Boris had promised me that we would do two of the leftover hits of acid as soon as his mind got back to usual, which was how he put it; he still felt a bit spaced-out, he confided, saw moving patterns in the fake wood-grain of his desk at school, and the first few times he’d smoked weed he’d started out-and-out tripping again.
“That sounds kind of intense,” I said.
“No, it’s cool. I can make it stop when I want to. I think we should take it at the playground,” he added. “On Thanksgiving holiday maybe.” The abandoned playground was where we’d gone to take E every time but the first, when Xandra came beating on my bedroom door asking us to help her fix the washing machine, which of course we weren’t able to do, but forty-five minutes of standing around with her in the laundry room during the best part of the roll had been a tremendous bringdown.
“Is it going to be a lot stronger than E?”
“No—well, yes, but is wonderful, trust me. I kept wanting Kotku and me to be outside in the air except was
too much
that close to the highway, lights, cars—maybe this weekend?”
So that was something to look forward to. But just as I was starting to feel good and even hopeful about things again—ESPN hadn’t been on for a week, which was definitely some kind of record—I found my father waiting for me when I got home from school.
“I need to talk to you, Theo,” he said, the moment I walked in. “Do you have a minute?”
I paused. “Well, okay, sure.” The living room looked almost as if it had been burgled—papers scattered everywhere, even the cushions on the sofa slightly out of place.
He stopped pacing—he was moving a bit stiffly, as if his knee hurt him. “Come over here,” he said, in a friendly voice. “Sit down.”
I sat. My dad exhaled; he sat down across from me and ran a hand through his hair.
“The lawyer,” he said, leaning forward with his clasped hands between his knees and meeting my eye frankly.
I waited.
“Your mom’s lawyer. I mean—I know this is short notice, but I really need you to get on the phone with him for me.”
It was windy; outside, blown sand rattled against the glass doors and the patio awning flapped with a sound like a flag snapping. “What?” I said, after a cautious pause. She’d spoken of seeing a lawyer after he left—about a divorce, I figured—but what had come of it, I didn’t know.
“Well—” My dad took a deep breath; he looked at the ceiling. “Here’s the thing. I guess you’ve noticed I haven’t been betting my sports anymore, right? Well,” he said, “I want to quit. While I’m ahead, so to speak. It’s not—” he paused, and seemed to think—“I mean, quite honestly, I’ve gotten pretty good at this stuff by doing my homework and being disciplined about it. I crunch my numbers. I don’t bet impulsively. And, I mean, like I say, I’ve been doing pretty good. I’ve socked away a lot of money these past months. It’s just—”
“Right,” I said uncertainly, in the silence that followed, wondering what he was getting at.
“I mean, why tempt fate? Because—” hand on heart—“I
am
an alcoholic. I’m the first to admit that. I can’t drink
at all.
One drink is too many and a thousand’s not enough. Giving up booze was the best thing I ever did. And I mean, with gambling, even with my addictive tendencies and all, it’s always been kind of different, sure I’ve had some scrapes but I’ve never been like some of these guys that, I don’t know, that get so far in that they embezzle money and wreck the family business or whatever. But—” he laughed—“if you don’t want a haircut sooner or later, better stop hanging out at the barber shop right?”
“So?” I said cautiously, after waiting for him to continue.
“So—whew.” My dad ran both hands through his hair; he looked boyish, dazed, incredulous. “Here’s the thing. I’m really wanting to make some big changes right now. Because I have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this great business. Buddy of mine has a restaurant. And, I mean, I think it’s going to be a
really
great thing for all of us—once in a lifetime thing, actually. You know? Xandra’s having such a hard time at work right now with her boss being such a shit and, I don’t know, I just think this is going to be a lot more sane.”
My dad? A restaurant? “Wow—that’s great,” I said. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” My dad nodded. “It’s
really
great. The thing is, though, to open a place like this—”
“What kind of restaurant?”
My dad yawned, wiped red eyes. “Oh, you know—just simple American
food. Steaks and hamburgers and stuff. Just really simple and well prepared. The thing is, though, for my buddy to get the place open and pay his restaurant taxes—”
“Restaurant taxes?”
