Everything Changes

were always a worrier, even as a kid. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, you would always ask me for a flashlight. You were five years old and you were worried about blackouts. Do you remember that?”
    “No,” I lie.
    “Well, anyway. It just seems to me that on the list of things that are troubling you, I’m nowhere near the top right now. I don’t know if it’s work, or your engagement, or what, but I just know this: it’s not me.”
    “Don’t sell yourself short,” I say. “You’re still way up there.”
    Norm lets out a bone-weary sigh and picks up his notebook, carefully organizing some of the tattered pages sticking out at various angles. “What is that, anyway?” I ask him.
    “I’m writing my memoirs,” he says without the faintest whiff of self-consciousness, and something about it just makes me laugh out loud. “What?” he says defensively.
    “Your memoirs,” I say, unable to hold back a laugh.
    “That’s right,” he says defensively. “And I’ll have you know that I’ve already shown them to a friend or two in the publishing game, and they’re very interested.”
    “No doubt.” I’m still smiling, and I can see it’s aggravating him.
    “Look,” he says, annoyed. “Are we going to eat, or what?”
    And maybe it’s the insanity of the last twelve hours, maybe it’s my current worries about my own mortality, maybe it’s because I’m scared and I want a father, any father, or maybe it’s just because this is the first time I can recall laughing in recent memory, but suddenly, I have no resistance left in me. “Fine,” I say. “Let’s go eat.”
    “Hallelujah,” Norm says.

Chapter 17
    We eat at Arnie’s Deli, a small restaurant on Broadway with a deliberate coffee shop feel. “How are you guys doing?” the waitress says, handing us our menus. She’s tall and slim, her hair, an unnatural platinum color, fed in a ponytail through the hole in the back of her baseball cap, and Norm is all over her in an instant, shamelessly looking her up and down with an appreciative grin.
    “I’m just fine, Penny,” he says, reading her name tag. “Thanks for asking. And how are you?”
    “I’m good,” she says with considerably less enthusiasm.
    “You look beautiful this evening,” Norm says.
    “Well, thank you. And what can I get you tonight?”
    “What’s good?”
    “I don’t know. What are you in the mood for?”
    “Well, I usually get to know a woman better before I answer that, but since you asked . . .” He laughs loudly at his little joke, nudging my arm to get me in on it, smiling at the other diners, the inadvertent beneficiaries of his sharp wit.
    “Norm,” I say quietly.
    “Sorry,” he says, not taking his eyes off her. “My son doesn’t like to see his old man flirt.”
    “And you do it so well,” Penny says. Oblivious to her sarcasm, Norm breaks into raucous laughter, as if she’s bantering with him.
    “Well, no one ever died from being told they were beautiful, did they?”
    “I’m dying,” I say, and Norm goes off again.
    I catch Penny’s eye and I want to explain everything to her, how I haven’t seen him in years, how he coerced me into this, how sorry I am for the inconvenience. “We’ll need a few minutes,” I say ruefully.
    “I’ll be right back, then,” she says with a grin, heading back to the counter, and I realize that I’ve overestimated her reaction to Norm.
    “I’ll watch you go,” my father says, leaning out of his chair.
    “You behave now, Norm,” she says, casting a playful glance back at him.
    “This is behaving,” he calls after her, smiling around the diner at his unwitting audience, somehow seeing approval in their indifference. Then he casts one more longing look at Penny’s ass before sitting back in his chair. “Now, that will keep you warm at night,” he says appreciatively.
    “Jesus, Norm,” I say.
    “What?”
    “It’s a shitty enough job without having to be hit on by dirty old men.”
    “She didn’t seem to mind,” Norm says.
    “She was being polite, because this is her place of work, and if she tells you to fuck off, she could lose a tip or her job.”
    “And I think it’s a long night, and a tough job, and maybe a little flirting breaks up the monotony and makes her feel good about herself. Besides, I think she liked me.”
    “What, you and her?” I say, inexplicably frustrated by his delusions. “Are you honestly telling me that you think you have a shot at getting a date