What he liked, his mother absolutely wouldn't like, and since it had been his bright idea for Conchita to come over so that she might finally meet his mother, an idea that, as soon as it was broached, developed an alarming weight of regret, regret so heavy he found himself unable to put the phone back in the cradle and instead dropped it on the floor, where it twirled and twirled on its coily black cord, and now that she was standing in his mother's kitchen looking not at all like a ten-dollar hooker but more like a two-dollar one, Sonny felt gut-shot, or maybe run over by a bus.