He lowers his eyes and shakes his head. “I can’t.”

There is a moment’s hesitation, no more. I know that it is coming, but I do nothing to stop it. With grace that never fails to surprise me, Zorra spins and sweeps Fat Gandhi’s legs. Fat Gandhi drops like a sack of peat moss onto his back. He makes an oof noise as the air leaves his lungs.

Zorra stands over his prone form. He raises his razor-sharp (literally) heel, perfectly poised to stomp down on Fat Gandhi’s face. Instead Zorra lowers the point of the heel so that the blade is scant millimeters (again literally) from Fat Gandhi’s cornea.

“Bad answer, dreamboat,” Zorra tells him. “Try again.”

Chapter 24

Myron sat in his dad’s chair in the TV room.

Dad asked, “Are you going to wait up for Mickey?”

When Myron was a teenager, his father would sit in this chair at night and wait for his children to come home. He never gave Myron a curfew—“I trust you”—and he never told Myron that he waited up for him. When Myron would come through the door, Dad would either pretend to be asleep or have already sneaked upstairs.

“I will.” Then with a smile on his face, Myron said, “You think I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“That you stayed awake until I came home.”

“I couldn’t sleep until I knew you were safe.” Dad shrugged. “But I knew you knew.”

“How?”

“I never gave you a curfew, remember? I said I trusted you.”

“Right.”

“But when you realized I stayed awake, you started coming home earlier. So I wouldn’t have to stay up and worry.” Dad arched an eyebrow at him. “Ergo, you actually came home earlier than if I gave you a curfew.”

“Diabolical,” Myron said.

“I just took advantage of what I knew.”

“Which was?”

“You were a good boy,” Dad said.

Silence. Silence that was broken when Mom shouted from the kitchen: “This is a very touching father-and-son moment. Can we go to bed now?”

Dad chuckled. “On my way. Are we going to Mickey’s game tomorrow? It’s home.”

“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” Myron said.

His mother leaned her head in from the kitchen. “Good night, Myron.”

“How come you never stayed awake until I came home?” Myron asked her.

“A woman needs her beauty sleep. What, you think I stay this hot by accident?”

“It’s a good lesson on marriage,” Dad said.

“What is?”

“Balance. I stayed awake at night. Mom slept like a baby. It doesn’t mean she didn’t care. But our strengths and weaknesses complement each other. We’re a couple. See? That was my contribution. I took night watch.”

“But you were also first up in the morning,” Myron said.

“Well, yes, that’s true.”

“So what was Mom good at?”

Mom from the kitchen: “You don’t want to know.”

“Ellen!” Dad shouted.

“Oh, relax, Al. You’re such a prude.”

Myron already had his fingers in his ears. He started saying, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you,” as his father trudged toward the kitchen. He took his fingers out when they had both gone upstairs. He sat back and looked out the window. Funny. The chair was perfectly set up so you could watch both the television and any car approaching from the street.