The Risk Pool

yet.
    “I just heard Mother in the bathroom,” she said, up on one elbow to smooth hair away from my forehead, a gentle, wonderful intimacy that took my breath away.
    “You don’t make it easy for a guy to break camp,” I said.
    She covered herself, or tried to, with the sheet. “You better had, though, unless you want to meet her in the hall.”
    I could hear water running in another part of the house. “Let me take you to dinner tonight,” I said.
    “No,” she said. “But call me later.”
    “She’s liable to hear me drive away,” I said.
    “She’s probably seen the car out there anyway,” Tria said. “Don’t worry, though. She’ll pretend she doesn’t know. Things are always normal here, no matter how abnormal.”
    I got dressed and out the door quickly. My father’s Cadillac gave me a bad moment when it refused to turn over or even acknowledge that a key had turned in the ignition, but then the engine coughed to life with a plume of purple smoke from the exhaust. It hung there, intact, utterly refusing to dissipate, when I drove away, between the stone pillars and down the hill.
    The first thing to do was return the car. It was Saturday morning though, and there was no hurry. I’d left my father at Greenie’s with half a load on around 7:30 the night before, which meant that Saturday wouldn’t get under way for him much before noon. I didn’t want the car for anything, though, so I left it at the curb across the street from his flat where he couldn’t miss it. Then I walked to the corner and left on Main toward the Mohawk Grill. Out of habit I peeked in on my way by, and there was my father sitting at the counter eating eggs. The only other person was Harry, who was nursing his ritual Saturday morning hangover, the very apparent pain of which changed his personality not one jot.
    “Here’s the car thief now,” my father said when I slid onto the stool next to him. “How about some eggs?”
    “Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
    “Not a thing,” he said. “Just sitting here wishing I had a car is all. I walked all the way over to your mother’s and it wasn’t there either.”
    “You didn’t wake her up, I hope.”
    “You shitting me?” he said, as if to suggest that perhaps I’d forgotten that he was acquainted with her. “What’d you do, wreck it?”
    “It’s sitting right out in front of your place,” I told him.
    “Like hell. I walked all around the block. Two blocks.”
    I shrugged. “I’ve got twenty bucks says it’s right out front.”
    “Then you just put it there.”
    Harry set my eggs in front of me and went back to frying bacon and sausage, which he had sputtering in long even rows on the grill. My father finished his breakfast and amused himself by watching me eat mine, nodding as if he knew something worth knowing.
    “So,” he said. “You finally found a better place to park my car at night than your mother’s.”
    “Who, me?” I said. I liked those rare occasions when he didn’t know what was up. It was pure pleasure not helping him figure it out. “I’d check the battery cables,” I told him. “It wouldn’t start, at first. I think you got a loose connection.”
    “He
is
a loose connection,” Harry offered without turning around.
    My father ignored him. “Does that in the morning sometimes. When it’s damp. Rain out where you were?”
    “Yup,” I said.
    He nodded. “Guess who came home yesterday.”
    “Drew Littler,” I said. The name was out before I could call it back or figure out where it came from.
    “That’s a hell of a guess,” he said. “You run into him?”
    I said I hadn’t and hoped I wouldn’t.
    “Got his mother all in a tizzy already. Couldn’t call ahead, naturally, and say he was coming. Got to show up and give her a heart attack.”
    “How is he?” I said, trusting my father to intuit that I was not inquiring after Drew Littler’s health so much as his mood.
    “You should see him,” my father said. “He’s big as a house. Bigger. Moved his shit right back into the spare bedroom. Never mind waiting to be invited. Not Zero.”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t call him that,” I suggested.
    My father lip-farted. “That’s what he is.”
    “That’s why you shouldn’t,” I said. “He probably resents the hell out of it, and he’s not sixteen anymore.”
    “Big isn’t everything,” my father said, catching my drift. “Smart counts too, you know.”
    “Where do
you
fit in?” Harry wanted to