Jon’s eyelids fluttered. He sat up and stretched. Allison rolled onto her back, exposing not only her lovely face and the aureole of wheat-light hair on the pillow but also her absolutely perfect breasts. It was amazing, but he felt himself stand up for her again, as if three times hadn’t been enough.
Actually, to be honest, the sex, though good, hadn’t been terrific. Allison was used to being pleased, and she was nowhere near as good a lover as, say, Beth, but just looking at her had given him enough of a thrill to make up for the difference. So he was thinking about another attempt, when his phone rang.
He had taken her to his place—breaking the rules, which Tracie would not have approved of, and here was his punishment. He thought for a moment of just ignoring the phone, but he didn’t want Allison to think she was that important to him, or he’d never get another shot at her. He hoped it wasn’t Beth. So, on the second ring, he reached over and picked up the receiver.
“Hey, Jon. Do you know what day this is?” a male voice asked, and he nearly dropped the phone.
“Dad?” he said, but then he didn’t know what else to say. He hadn’t heard from his father for at least two years, except for one postcard he had gotten from Puerto Rico, and then a letter from San Francisco begging him to invest $100,000 in a new venture that his dad and two other losers were trying to start. He had barely been able to understand the prospectus, but he had sent his father a money order for a thousand dollars and a note that wished him luck. He hadn’t heard from him since then.
“Dad . . .” he repeated. Beside him, Allison turned and lifted her head, leaning it against her arm so she could look at him. But he didn’t want to be looked at right now. He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed, turning his back on her.
“It’s my day, Jon. It’s Father’s Day. Remember? And I am your father.”
There was a defensive yet pleading tone to his voice that made Jon very uncomfortable. Had he been drinking this early? Jon still didn’t have a watch, but it was early—very early for drinking. Of course, he didn’t know what time zone Chuck was in—or even what hemisphere. Maybe it was cocktail hour in Singapore.
“I wondered if you’d have the time to meet me?” his father was saying. “I came a long way, son, to see you.”
Jon shrugged a little. If his father was calling him “son,” it was definitely a sign that something was wrong. His father never liked to admit that he was older than thirty-five, which made it awkward to have a son Jon’s age. As he aged, his women hadn’t, though there’d been a frightening decline in quality. Jon sighed and hoped his father didn’t hear it. “Sure,” Jon said. “Sure I can meet you.”
“Shit! Shit,” Tracie said as she looked at the papers spread out on her living room floor.
“Come on, his eggs aren’t that bad,” Laura said. They were having a late breakfast, prepared—oddly enough—by Phil. He had insisted. Though the eggs were cooked until they were brown and the potatoes were uncooked, so that they were unpleasantly crunchy, Tracie had hardly noticed. Instead, she was mourning the abortion Marcus had made of her feature on Father’s Day. It hadn’t been easy to think of an original angle, but she’d been pleased with the piece, since what she’d managed to do was a piece about alternative fathers. A priest who had helped raise a dozen orphan boys, a Yuppie who was Big Brother to a wheelchair-bound fatherless nine-year-old, a guy who had run a summer camp and served in loco parentis for dozens of boys, as well as a couple of grandfathers who were raising their grandsons.
It had run four full columns in length, but it had been cut to less than a column, mentioning only the grandfathers in detail, with the others given barely a sentence. And someone else had supplied the usual crap about where “normal” kids were bringing “normal” dads to celebrate, along with a list of restaurants serving special brunches. Enraged, she glanced at the byline and found that while her name was on it at the bottom, it did add “With special reporting by Allison Atwood.” “Goddamn it!” Tracie said, and threw the paper halfway across the living room.
Oblivious to her pain, Phil chose that moment to ask, “How do you like the eggs?”
She could hear Laura stifling a laugh behind her, but she managed to suppress her own rage at the paper long enough to turn to Phil with a tight smile. “Really good. Thanks.” What she thought was that she’d cooked him probably a hundred breakfasts without any fuss, and, usually, without any thanks. But if a guy fried up one goddamn egg, he expected the Nobel Prize.
