After the first few months, Luis had stopped asking Gaspar to help with the twins. The meaning behind that wasn’t so good—Luis trusted Gaspar except in one respect: every once in a long while, but with real ferocity, Gaspar got angry. And when he got angry, he broke things and hurt himself and was unstoppable, strong—there was something of the terrified animal about him. He had kicked in the wardrobe, which still had the holes. Another night it was all the dishes, after a fight that wasn’t even about anything important. He had thrown his own clothes out into the street, and one time he’d intentionally hurt himself in front of his uncle: sitting at the table during an argument, nervously tapping his fork, he had suddenly stabbed the utensil into his own hand. Isabel, the psychiatrist, talked about anger management, but hadn’t recommended anything as being urgent. “My daughter screams at me that she hates me, quit your bitching, he’s a great kid,” Gaspar had overheard one night during a barbecue; Negro talked too loud when he was drunk. So far Gaspar hadn’t gotten violent with anyone except himself. But sometimes, when he was coming back from swimming or from Marita’s house or from the soccer field, it occurred to him that he could insult someone in the street just because, start a fist fight to get the release. The desire to break something or someone was sometimes like the desire to run, or like thirst: urgent. Soothing.

The house was big enough to have privacy, in any case. In the spacious backyard, Luis and some worker friends had built a small enclosed porch, nothing fancy, but well made. Since the parties at the house had grown less frequent after the babies were born, Gaspar had taken it over, and no one objected. It was his studio apartment, warm in winter and cool in summer: the porch had a heater and a fan. He brought out his mattress, his stereo, he took one of the small TVs, his books. It became a much more convenient place to be with Marita, who had left some of her things there. Underwear, a pair of pants, pads in the nightstand, all with her little touches: the pants with black hearts drawn on with marker, the underpants white and cotton, the pads inside a black faux velvet pouch so no one could guess what it held.