The Risk Pool

who’d predicted the night before that something nice was going to happen to her soon, he’d
felt
it. By the time I got there she’d have bells on.
    “She says she’ll have bells on,” I told him.
    “That’s her all right,” he said. “Ding-a-ling.”
    Where the old apartment above Klein’s had borne a distinct resemblance to a bowling alley, my father’s present flat was much smaller, one room, really, plus a small bath that featured a sink, a commode, and a jerry-rigged shower stall. The living room itself was just long enough to accommodate the old sofa when it was folded out into a bed, which it happened to be at the moment. The television at its foot was new, but it sported the same old bent rabbit ears which pulled in the same old snow.
    “You don’t have to stay with her if you don’t want to,” my father said. “Wussy’s got a roll-away someplace.”
    The only place I could see to put it was on top of the pool table, which was wedged into the remaining corner and covered with a sheet of plastic.
    “I should though,” I said.
    “You’ll be kicking our mutual friend out of the spare room,” he said. “Or didn’t you know about that?”
    One of my very few rules in dealing with my parents had always been an adamant refusal to discuss each with the other. My silence had been known to infuriate both, but it kept my sanity and allowed me to pretend equal loyalty and affection. “I did, actually,” I admitted, without elaborating.
    “We had a little discussion about the arrangement one night,” my father said. “Right on Main Street across from the diner. He got lippy when I mentioned a couple of little things I didn’t like. Had to pick himself up off the seat of his pants.”
    “What do you care what they do?” I said.
    “That’s not the point,” he said.
    “Oh,” I said, since it seemed like the point to me.
    He shrugged. “I figure let it go. Being around your mother is punishment enough.”
    I rooted around my duffel bag until I found my razor and stripped off my shirt. The way I smelled, it was a terrible temptation to shower first, but the bathroom mirror looked like the only one in the flat and it was already cloudy. I lathered while he talked behind me.
    “Funny part is, he’s helped me out of one or two little scrapes. He’s not a half-bad lawyer, for around here anyways. Stands right up and talks to the judge and the judge listens. I just hope he doesn’t try that with your mother.”
    He came over and leaned in the doorway so he could watch me shave.
    “Last time I saw you, you weren’t shaving, were you?”
    I said that was true. I could tell he was trying to remember how old I was that last time.
    “You could have got luckier in the father department,” he said.
    “Or unluckier,” I said.
    “Not likely.” In the distorted, cloudy mirror, his face looked long, his eyes disproportionately large.
    When I’d showered and put on clean clothes, I felt very nearly human again. My hair was pretty shaggy, but I didn’t look bad enough to give my mother serious misgivings. We drove directly there, stopping just once when the Cadillac smelled hot, so my father fetched a couple bright yellow cans of oil from the spare case he kept in the trunk. He punctured these and turned them upside down into a plastic funnel, tossing them a great distance into an empty lot when he was finished.
    “What’s so funny?” he said when he caught me grinning.
    “Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking of something.”
    The morning had turned bright and warm. My mother was sitting in the sun on the second-floor front porch. She jumped up when the car pulled into the drive and came down at a dead run before either my father or I could get out of the car. She paused, questioning, only when she saw my father.
    “Look who I found getting off a bus downtown,” my father said, the lie more smooth and natural than the truest thing he’d ever learned.
    That night, to celebrate my return, we went out to dinner at The Elms, the restaurant Mike had lost in Vegas. My mother asked if it was all right if Will joined us, and I said sure, grateful for his company after the long afternoon. Besides, it was clear that “Will” pretty much had to come along if
we
were going to go, since it was his car that would transport us, his credit card that would eventually find its way under the check when that was presented. In return for these considerations, my mother consented to choose the