“Really? You like the eggs?” Phil asked, probably because they hadn’t praised him enough, and Tracie wondered, not for the first time, if she could perhaps somehow manage to live without sex.
Tearing himself away from Allison had not been as painful as the apprehension of what little treat Chuck Delano had waiting for him.
Jon didn’t hate his father. It would be easier if he did. Instead, what he felt was a kind of indignation cut with pity. It was the pity that had gotten him out of his bed, into his clothes, and into a taxi. He wondered again what was waiting for him.
When Jon was just a teen, his father had made him go with him on several of his little excursions. Chuck—he didn’t want to be called Dad—would sit across from some young woman but direct conversation to Jon. “Now, son, I want you to meet my new girl. Isn’t she a pip?”
There had been a lot of those, because, though Jon hated to acknowledge it, his father was a good-looking and sometimes charming guy. But when Jon was in his early teens, Chuck had been at the top of his game. As his career had ebbed, so had his looks, and he’d found more solace in Southern Comfort than the entire Confederacy had. And more and more frequently, Chuck had used him as a prop to help with the women. He hadn’t had a choice—his father had visiting privileges—and a part of him had wanted to see his dad. What kid didn’t? As Jon hit maturity, Chuck certainly still hadn’t. Just before he’d left Seattle for parts largely unknown, he’d taken Jon out for the last time. Another one of his jobs had ended in disaster, and after a few drinks and a lot of self-pity, Chuck had become maudlin. “Gotta start again somewhere,” he’d said. “Got it all planned out. And I want you to be a part of it. You’re my flesh and blood.” Jon had been working at Micro/Con for a few years, but his father told him to quit. “You’ll never get rich working for someone else,” he said. “Take it from me. I’m striking out on my own.” Striking out was more like it.
Jon hadn’t noticed a very young woman peering at them from the bar until his father pointed her out. She looked like a ninth grader. Jon had almost thought she was interested in him, but he’d been sure the proof she carried was fake. “I was thinking of asking her,” Jon’s father had said. “Asking her what? How she scored on her PSATs?” Jon had asked. “No. No. To marry me,” his father had answered matter-of-factly.
Jon had the taxi drop him at the corner near where he was meeting his father. The neighborhood was getting seedy, not far from the bus station. What in the world could he get his dad? A pint of Southern Comfort? A one-way ticket to South America? He entered the drugstore in the middle of the block.
He settled on some aftershave, the classic, stupid Father’s Day gift. While the clerk gift wrapped it, he remembered that Phil lived somewhere around here, and that Laura had considered a place in the neighborhood until Tracie warned her off. Despite the wind that was making his eyes tear, he smiled. He’d have an earful for Tracie tonight.
His father had given him an address just a few blocks north of where he was now, a restaurant called Howdies. In another block, Jon could see it, the kind of big, grim, noisy place that people who took long-distance buses stopped at to eat.
As he swung the door open, an automated voice shouted, “Howdy.” But that was about it as far as the theme went. The place was a grim collection of Formica-topped tables and molded plastic chairs. It was cavernous, and along one long wall ran a food service where hot tables offered up yesterday’s meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, mixed carrots and
peas. Jon felt as forlorn as the bowls of browning iceberg lettuce that sat, unwanted, in a row across the top of the salad section. From the entrance, he saw the ghostly glimmer of a white face under a cap and an equally white hand beckoning. Jon walked down the long aisle toward his dad.
He tried not to make a noise or stare once he saw him clearly, but it would have been equally cruel to avert his eyes. Chuck seemed to have aged two decades in the two years or so since Jon had last seen him. His father began to struggle to his feet, but Jon waved him back and took the chair opposite. He didn’t kiss or hug him, but he did hold out his hand. His father’s was thin and his skin was amazingly papery. Jon was too shocked by his appearance to say anything. “Hello, Jon,” Chuck said. “You’re looking well.” It wasn’t the best opening, since Jon couldn’t give the standard “Yes, so are you.” He fumbled in his pocket and then silently handed Chuck his gift. Chuck took it and looked at it blankly, as if it were a meteorite or a ball of buffalo mozzarella. “What’s this?” Chuck asked.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s a present. You know, Father’s Day.”
