The Risk Pool

nothing to do but walk up that long sloping terrace, just as I had done every morning, grades one through six, so I did, half expecting the old bell to sound. Beneath the stone arch was a row of mailboxes and buzzers, and above the first of these was a label that said: S. Hall, resident manager. I pushed the buzzer and waited. Then I wandered around back where there was a big metal dumpster and a parking lot that was empty except for half a dozen cars, one of which was a yellow Subaru. It was unlocked, so I tossed my bag inside, checked to make sure he hadn’t left the keys in the ignition, and locked it up. Across the street, where a corner market had been when I was a kid, there was now an establishment called Trip’s, and Trip’s had a big green, triangularcocktail glass tilted over the front door. It looked like a good place to begin.
    And there he was, swung around on his bar stool so he could follow the action at the shufflebowl machine. His head was cocked strangely, as if he were trying to see out from under his glasses and along the bridge of his nose. When I sat down next to him, he rotated around to see who it was. “Hey!” he said. “You’re in New York!”
    “No,” I said. “I’m right here.”
    “I can see that. How come?”
    “I thought you invited me. What’s wrong with your neck?” He was tilted back, almost off the stool so he could look me over.
    “Stiff as a bitch,” he said. “Hurts, too. You bring your golf clubs?”
    “No.”
    “How come?”
    “I’ll rent some.”
    “Can you do that?”
    “Sure,” I said. “Even in Mohawk.”
    One of the shufflebowl players, a guy about forty, dressed in a pale blue summer cardigan and breezy, lightweight slacks came over. “The resident manager is up,” he said.
    “Say hello to Smooth,” my father said. “He owns this joint, along with those overpriced apartments across the street.”
    We shook hands, Smooth grinning at my father as we did. “What do I get from Sam Hall? Heartache. He gets his apartment for free, I buy the bar across the street so my legitimate tenants will know where to find the resident manager, and what do I get for my trouble? Heartache.” He was grinning at me now. “It’s worth it though, because I won the bet.”
    “Your ass,” my father said.
    “I bet him a hundred bucks two months ago that before the year was out, Sam Hall’d go back to school.”
    “You got room for one more tomorrow?” my father said.
    “You don’t have to ask. You’re the resident manager. You got privileges,” Smooth said, then to me, “You play golf?”
    “Not well,” I admitted.
    “Can he rent clubs?” my father said.
    “I got an extra set,” Smooth said. “They wouldn’t shoot straight for me, but they might for him. The only trouble is, they’re home.”
    “Uh-oh,” my father said.
    “How pissed off can she be?” Smooth said. “It was a week ago. You can’t keep a man out of his own house forever. There’s a law.”
    My father got down off the stool, rather gingerly, it seemed to me, and headed for the shufflebowl. “His mother kept me out of mine for about twenty years,” he said.
    “Who can blame her?” Smooth said. Then, when my father was out of earshot, he said, “I’m glad you decided to come up. He said you weren’t going to.”
    We watched my father hunch over the bowling machine, peering over the top of his glasses now at the still quivering pins. His first frame was a strike, but in the second he hit the head pin straight on and left a seven-ten split.
    “He’s all set up over there. They delivered the furniture yesterday,” Smooth said, but there was something in his tone I didn’t understand, as if there might be an irony about the arrangement. “Don’t say I said anything, but he talks about you all the time. My son the publisher.”
    When the game was finished and my father came back over, Smooth said, “How’d you get such a smart kid?”
    “I let his mother raise him.”
    “Good strategy,” Smooth said. “Remind me of it if I ever start talking about going home.”
    “You never listened to anything I told you yet,” my father said.
    “It’s the secret of my success,” Smooth said. “You’re like a compass that points due south. I look where you’re headed and go the other way. Speaking of which, I better go bail for Uncle Willie before they get him settled in for the night.” He turned to me. “Can you believe the cops in this town? Popping