Rosa Robles wandered around the cozy music room in the west wing of the Dey mansion, surrounded by acres of landscaped estate, a compound walled in on every side, locked gates under twenty-four-hour camera surveillance. An old harp sat by the window, stately and abandoned, grand and untouched, a museum piece.

Amy’s blood ran cold just to think about it, and herself, and the scant differences between them.

Rosa went around the wood-paneled room with a rag in one hand and a spray can of furniture polish in the other. Pshshshsh, a white cloud collected on the mahogany credenza before Rosa wiped it down. She’d done it thousands of times in the fifteen years she’d been with the Dey family, and they all hoped she’d go on doing it at least a few thousand times more.

“I don’t know,” Rosa said with a simple shrug as she went on dusting, Amy sitting in the overstuffed, wing-backed leather chair near the old-fashioned hand-cranked phonograph player, a relic of a bygone era.

“I don’t think it’s any great mystery, Rosa. My mom was totally freaked out by what happened to my dad. Now she thinks as soon as I step out of the house I’m gonna get kidnapped and murdered or something. But my dad, he was on a trip to Columbia, he knew there were risks, that it was very dangerous. That was his business, international trade, and he did really well in it. It’s not like any of those cartel thugs are going to come after me, not way out here.”

“It’s not just them,” Rosa said, her Mexican accent still fairly strong even after almost forty years in the United States. “That poor girl in Aruba, another one raised in a cabin behind some crazy man’s house. I know how it is too, Amy. My grandfather disappeared, and my aunts, both of them, before I was even born. It’s a very dangerous world out there, Miss Amy, especially for a beautiful young woman.”

“Okay, I get that, I really do. And I love that my mother is so protective, it means she loves me.”

“That is very right,” Rosa said carefully, turning to her to help punctuate the point.

“But she’s also as afraid for herself as she is for me.” This caught Rosa’s attention, and she turned, with an air of expectation, ready to hear Amy’s explanation. “Rosa, my mother really took it hard when my father was killed. That’s why she’s so protective of me, because she knows how dangerous it is out there. But also, I don’t think she could bear to lose me, not to some tragedy, but even to a normal life. My brothers too, they live in the family home and they’re almost thirty? Isn’t that kind of … weird?”

Rosa went back to her dusting. Pshshshshsh. “Mexican families stick together. A lot of times, it’s all we have.”

Amy wrapped her arm around Rosa’s shoulder and gave her a little nuzzle. “How is your family? Can’t you get them up here? My mom’ll pay for it, you know that.”

Rosa shook her head. “It’s the immigration people, the offices, the paperwork, the lines are so long, they say. I call and call, but they don’t answer, they don’t call back. When they do answer, they don’t know nothing. It’s hard, Miss Amy, I miss them, my little Chico, he has a boy of his own now.”

Amy gave Rosa another reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, Rosa, we’ll get ‘em over here somehow. And I guess after a lifetime of scrambling on the streets of Rosarito, this would all be great. But I just feel like … like a bird in a gilded cage, you know? Like a goldfish in the world’s most fantastic fishbowl.”

“So what’s so wrong? No danger, lots of room to swim — ”

“And it’s fine, Rosa, really … until you suddenly hit the glass wall.” Amy contemplated wistfully.

Danny swaggered into the music room, a casual stride and an easy smile on his red-eyed face. “Hey hey, the gang’s all here.”

Rosa said, “Buenos Dias, Mr. Danny.”

“Ro-Ro-Ro-Your-Boat!” Rosa chuckled, but Amy rolled her eyes. “Yer doin’ a great job, Ro, really, but, I gotta say, if you’d just not touch the wooden box on the top shelf, that’d be great. Dust wherever you want, I don’t care, but not the box, got it?”

“Si, Mr. Danny.”

“Atta girl.” Danny turned to Amy. “Up for a game of pool?”

* * *

The Crying Towel pool hall stank of spilled beer and stale breath. It was dark, lit like midnight even at two in the afternoon. There were a few aging bar flies hanging out, desperate to hide from the light, and even the brief glare from the opening bar door was too much for their strained eyes.