Chuck stared at it but didn’t move to open it. Then he shook his head a couple of times. “You’re a really good boy, Jonathan. You take after your mother’s side of the family.” Involuntarily, Jon nodded. “You’re looking good. Still crazy after all these years, huh?”
It was a song that his mom and Chuck used to sing together when they were in a good mood. Jon remembered driving to Vancouver, with them singing happily in the front seat while he chimed in from the back. “Still can’t afford a car?” his father asked, and when Jon was about to protest, Chuck raised his bony white hand to stop him. “I’m only joking,” he said. “I know how well you’re doing.”
“You do?” Jon asked.
“Your mother keeps me up-to-date. On the Internet. Thanks for coming to see me, son,” Chuck said, and Jon felt his heart tighten in his chest. The “son” business was usually the beginning of the financial requests. But it didn’t materialize this time. Chuck talked about his place in Nevada, gardening, and the Seahawks, Donald Trump, the upcoming election, and an episode of Frasier where Niles and his father both seemed to want to date Daphne. None of it added up to anything, and Jon kept waiting for the touch, the angle, until his father lifted up the brim of his cap and ran his hand over the stubble of his shiny head. “It itches like hell,” Chuck said. “They told me that was normal after chemo.” It was only then that all the pieces fell into place. Before Jon could say anything, Chuck leaned forward and looked him in the eyes for the first time. “I’ve got a good chance,” he said. “It hasn’t metastasized. I have some radiation treatments to go through and then, with luck, I’ll be right as rain.”
“Good,” Jon managed to choke out; he didn’t feel strong enough to ask a single question about what kind of tumor, whether it had been operable, what the percentage of success was . . . It all flashed through his mind, but he looked across at the shriveled shell of his father and didn’t ask a thing. “You look good, Chuck,” he said, and for the first time, his father laughed.
“You’re too fucking much,” Chuck said, shaking his fragile-looking head. He’d always been so vain. Jon wondered if he cared anymore about his looks or was only focused on survival. Again, he thought it was too personal a question to ask.
In fact, he didn’t have much to say. “Good luck,” he murmured at last. “If there’s anything I can—”
“Well, I did wonder if there was any chance I could be put on your medical plan?” Chuck said. “That would be a big help. I don’t really have the kind of benefits that give you priority seating in the waiting room.”
“Hey, don’t worry about that,” Jon said. “I can talk to my benefits coordinator tomorrow.” He doubted he could get his father, a man with a pre-existing condition, who he hadn’t lived with for fifteen years, any coverage, but he could certainly pay for whatever treatment might cure or comfort Chuck.
“Or maybe your mother could get me reinstated,” Chuck added. “I thought about going over to see her while I’m here. Is she hooked up with anyone now?”
“Yes.” Jon lied as smoothly as if he’d been doing it all his life. The last thing his mom needed now was to nurse her dying ex-husband. “You’d like him. He’s a professional wrestler.”
“I never should have left your mother,” Chuck admitted.
“You never should have cheated on her, either,” Jon said, and then regretted letting that slip, but his father merely nodded his head.
“Don’t make my mistakes, Jon,” he said. “Find a good woman. Stick with her. You’ll never regret it.”
Chapter 34
Molly was talking to a customer and didn’t notice when Tracie walked in, which was a relief to Tracie. Phil had been really talkative all evening and kept trying to keep her from leaving. But she was here on time, despite Phil, and proceeded to go to her usual spot to wait for Jon. Just as she was slipping out of her raincoat, Molly approached her with two steaming mugs of coffee. “You ’ave no one to blame but yourself for this little turn of events,” Molly said as she placed the two cups on the table and slid opposite Tracie in the booth.