“Oh God, yes, you wouldn’t believe the kind of fees they’ve got out here. You’ve got to pay your restaurant taxes, your liquor-license taxes, liability insurance—it’s a huge cash outlay to get a place like this up and running.”
“Well.” I could see where he was going with this. “If you need the money in my savings account—”
My dad looked startled. “What?”
“You know. That account you started for me. If you need the money, that’s fine.”
“Oh yeah.” My dad was silent for a moment. “Thanks. I really appreciate that, pal. But actually—” he had stood up, and was walking around—“the thing is, I actually see a really smart way we can do this. Just a short term solution, in order to get the place up and running, you know. We’ll make it back in a few weeks—I mean, a place like this, the location and all, it’s like having a license to print money. It’s just the initial expense. This town is crazy with the taxes and the fees and so forth. I mean—” he laughed, half-apologetically, “you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency—”
“Sorry?” I said, after a confused pause.
“I mean, like I was saying, I really need you to make this call for me. Here’s the number.” He had it all written out for me on a sheet of paper—a 212 number, I noticed. “You need to telephone this guy and speak to him yourself. His name is Bracegirdle.”
I looked at the paper, and then at my dad. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand. All you have to do is say what I tell you.”
“What does it have to do with me?”
“Look, just do it. Tell him who you are, need to have a word, business matter, blah blah blah—”
“But—” Who was this person? “What do you want me to say?”
My father took a long breath; he was taking care to control his expression, something he was fairly good at.
“He’s a lawyer,” he said, on an out breath. “Your mother’s lawyer. He
needs to make arrangements to wire
this
amount of money—” my eyes popped at the sum he was pointing to,
$65,000
—“into
this
account” (dragging his finger to the string of numbers beneath it). “Tell him I’ve decided to send you to a private school. He’ll need your name and Social Security number. That’s it.”
“Private school?” I said, after a disoriented pause.
“Well, you see, it’s for tax reasons.”
“I don’t want to go to private school.”
“Wait—wait—just hear me out. As long as these funds are used for your benefit, in the official sense, we’ve got no problem. And the restaurant is for
all
our benefit, see. Maybe, in the end, yours most of all. And I mean, I could make the call myself, it’s just that if we angle this the right way we’d be saving like thirty thousand dollars that would go to the government otherwise. Hell, I
will
send you to a private school if you want. Boarding school. I could send you to Andover with all that extra money. I just don’t want half of it to end up with the IRS, know what I’m saying? Also—I mean, the way this thing is set up, by the time you end up going to college, it’s going to end up costing
you
money, because with that amount of money in there it means you won’t be eligible for a scholarship. The college financial aid people are going to look right at that account and put you in a different income bracket and take 75 percent of it the first year, poof. This way, at least, you’ll get the full use of it, you see? Right now. When it could actually do some good.”
“But—”
“
But
—” falsetto voice, lolled tongue, goofy stare. “Oh, come on, Theo,” he said, in his normal voice, when I kept on looking at him. “Swear to God, I don’t have time for this. I need you to make this call ASAP, before the offices close back East. If you need to sign something, tell him to FedEx the papers. Or fax them. We just need to get this done as soon as possible, okay?”
“But why do
I
need to do it?”
My dad sighed; he rolled his eyes. “Look, don’t give me that, Theo,” he said. “I know you know the score because I’ve seen you checking the mail—yes,” he said over my objections, “yes you do, every day you’re out at that mailbox like a fucking shot.”
I was so baffled by this that I didn’t even know how to reply. “But—” I glanced down at the paper and the figure leaped out again
: $65,000.
Without warning, my dad snapped out and whacked me across the face, so hard and fast that for a second I didn’t know what had happened. Then almost before I could blink he hit me again with his fist, cartoon
wham,
bright crack like a camera flash, this time with his fist. As I wobbled—my knees had gone loose, everything white—he caught me by the throat with a sharp upward thrust and forced me up on tiptoe so I was gasping for breath.
