“Hope not,” Roy said, dipping his head down to her chest.

“His bike works, right? I mean, he doesn’t need a new one, does he? I don’t even know how much a bicycle costs these days.”

“Everything’s fine,” Roy murmured against her skin.

She felt his hands lifting her nightgown inside her robe. “Hey. Who’s the boss here, anyway?”

“Doesn’t count. It’s a whole new game now.”

“I keep forgetting I’m playing with a cheater.” She pushed away from him, took hold of his shoulders, and guided him until his back was against the door.

“Let me. Please?”

“Please, my foot.”

He leveled his gaze upon her and crimped his mouth as if exasperated.

She smiled. “My little palace boy. My little … beck-and-call servant.” The right words, she knew, could put him into the role. She watched his unshaven face readjust itself, and then relax into subservience.

He asked, “What’s your bidding?”

She thought about it. Before she could speak again, Matt’s voice sliced through the door behind Roy’s back. “They’re here!”

“They’re not here,” Roy said quietly, hopefully.

“What time were they supposed to arrive?”

“Eleven.”

Teresa looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was ten A.M. A car horn tapped out shave-and-a-haircut. “That’s your dad,” she said. “And I was just about to get creative.”

When the two of them emerged, dressed, through the front door, her in-laws were standing in the driveway next to their car. Helen, her auburn hair freshly coiffed into a bouffant, was bent over Katherine and Joseph, hugging them. Walter was holding a rolled-up magazine and had his other hand clamped onto Matt’s head, tilting it up toward the sky.

Teresa carried Frankie across the yard. Roy held back a moment to light a cigarette, and she heard him say from behind her, “You’re early.”

“Ten,” Walter said, looking at his watch. “On the dot.”

“We said eleven,” Roy countered. Teresa glanced at him, and he waved the cigarette in front of his chest casually. “It doesn’t matter. How are you?”

“We’re on time, according to schedule,” Walter said. He hiked up the waist of his checkered pants. “I was just telling this astronaut here that the men upstairs are about to enter lunar orbit. It’s probably happening as we speak.”

He was an older version of Roy: the same sharp, dimpled chin, the same blade of a nose, a pair of large, chocolate eyes fixed beneath brows shaped like little furry triangles. The part in his silver hair was a carefully executed line just a couple of inches above his left ear. The hair, waxed and shining, covered his forehead like a visor and bore the tread marks of his comb.

Frankie held on to the pocket of Teresa’s blouse.

“We’re going to grill hamburgers for lunch,” she said. “Hot dogs, too.”