No matter who eventually bought and owned that house, a little bit of it would always be his and Karen’s.

He went quickly down the dark unlit alley to the slatternly back fence, found the gate, went in past the heaps of unboxed refuse and wine bottles, to the back door of the house. He let himself in. The smell left by his mother’s cooking, the chili, the masa and grease, the coffee, was rank in the kitchen. He stole through to the main room, crossed it softly in the dark, and tapped on the bedroom door.

He heard the bedsprings creak, some sort of muffled drunken jabber from his father, his mother saying, “Go back to sleep. I’ll see to it.” The door opened and there she stood, dimly visible in the vast white cotton gown. “Eddie?”

“Come out and close the door.”

She obeyed. She came into the room, shut the door without rattling the catch, then went to a table and switched on a lamp there. She looked over the lamp at Eddie, and he saw the worry, the anxious dread in her eyes. “Something’s happened?” she whispered.

“I have to go away tonight. Right away.”

She pulled the edge of the gown up over the lump at the base of her throat. She stood by the lamp for another moment, then sat down slowly. Her face crumpled; she hid it in her hands. She was crying.

“Don’t worry about me,” Eddie said. “All I need is a few dollars. You do have something hidden away, don’t you, Mama?”

She nodded without lifting her head from her hands. The enormous goiter bulged from between her wrists like the head of a baby under the skin there, a baby which had worked its way up there trying to be born. She trembled, her flesh quivered, but the big lump under her skin was firm and quiet as though it were not a part of her. “Can you tell me?” she whispered.

“I’d better not. Then you won’t know; they can’t threaten you.”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone anything,” she said through her shaking hands.

“No, Mama.”

“Is it . . . really bad?”

“Yes, it’s bad. It’s as bad as it can get.”

She lifted her eyes, her mouth still covered, perhaps to conceal its trembling. Her eyes were already reddening. “Somebody killed?”