I take a bite of lasagna, wash it down with a swig of milk and ask, “Where are the dingbats?”

My dad says, “They’re downstairs, playing with Chester and Gretchen.”

Chester?

Gretchen?

“You remember Chester and Gretchen,” my dad says. “Bonnie’s dogs.”

My jaw drops.

“Chester and Gretchen are still alive?”

Chester and Gretchen are two little Yorkies. Sometimes Bonnie would bring them over when she would watch me. I’d always try to play fetch with Chester, but he never seemed interested. He just wanted to hump your leg. And Gretchen would just follow one step behind Bonnie at all times. She never so much as licked my hand.

“They cannot still be alive.”

“Sure are,” my dad says nodding. “Chester is sixteen and Gretchen is going on nineteen.”

Nineteen!

What was that in dog years?

I do the calculation.

Gretchen was one hundred and thirty-three years old!

“How is that even possible?” I ask.

My dad shrugs.

“Can they, like, function?”

“Eeh,” my dad says, his face grimacing.

“What’s that mean?”

He tells me that I’ll have to see for myself, then readjusts himself in his chair.

I notice him wince.

I didn’t even think about my dad’s back. He slipped a couple discs a few years earlier dragging me up three flights of stairs, and his back was never the same.

Sitting in the boiler room with his arms wrenched behind his back and his legs shackled together — it’s a miracle he can even walk.

“I should have grabbed your pills,” I tell him.

“I’ll sneak over and grab them in a bit.”

“You should go soon. There are going to be fifty guys in FBI windbreakers there pretty soon and they’re not gonna want you taking anything.”

He nods, but I know he won’t go for another six minutes, not until I fall asleep.

Jorge says he will go and my dad tells him where to find the pills in his bathroom.

I ask, “What are you going to do about the house?”

“I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Do you think you could sleep there knowing two men were shot dead in the living room?”

“Probably make the property value skyrocket,” chimes Minister Robert.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I say. “Not a whole lot of people in the market for a house with a double homicide.”

“Of course not,” Robert says. “But the house where the President was kidnapped by terrorists? I mean, come on, people are going to pay top dollar for that.”

I nod.

He’s probably right.

I spend the next couple minutes eating everything in front of me, then say, “Well, I better find a place to crash.”

“Bonnie made up the couch for you in the basement.”

“Thanks, Bonnie,” I say.

She blows me a kiss.

I stand up, as does my dad, and I pull him into a hug. “I never got to thank you for putting on the wedding.”