“Excuse me? I don’t remember inviting you to join me.”
“Well, if I don’t, you’re going to be ’ere alone this time,” Molly said as she pushed the sugar holder toward Tracie’s hand. “We’re making some doughnuts in the kitchen. You’ll be able to dunk them. In your tears,” she added. “I take it the tickets didn’t work. And I ’ad to fuck a roadie to get them. Waste of a good favor, I call it.”
“I think you’re being a little overdramatic,” Tracie said with as much dignity as she could muster. “Anyway, I have nothing to cry about.”
“Being stood up by your friend after all these years won’t upset you then?”
“What are you talking about? I’m early and Jon’s a little late. What’s the big deal?”
“No, luv. ’e was late last week. And a little late the week before. My bet is that this is the week ’e doesn’t show at all, Radiohead tickets or no.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We meet for this late brunch every Sunday, no matter what. Except for the time he had his appendectomy,” Tracie told Molly, as if she didn’t know. “I’m his best friend.”
“You’re a lot more than that.” Molly stood up and looked deep into Tracie’s eyes. “Face it: You’re a scrambled egg girl who thinks she should like something different. You don’t even know what you feel about ’im, do you? ’e was at your beck and call and you were too stupid to appreciate it.”
“I did that?”
“Yes, Dr. ’iggins.” In disgust, Molly got up from her seat and walked toward the kitchen.
Tracie sat alone in the booth, staring out the window. Bored with the lack of activity outside, she started to fiddle with the packets of Sweet ‘n Low. There were eleven—a very unsatisfactory number. She tried to arrange them in three rows of four, but the last, short row annoyed her. So she reorganized them into two rows, the top with five and the bottom with six, but that looked like a pyramid without a top. So she did one at the top, a row of two under that, a row of three beneath that, and a row of four underneath. But then she had one left. What the fuck? she thought, then tore it into a star shape and put it at the top of the triangle that now became a Christmas tree. She got the Sweet ’n Low all over everything. The powder that spilled all over could be snow. Too bad it’s mid-June instead of Christmas, she thought sourly.
“ ’aving fun?” Molly asked on her way by the table.
Tracie sighed. Maybe Molly was right about her. Maybe she was a scrambled eggs kind of girl, a person who liked to work under deadlines, have assignments, and didn’t know when she loved somebody. After all, Laura had said the same thing a week ago. She glanced down at her watch—only another nine minutes had passed. Where the hell is he? she thought. She’d always taken his promptness for granted. But he’d come early because . . . he loved her best. She felt wate
r rise up to the bottom of her lids. Somehow, she’d counted on that. Who did he prefer now? Who was he with? Ten minutes passed. Tracie couldn’t take the waiting any longer. She got up and went to the phone booth at the back of the coffee shop. She punched in Jon’s number, but there was no answer. “Damn it!” She hung up the receiver and dialed his work number—he might have fallen asleep over his terminal—but all she got was the same recording saying his mailbox was full. “Goddamn it!”
She marched back to the booth, passing Molly, who was taking another customer’s order. Molly looked up and smiled at her with an unbearable I-told-you-so grin. Tracie gathered up her raincoat and bag, stalked across the floor, pushed the door open, and stormed out.
She put her bag over her head to shield her hair from the rain and walked quickly to her car, fumbled with the keys to unlock her door, and finally managed to get inside. Why the fuck do I live in a city where it always rains? What’s wrong with me? She drove like Mario Andretti through the wet, deserted streets of downtown Seattle. The rain was coming down so hard, it was like a sheet sliding down the windshield. She glanced at the console clock, which told her Jon was now—wherever he was—forty-eight minutes late for his date with her.
Tracie squealed up to his downtown building, parked illegally in front of it, and left the emergency flashers blinking. She hustled out of the car and ran up the stairs to his loft. Ridiculous! His rent was exorbitant, but he had no elevator, no amenities. So like Jon!
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