“Look here.” He was shouting in my face—his nose two inches from mine—but Popper was jumping and barking like crazy and the ringing in my ears had climbed to such a pitch it was like he was screaming at me though radio fuzz. “You’re going to call this guy—” rattling the paper in my face—“and say what I fucking tell you. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be because I will
make
you do this, Theo, no lie, I will break your arm, I will beat the everloving
shit
out of you if you don’t get on the phone right now. Okay? Okay?” he repeated in the dizzy, ear-buzzing silence. His cigarette breath was sour in my face. He let go my throat; he stepped back. “Do you hear me? Say something.”
I swiped an arm over my face. Tears were streaming down my cheeks but they were automatic, like tap water, no emotion attached to them.
My dad squeezed his eyes shut, then re-opened them; he shook his head. “Look,” he said, in a crisp voice, still breathing hard. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t
sound
sorry, I noted, in a clear hard remove of my mind; he sounded like he still wanted to beat the shit out of me. “But, I swear, Theo. Just trust me on this. You have to do this for me.”
Everything was blurred, and I reached up with both hands to straighten my glasses. My breaths were so loud that they were the noisiest things in the room.
My dad, hand on hips, turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Just stop it.”
I said nothing. We stood there for another long moment or two. Popper had stopped barking and was looking between us apprehensively like he was trying to figure out what was going on.
“It’s just… well you know?” Now he was all reasonable again. “I’m sorry, Theo, I swear I am, but I’m really in a bind here, we need this money right now, this minute, we really do.”
He was trying to meet my eyes: his gaze was frank, sensible. “Who is this guy?” I said, looking not at him but at the wall behind his head, my voice for whatever reason coming out scorched-sounding and strange.
“Your mother’s lawyer. How many times do I have to tell you?” He was massaging his knuckles like he’d hurt his hand hitting me. “See, the thing is, Theo—” another sigh—“I mean, I’m sorry, but, I swear, I wouldn’t be so upset if this wasn’t so important. Because I am really, really behind the eight ball here. This is just a temporary thing, you understand—just until the business gets off the ground. Because the whole thing could collapse, just like that—” snapped fingers—“unless I start getting some of these creditors paid off. And the rest of it—I
will
use to send you to a better school. Private school maybe. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Already, carried away by his own rap, he was dialing the number. He handed me the telephone and—before anyone answered—dashed over and picked up the extension across the room.
“Hello,” I said, to the woman who answered the phone, “um, excuse me,” my voice scratchy and uneven, I still couldn’t quite believe what was happening. “May I speak to Mr., uh…”
My dad stabbed his finger at the paper:
Bracegirdle.
“Mr., uh, Bracegirdle,” I said, aloud.
“And who may I say is calling?” Both my voice, and hers, were way too loud due to the fact that my dad was listening on the extension.
“Theodore Decker.”
“Oh, yes,” said the man’s voice when he came on the other end. “Hello! Theodore! How are you?”
“Fine.”
“You sound like you have a cold. Tell me. Do you have a bit of a cold?”
“Er, yes,” I said uncertainly. My dad, across the room, was mouthing the word
Laryngitis.
“That’s a shame,” said the echoing voice—so loud that I had to hold the phone slightly away from my ear. “I never think of people catching colds in the sunshine, where you are. At any rate, I’m glad you phoned me—I didn’t have a good way to get in touch with you directly. I know things are probably still very hard. But I hope things are better than they were the last time I saw you.”
I was silent. I’d met this person?
“It was a bad time,” said Mr. Bracegirdle, correctly interpreting my silence.
The velvety, fluent voice struck a chord. “Okay, wow,” I said.
“Snowstorm, remember?”
“Right.” He’d appeared maybe a week after my mother died: oldish man with a full head of white hair—snappily dressed, striped shirt, bow tie. He and Mrs. Barbour had seemed to know each other, or at any rate he had seemed to know her. He’d sat across from me in the armchair nearest the sofa and talked a lot, confusing stuff, although all that really stuck in my mind was the story he’d told of how he met my mother: massive snowstorm, no taxis in sight—when—preceded by a fan of wet snow—an occupied cab had plowed to the corner of Eighty-Fourth and Park. Window rolled down—my mother (“a vision of loveliness!”) going as far as East Fifty-Seventh, was he headed that way?