Danny pulled back a hard gulp of his Michelob, wincing and smacking his lips, thumping the rubber end of the pool cue on the bar’s soiled carpeting. “Now that is one shitty beer. I just wanna say, we’ve got a fresh keg of Stella in the bar at home.”

“I know,” Amy said, lining up her shot. She let the cue stick fly, sending the cue ball into the nine ball, dropping it into the far corner pocket. “And we’ve got a bowling alley, a movie theater, I’m a little surprised a strip mall hasn’t popped up somewhere between the pool house and the tennis courts.”

They shared a little chuckle. “It’s great, isn’t it? If it weren’t for necessities, I don’t think I’d ever leave.”

“Don’t you resent them leading us around, controlling our money, our lives?”

Danny shrugged. “I say let ‘em deal with the money. I’ve got everything I need.”

“But you could probably leave the mansion if you wanted to, buy a house or go traveling on your own. I’m the one nobody trusts, I’m the one everybody thinks is just … incompetent.” Amy stated.

She shot again, the cue ball misfiring and knocking the seven ball careening across the table, sending the eight ball dangerously close to one of the two side pockets.

Danny said, “It’s for your own good, mine too. And in the final analysis, what’s the real difference? I don’t mean to call you ungrateful, but, y’know, some things seem good because you don’t have them, that’s the real attraction. The grass is always greener, y’know?”

Pulling away from the table, Amy felt like she had to ask, “You don’t really mean that.”

“Why not?” Danny held his hands up to the bar around him, a beer bottle in one and the pool cue in the other. “Amy, why go out for hamburger when you’ve got prime rib at home?”

“Because you can’t eat prime rib morning, noon, and night,” Amy said, surprising herself with her own quick wit. “Danny, don’t you wanna get out there and do something with your life?”

“Do what with it?” Amy could scarcely digest the response, but Danny stood there shrugging as if there was no doubt to be had. “Get a job? Doing what? There are no jobs out there, Amy, there just aren’t. Second, if there was an available job out there, why should I take it? I don't need it. I know it sounds like I’m privileged or lazy, but think about it this way; really, it’d be selfish to take a job that somebody else could have and could really use.”

Amy shot her brother an expression which, after a lifetime of friendship, didn’t have to be explained.

“Don’t give me that look,” Danny said, emptying his bottle and lining up his own shot. “Should I be running the company? Mom does that, and when she’s done Jonathan’s taking over, that’s already a done deal. Not much more for me to do than sit back and enjoy the ride. And I don’t appreciate being made to feel guilty about it.” He said, defensively.

“I’m not making you feel anything, Danny. I think you’re just feeling it naturally.” Danny shot, sinking the three ball. “I wouldn’t blame you, I feel the same way. But that’s not what I’m talking about, Danny. You’re so talented, intelligent. It’s sad to think of all that talent going to waste on a series of vacations and models.”

“What should I do? Write a novel that nobody’ll read? Make an independent film? Talk about a waste of a life.”

Danny missed the next shot and stepped back from the table.

Amy circled the table, selecting her next shot, the fourteen into the corner pocket. She lined up the cue stick and took a few, short practice strokes. “What about a family? Have you thought about having a few kids, that’s a good way to pass along what you’ve learned — ”

“No, no way,” Danny said, shaking his head as Amy took her shot, a broad miss of the pocket, the fourteen rolling hard to the other corner, then bouncing idly away to settle near the center of the table. “I’m not gonna spend my life chasing around a bunch of rug rats, always worried about what they’re eating, where are they — sounds like a massive headache to me.”

“Really? To me, it sounds like the way I grew up, the way you three raised me after Dad died.”

Danny tensed up in that awkward moment. “Um — ”

“Is that the way you see me, as a responsibility, as a headache?”

“No, Amy, of course not. We all just want you to be happy, that’s all.”

Danny took his shot, the five ball missing the corner pocket and bouncing back hard, streaming toward the eight ball dangling near the side pocket. With a slight tap, the black ball went down into the hole.

The game was over.