Dad snorted the last rail off Granny’s copy of Better Homes and Gardens and asked, “Ever fuck a Catholic chick?”

I felt the drip in the back of my throat and shook my head no.

“Catholic chicks, they, like, go crazy for it. They’re told it’s fucking wrong, so they lose their shit when they get dick, because—”

“Stop usin’ that language in my house,” Granny said from the recliner.

“Sorry, Ma.”

Granny went back to watching Cops.

Dad stood and grabbed up the straw and the empty baggie. “Gonna take a shit real quick then we’ll head out,” he told me.

I went to the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water. My lips were numb and my face felt like ants were marching all over it. It felt like my heart was trying beat through my chest. I ignored it, set the glass in the sink, and went back to the living room and asked Granny, “The show good?”

She looked up at me.

“Your show? Is it good? Do you like it?”

“Stop yellin’, ya damn idiot,” she said.

I’d only done coke a couple of times, and every time the high kicked in, I couldn’t tell how loud I was talking. The first time I tried it, I walked in on Dad doing it in his room when my mom dropped me off at Granny’s house for his weekend with me. He held out the rolled up dollar and the compact mirror and asked if I wanted to try. “It’s just a little bump. It won’t hurt.” So, I did, and it didn’t, and I felt like I could smile for days. The Pink Floyd tape Dad had playing on the boombox sounded even better, and the bikini-clad Heather Thomas poster he had on his wall looked sexier. Heather’s teeth were whiter, her skin smoother, her bikini sheerer. “She’s hot,” I said.

Dad laughed. “I know, but you ain’t gotta yell it.”

“Huh?”

I don’t remember everything we did that weekend but I’m sure we had fun. We probably played Nintendo and watched TV like any other weekend.

Then two months and a few rails later, it was a weekend in July, and Dad came up with the plan.

He came out of the bathroom. “Ma,” he told Granny. “Dickie and I’re going out. I’ll be back.”

She waved him away.

“Love you.”

No answer.

I followed him out to his Sunbird. We drove over to my mom and stepdad’s house in the country. The dash clock read ten-after-ten. Dad pulled into the driveway.

Dad asked, “They went to Cancun, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“No cameras, right? Here, or…” He gestured up and down the road.

“No, nothing. I cut both neighbor’s lawns. They don’t have cameras.”

“Cut their lawns?”

“I got a job at Joe’s Lawn Care.”

“When’d you start that?”

“Last month, before graduation.”

“Money good?”

“It’s okay, especially out here with the lawns big’s they are.”

“Hope so. Big as football fields.” He cocked his thumb over his shoulder to the house across the street. “How’bout that place?”

“It’s empty. Guy that owns went to Florida. Gay guy, but he’s cool.”

“He didn’t try’n fuck ya, did he?”

“Naw.”

“Good. Don’t let’m… Florida. Cancun. Must be nice.”

We went around to the back door and Dad pulled his lockpick set and mini Maglite out of his pocket. It was his idea to pick the lock. If we used my key it’d be suspicious, he said. A scratched-up lock would look like actual burglars did it.

Dad handed me the flashlight. He went to work on the lock, set a tension wrench on the bottom, and started to move the rake pick back and forth in the lock. “How long’re they gone?” he asked.

“A week.”

“Y’know, I asked about getting you a job at the warehouse, but, like, there’s some rule about, hiring relatives or something, foreman said.” He worked at Corman Shipping in Toledo. About a month before that he worked at Drost Appliance Delivery. I can’t remember where he worked about a year before that.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t have to spend as much in gas going there’n back, I guess.”

“Yeah. Gas puts a… strain on the… wallet. Goddamn thing ain’t budging.”

I was going to tell him that he could probably rake the pins a little slower, but he told me to use my key. I asked if that wouldn’t be suspicious and he said that there was enough markings on the lock that cops would assume a master picker broke in. It made sense so I unlocked the door. We went in. “Hot in here, ain’t it?” he asked.

It didn’t feel that hot to me. I got a Pepsi from the kitchen and asked if he wanted one.

“No. Where’s the safe?”

“Basement.”

We went downstairs. The firesafe sat against the opposite wall between two metal shelving units that had some canned goods and some stuff in mason jars. It was only about two-foot square, but it was heavy. Two people could manage it, but Dad said he had arthritis. I knew he was going to ask me to carry it upstairs, which he did. I set my Pepsi down and took it up to the kitchen. I went back to the basement and wiped sweat off my forehead with my shirttail. Dad was sweatier than me. “You got the combo?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I took the piece of paper out of my pocket.

“Give it to me when we’re back at my place. Where’d you get it, anyway?”

“Greg’s got it on a Post-It in the home office.”

“A home office?”

Yeah, I was talking to him one day while he was on the computer and—”

“Computer? How rich’s this fuckin’ guy?”

“I mean, I guess he’s got money and but he ain’t rich rich. So, he was getting money from his bank or something and I saw the combo written down and I memorized it.”

“How you get money from your bank with a computer? Sounds like Star Trek shit to me. So, it was just out there on the desk? Ha. Shit. Well, if little Greg ain’t gonna keep an eye on his stuff, he deserves what he gets.”

