The Risk Pool

opinion from the movement of my eyebrows. For this reason I was reluctant to open the volume, fearful of setting this chain of events in motion.
    “The author of this work of history is Tria’s grandfather on her mother’s side, you see. And my own father,” Mrs. Ward added, as if these two were not the same person, but rather collaborators. “What we are in urgent need of is an informed and objective opinion. I am convinced that what you hold in your hands is a work of historical significance, intelligence, and refinement, but, as my daughter has pointed out to me, I am hardly objective in this matter, you see.”
    “Certainly,” I said. “I mean, that’s entirely understandable.”
    “I could never allow the volume to leave this room, of course, but you could examine it here, at your leisure.”
    Tria was looking away now, flushed and beautiful.
    “I’m not really an historian,” I said again. “Of course I’d be very interested to have a look, but—”
    “Wonderful,” Mrs. Ward said. “You see dear? Help has arrived. I told you Mr.… was just the young man for us.”
    “I work days—” I began.
    “There is no deadline, you see,” Mrs. Ward said. “None. You would be welcome to visit us any evening. I have a project in mind, you see, but there are bridges to cross, and I am aware of each one, you see.”
    “Well—”
    “You will of course be compensated. We would not expect to engage the services of a graduate of the university without providing remuneration.”
    This last had the ring of a line too long practiced, too desperate. “I couldn’t take money—”
    “But you will read and give us your opinion.…” Mrs. Ward now held out her palms for the volume, as if it had already rested too long in the hands of a stranger, and I returned it to her, still unopened, her thin fingers closing around it like tiny vises.
    “Of course I will,” I reassured her, all the while thinking, I must confess, of the sweet promise of long evenings in conference with her dark-haired daughter. “Of course I will.”
    It was that dark-haired daughter who walked me out to F. William Peterson’s shiny New Yorker less than fifteen minutes later, the afternoon suddenly far shorter than I’d expected. The air had lostits warmth, and so had my companion, it seemed to me. I couldn’t make up my mind whether Tria Ward was irritated with me or simply abstracted.
    “I hope I didn’t mess up,” I said when we were out of earshot.
    She allowed herself a half smile. “No,” she said. “It isn’t that. With Mother, things are never easy. Encouraging and discouraging her can be equally hazardous. I warned you not to laugh. I should have also warned you not to take her too seriously.”
    “Right,” I said. “Then I’d have known just what to do.”
    She shrugged. “It’s my fault anyway. I’ve seen this coming and didn’t do anything about it. Now she’s all wound up and there will be no dealing with her. You may have to be honest before you’re through, and that will earn you an enemy.”
    “As long as it’s just the one,” I said, and she looked at me strangely, as if my remark would not permit interpretation. The blankness of her expression gave me a chill. It occurred to me for the first time in my long but slender acquaintance with Tria Ward that she might be slow. But I decided, as I stood there, completely charmed by the subtle flecks of color in her dark eyes, that it wasn’t true, and that it wouldn’t necessarily matter if it were. In the space of a few short hours, it occurred to me, I had fallen half in love with her again.
    At least half.

34
    My father said little about the legal difficulties that were closing in on him. In fact, he maintained that the lawsuit pending against him would never come to trial. The insurance companies would settle out of court, and the criminal negligence charge resulting from the DWI would be dropped. Beyond the mandated insurance coverage he had from the assigned risk pool, he himself had nothing, and to his mind that rendered him judgment-proof.“What the hell do I have?” he kept insisting whenever anyone suggested he might be in trouble.
    He was willing to concede that the accident would plunge him even further into the very deepest, darkest recesses of the risk pool, making his already exorbitant insurance rates astronomical, but beyond that he couldn’t see where he had anything to lose. When I asked him whether there was a chance he