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from good middle-class Catholic families, she’d barely even lowered her station in going from her mother’s little cabin to Thirty-Third Street, and her student debt was functionally a vow of poverty. She felt more effective at doing her house chores and helping Ramón than at anything else in her life. And yet, to answer Igor’s question, she did have an ambition, if not a plan for achieving it. Her ambition was not to end up like her mother. And so the fact that she was effective at being a squatter didn’t give her much satisfaction; it filled her, more often, with dread.
    As she rounded the corner onto Thirty-Third Street, she saw Stephen sitting on their front steps, wearing his little-boy clothes, his secondhand Keds and secondhand seersucker shirt, its short sleeves strained by his large biceps. The subtle evening mist was making shafts of the golden light beneath the nearby freeway viaducts. Stephen’s head was bowed.
    â€œHello, hello,” Pip said cheerily, as she dismounted.
    Stephen raised his head and looked at her with reddened eyes. His face was wet.
    â€œWhat is it?” she said.
    â€œIt’s over,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s over? What happened?” She let her bike fall to the ground. “Did Dreyfuss lose the house? What happened?”
    He smiled wanly. “No, Dreyfuss did not lose the house. Are you kidding? I lost my marriage. Marie’s gone. She’s moved out.”
    His face twisted, and cold fear surged outward from Pip’s center; but when it passed below her waist it became a terrible warmth. How well aware the body was of what it wanted. How quickly it gleaned the news it could use. She took off her helmet and sat down on the stoop.
    â€œOh, Stephen, I’m so sorry,” she said. Until this moment, their only hugs had been of hello and good-bye, but her limbs were suddenly so shaky that she had to put her hands on his shoulders, as if to keep her arms from falling off. “This is so sudden.”
    He snuffled a bit. “You didn’t see it coming?”
    â€œNo, no, no.”
    â€œThat’s right,” he said bitterly, “because how can she remarry? That was always my ace in the hole.”
    Pip squeezed him and rubbed his biceps, and there was nothing wrong with this; he needed a comforting friend. But his muscles were testosterone-hardened and warm. And the great impediment was gone, moved out, gone .
    â€œYou guys have been fighting so much, though,” she suggested. “Almost every night, for months.”
    â€œNot so much lately,” he said. “I actually thought things were getting better. But that was only because…”
    He put his face in his hands again.
    â€œIs there somebody else?” Pip said. “Somebody she…”
    He rocked in a kind of whole-body nod.
    â€œOh, God. That’s terrible. That’s terrible, Stephen.” She pressed her face into his shoulder. “Tell me what I can do for you,” she whispered into the seersucker of his shirt.
    â€œThere is one thing,” he said.
    â€œTell me,” she said, nuzzling the seersucker.
    â€œYou can talk to Ramón.”
    This brought her out of the unreality of what was happening; made her aware that she had her face in somebody’s shirt. She took her arms away and said, “Shit.”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œWhat’s going to happen to him?”
    â€œShe’s got it all figured out,” Stephen said. “She’s got the entire rest of her life plotted out like some corporate master plan. She gets custody and I get visitation, as if that was the point of adopting him—visitation. She’s been…” He took a deep breath. “She’s involved with the director of the home.”
    â€œOh, Jesus. Perfect.”
    â€œWho is apparently friends with the archbishop, who can get the marriage annulled for her. Perfect, right? They’re going to put Ramón