Page 88 of Roadrunner

“That’s fair,” I said.

He picked up his book and went to his room.

Sunday arrived the way Sundays in Arizona arrived. Immediately. The light through the bedroom curtains at six in the morning was not a suggestion. It was a declaration.

I lay in bed for a while and listened to the house.

Arthur was already up. I could hear him in the kitchen. The refrigerator opened and closed. A cabinet. The sound of cereal hitting the bowl.

I lay there and thought about the evening ahead. Something between anticipation and the nerves of a woman who had not been on a proper date in longer than she cared to calculate.

Riley had texted the night before. Seven o’clock. Dress comfortable.

That was the whole message.

Dress comfortable. Of course.

We arrived at Della’s at four.

Arthur had his bag over his shoulder before I had the SUV in park. He was out the door with the efficiency of a boy who had somewhere to be.

Della was on the front step.

She spread her arms.

Arthur walked straight into them without hesitation. She wrapped both arms around him and squeezed and said something in his ear that made him laugh. Then she released him and pointed him toward the kitchen and he went without argument.

She looked at me.

“Go,” she said.

“I’m not leaving until seven,” I said.

“Then come in and help with the tamales,” she said. “But at seven, you go.”

The kitchen smelled like masa and chile and the warmth of a house that had been cooking since morning. Arthur was already at the counter with a bowl in front of him and a look of concentration that told me Della had given him a job and he was taking it seriously.

I sat at the table and watched them.

Della directed without hovering. She told him what she wanted, showed him once, and then left him to it. When he did it wrong she corrected him without making it a thing. When he did it right she said nothing, which Arthur seemed to understand was the higher compliment.

They moved around each other in the kitchen with the ease of people who had been doing it for years.

“You’re Italian, right?” Arthur asked. “Mom said your family’s from near Rome.”

“Sicily, technically, on my mother’s side. Close enough.” She didn’t look up from the pot she was stirring.

“So how come tamales are your favorite thing to make? Aren’t you supposed to make, like, pasta?”

She did look up at that, one eyebrow arched in a way that clearly delighted her. “I make excellent pasta, mister. Every Christmas Eve, seven fishes, the whole production.” She went back to the pot. “But I learned tamales from Rosa Delgado forty years ago, three doors down from the first house Antonio and I ever owned, back when I didn’t know a soul in this state and she brought a plate over unasked because that’s what you did for the new Italian girl who looked half-lost in her own kitchen. I’ve been making them every way she taught me ever since.” She tapped the spoon once against the pot’s edge. “A recipe doesn’t ask where your grandmother was born, baby. It asks who fed you when you needed feeding. Rosa fed me. So now I feed you tamales instead of manicotti, and you’ll live.”

Arthur considered this with the seriousness he gave everything. “That’s a good answer,” he decided, and went back to his bowl.

It had been forty minutes.

“He’s a natural,” Della said, not looking up.

“He’s competitive,” I said. “He doesn’t like doing anything badly.”