I didn’t say anything, because… I mean, I guess I liked Greg. Not as much as I liked my dad, but I liked him. He treated me and my mom well. He never, like, yelled at me or told me to do homework or anything. But, I mean, I guess my dad was right. It wasn’t a good idea to keep stuff like that lying around. Besides, when Dad asked me if Greg or my mom had anything lying around the house that they weren’t using, stuff they wouldn’t miss, Dad said something that stuck with me, and made me think maybe the divorce between him and my mom wasn’t, like, as normal as Mom said. She always said Dad was lazy, that he’d spent too much money on drugs and whatnot, but Dad told me something like, “You know she screwed me right? She’ll say I was doing drugs or some shit. I like coke now and again, and, like, a beer or two, but if I was such a goddamn drug addict, how could I afford our house? Hand to God, that house was in my name, not hers. Of course, she got it in the divorce, then she fucking sold it, got all the money, moved in with this new guy… She’ll say I got fired from my job too, but I didn’t. They let tons of people go at the auto shop, tons. Not just me, tons of people. But she lives in that big-ass house now, that she bought with money from my house. My house. It ain’t fair, Dickie. I got screwed, and, hand to God, truth be told, I swear, all I want is what’s mine. A fair cut, that’s all.”

After I told Dad about the safe, he asked what was in it. I told him mom said she put some of her dead mom’s jewelry in there, and I think I heard Greg say he put a handgun in there. Dad asked what kind of gun. I said I didn’t know. That’s when he came up with the plan.

I sipped my Pepsi.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Dad asked. “Feel like I gotta shit again.”

“Upstairs, end of the hall.”

He went upstairs. I went over to the boxes and totes filled with Halloween stuff like fake cobwebs and ghosts you hang on your porch, things like that. The skull of a plastic skeleton looked at me from inside one of the totes.

I finished my Pepsi, went upstairs and tossed the can in the trash under the sink, then dug it out, and put it in the recycle bin right next to the trash. I was still getting used to that. Greg and Mom just got the recycle bin a month prior and said we had to throw the empty cans in there from now on. It was supposed to help the environment, they said.

I sat at the table and flipped through Greg’s new copy of MotorTrend. I checked out the ’88 Lotus Esprit. It looked like the kind of car you’d see on Miami Vice. I liked MotorTrend, but I liked Greg’s copies of Hot Rod better because of the girls.

I looked at the clock on the stove. It was about ten-thirty.

I went down the hall, heard the sink running in the bathroom, went back to the table, flipped through the magazine again. Ten-forty-one.

Back down the hall. The sink was still running. I knocked. “Dad?”

 

“He was your father?” the cop asked.

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t live here?”

“No. He lived over on Seventh.”

He wrote it down in his notepad. “Why was he here?”

And it came out of me, like I had written it down somewhere and rehearsed it. “I spent the weekend at his house, and he, like, usually drops me off around this time on Sundays. He said he had to use the bathroom, so I let him in, and that’s, uh…, when I found him. Then I called you guys.” I didn’t tell him I’d taken the safe back down to the basement before I called 911.

“He wasn’t using, was he?” the cop asked.

I didn’t know what to say. He could tell.

“It’s okay. All of us in the department had run-ins with your old man. We knew he had his problems, so, if he ingested anything, smoked anything, you can—”

“No. He didn’t. Not that I saw.”

He closed his notepad. “I’m sorry for your loss, son,” he said.

The ambulance and the cops left about an hour later.

 

“He was inside the house?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. Like I said, he said he had to go real bad. I didn’t, like, know what to tell him.”

She sighed. “Dickie, I’m sorry that happened. Your dad had his issues, but he did love you.”

Why’d she say it like I wouldn’t believe her? “I know,” I said. “Sorry for calling so late.”

“It’s fine, honey. I’m just glad you’re okay. Call back if you need anything.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“Love you.”

 

I drove his Sunbird back to Granny’s. I tried calling before I headed over, but she didn’t answer. The lights were off when I got there.

The door was locked. I used his key and went in, and grabbed another glass of water. I tiptoed down the hall. Granny was asleep in her room. Her fan was running.

I went to Dad’s room, shut the door and turned on the light. It didn’t look that much different than my room. I looked under the bed. There was a stack of Playboy’s and Hustler’s. I checked the drawer of his nightstand. There was an ashtray with a couple roaches inside, a deck of cards, his employee badges for Corman, Drost, and a nametag for Domino’s Pizza. I never knew he worked at Domino’s. There were also a half-dozen empty baggies with white residue inside and a rusty razor.

I shut the drawer.

I looked through his dresser. Half the drawers were empty. The other half was filled with the same clothes he’d worn my whole life. The same kind of clothes were in the closet along with a half-deflated football.

I closed the closet and picked the boombox off the floor and unplugged it. He borrowed it from me the year prior. I was going to eject the Pink Floyd tape, but I kept it in there.

I grabbed the Playboy’s and Hustler’s from under the bed and took the Heather Thomas poster off the wall. I cradled the magazines, the poster, and my boombox in one arm, turned off the light, and went down the hall.

I was going to wake her and tell her about Dad, but she was still asleep. I went out the front door to the Sunbird and drove myself back home.