The Risk Pool

went back to work, he might be okay.
    “You learn how to make a Manhattan yet?” he said.
    I said no.
    My father consulted his watch. “You got about ten minutes to learn.”
    He was right, too, because very shortly thereafter, the heavy front door to Mike’s Place grunted open about six inches, fell back shut, then grunted open a second time, a wooden cane thrust in this time, to prevent the door from closing.
    “You better go help her,” my father said.
    I did as I was told, nearly screwing up bad, because when I pulled the door open, the old woman on the other side, having braced her thin shoulder against the wood, tumbled in. I caught her just in time. The fat taxi driver who had apparently just dropped her at the curb hadn’t bothered to get out, but had leaned across the seat to watch and now looked disappointed that I’d broken the old woman’s fall.
    “Why thank you, young man,” the old woman said when I had her upright and the door had swung shut again. “I think I’ll have a Manhattan.”
    So I got her settled in the booth nearest the door, made her a Manhattan under my father’s supervision, and brought it to her. For some reason, she looked familiar to me, though I didn’t see how she could be. She made no move to take off her old fur coat, though she did remove her hat, which had been knocked cockeyed by her assault on the door. Her gray hair was thin, but utterly wild, despite the half-dozen bobby pins arranged, as far as I could tell, randomly.
    “You’re him,” she said, staring up at me intently, “aren’t you.”
    “Why, yes,” I said. “I suppose I am.”
    “Well,” she said. “He’s still alive, though I’m sure I never would have expected it.”
    “I’m very glad to hear it,” I told her, still not making the connection. “Excuse me.”
    I went back to the bar.
    “Give her about twenty minutes,” my father said, “then make her another one. Did she have money on the table?”
    I said yes.
    “Sometimes she forgets,” he said.
    In a few minutes I went back to see how she was doing. “I think I’ll have another Manhattan,” she said, as if the idea had just occurred to her. She handed me the empty glass.
    Twice more this happened, and when I served her fourth, she instructed me to call a taxi. The dispatcher seemed to be expecting the call. “Aw, fuck,” he said.
    A few minutes later the same driver pulled up out front and tooted. I got the old woman on my arm and together we negotiated the single step down to the sidewalk and then the curb. Again, the driver didn’t bother to get out. It took a minute, but eventually I got her situated comfortably enough in the backseat.
    “Make sure the towel’s under her,” the driver said.
    Oddly enough, there happened to be a ragged, dirty towel on the seat and the old woman was squarely in the center. It had begun to drizzle out and I was getting wet, but I took a moment for a word with the driver.
    “When you get her home,” I said quietly, “why not get off your fat lazy ass and give her a hand into the house.”
    He started to say something, but I held up a finger and wagged it, trying to look like a dangerous man. I must have, at least a little, because the words died in his mouth.
    Back inside, I was greeted by a powerful odor that I’d been only vaguely aware of when I’d helped the old woman out of her booth. My father and the other men at the bar were all grinning at me.
    “There’s plenty of t-towels in the back,” Tree said.
    In fact, the old woman had peed all over the booth and floor, just as she apparently did every Wednesday afternoon upon finishing her fourth Manhattan.
    But it was later that night, at home, when I sat straight up in bed. I’d been thinking about the cab driver I’d been too hard on, and the old woman’s good-natured way of letting other people clean up her mess, when I suddenly imagined a younger Mrs. Agajanian, standing on her screened-in back porch, watching my old friend Claude dangle, red-faced, from the bent crossbeam of the ramada.
    One Saturday afternoon in early May I ran into another old woman I’d known a decade before, and this one—Tria Ward’smother—I recognized right away. The amazing thing was that she also recognized me.
    I didn’t work Saturdays, and I had agreed to meet my father at some unspecified time and place later that afternoon, whenever and wherever I managed to track him down. At the moment I was putting it off by picking up my mother’s