The only “best choice” I’ve made lately was to stop drinking. “Do you think this is the best choice for you?”Ĭlassic Nowhere Man. “Because I’m moving out? Planning to do that. He brushes some invisible whatever from his knee, like his attention’s already gone. Can’t remember when I started doing that, but it was well before my balls dropped. So I could slurp down the last of the scotchy ice water without him knowing while he was washing his hands before dinner. Even when I was little, I knew he’d leave the second drink half-finished. It’s only three o’clock and there’s the bucket, oozing cool sweat like I am. Sidebar? Sideboard? Generally, Ma brings in the ice in the little silver bucket thing ten minutes after he gets home from work, six p.m., synched up like those weird-ass cuckoo clock people who pop out of their tiny wooden doors, dead on schedule when the clock strikes, so Pop can have the first of his two scotches ready to go. Try not to scope out the bottle of Macallan on the . . . His eyes, like Nan’s and my own, are gray.
In the bad old days, I always got high before a father/son office visit. Two more of her on the wall, straightened hair, expensive white smile, plus a framed newspaper clipping of her after delivering a speech at this summer’s Stony Bay Fourth of July thing. On his desk, three pictures of Nan, my twin, at various ages-poofy red curls, missing teeth, then baring them in braces. I face the rear of Pop’s neck, hunch further into the gray, granite-hard sofa, rub my eyes, sink back on my elbows.
August heat outdoors, but no hint of that allowed here.
Except here, a room spliced out of John Grisham, all leather-bound, only muted light through the shades. Ma’s fond of “cute”-teddy bears in seasonal outfits and pillows with little sayings and shit she gets on QVC. I flick my eyes around the room: the mantel, the carpet, the bookshelves, the window try to find a comfortable place to land. He holds up his hand, keeps scribbling on a blue-lined pad. He’s at his desk when I step inside the gray cave of his office, his back turned. I’ve been summoned to see the Nowhere Man.
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