The Risk Pool

important nuance, my father erred by making things more complex than they already were. When he was on a streak—and it was not all that unusual for him to hit three or even four races in a row—things would invariably go very bad, usually all at once. The problem was that after hitting three or four in a row, my father began to suspect that the true determining factor in the next race’s outcome was himself. Destiny was awaiting his wager. Yes, he was a skilled handicapper, but I think he sometimes believed that this skill merely opened some door to an inner sphere of far greater influence. He began to suspect that the race was being run for his exclusive entertainment and benefit, that an act of faith on his part—say a hundred-dollar wager—was all that was needed to rig the race.
    At such times his expression became both fierce and distant. Neither I nor anyone else existed. And when he lost, finally and inevitably, he looked like a man turned away at the threshold, as if some fine promise had been made, then without explanation, welshed on. Sometimes, too, he appeared almost relieved, as if he wouldn’t have known what to do if the promise had been kept. Having been taken advantage of, he was reassured of his purpose, and he’d grin at me weakly then, as if to say he hoped I’d been paying attention.

15
    The Sunday before Christmas I went next door to clean Rose’s as usual. My father, after that first time, never accompanied me. Rose made me a list of things that needed doing, and I checked each one off methodically. I also went through her black ledger to find out how she was doing. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas she set new records every week, though many of the entries were made in light pencil, others on slips stuffed carelessly into the crease of the binding.
    On Mondays, usually late in the afternoon, Rose knocked on our door and handed me my pay. “Your father leaves you alone too much,” she often observed, as she craned her neck to see inside.
    I shrugged. As a rule I didn’t mind being alone. I’d taken up reading with even more of a vengeance in the months since moving in with my father, making at least two trips to the library every week. I’d grown fond of being the only one in the vast, high-ceilinged apartment, and sometimes I pretended I was its sole proprietor, an illusion not all that difficult to sustain, given my father’s unpredictable comings and goings. Once he learned that I would not starve if he didn’t show up at mealtimes, he felt better about not showing up. He set up an account at the Mohawk Grill and told me to eat there when I didn’t have cash. Sometimes, hewould disappear entirely for a day or two and then come back looking sheepish, though he never offered any explanation. I never worried much, because there was always somebody at the Mohawk Grill who knew where to find him if I needed him, and usually I forgot to need him. I had plenty of ready cash and a growing savings account, the existence of which nobody knew.
    “Boys your age need guidance,” Rose went on. “Before long you’ll have some girl knocked up, and then where will you be?”
    I felt like explaining to her that it wasn’t so simple. But she wasn’t the only one to worry mistakenly about my unsupervised life in the big apartment. The guys at the grill were always wanting to know if I was getting any, and saying that I better had be. “At your age I’d have gotten myself laid every night if I’d had a place,” Skinny was fond of observing. I had trouble imagining Skinny at twelve, much less his getting laid.
    “You know how to protect yourself?” Rose wanted to know.
    I nodded. Wild Bill Gaffney, the town derelict, who spoke gibberish, had on more than one occasion pressed me to accept a small package, the contents and purpose of which I divined only after removing the prophylactic and unrolling its unnecessarily long sleeve. At the moment I had three still in their sealed packages. Protection was my strong suit. I needed something to be protected from.
    I was thinking about this very problem that Sunday morning before Christmas in Rose’s when I heard the heavy step on the stair outside. I’d left my father asleep on the sofa next door, and when whoever it was on the stair stopped and pounded on our apartment door I heard him snort awake. Through the frosted glass of Rose’s rear door, I watched the dark shadow of our apartment door yawn inward and the figure before it