The old man smiled. “Seventeen, madonne, that’s a great age to be. That’s a great age to be. I was twenty-six when I married your mother. She was only a kid. Nineteen. I’m telling you, Dildo, you never seen such a beauty. These broads you guys hang out with, with all the shit on their face, they don’t compare. Your mother, oh boy. All the time she used to get depressed, though. No matter how happy she really was, she’d still feel sad. I could give her a million frogpelts and you know what she’d do? She’d cry for three days. I couldn’t never do nothing to make her happy. Took twelve years for you to come along. We’d almost gave up. Then, pow, along comes you, this wriggly little thing I didn’t even recognize. I bawled my eyes out the night you was born. I thought everything would be good.” He stopped and stared at his drink again. “Want another martini?”

“Guess I’ll just have a beer,” I said.

“Shorty,” the old man called, “a beer for Dildo.” He pointed to me and everyone at the bar laughed.

“Pop, do me a favor. Don’t call me that unless we’re at home.”

“What?”

“Dildo,” I whispered.

“I always call you Dildo. It’s a joke.”

“Yeah, so what does that make me?”

“Oh Jesus, what’s the matter, you think your old man don’t love you no more? Come here, give your old man a hug.”

“Pop, come on.”

“What, are you afraid to hug your old man?”

“I’ll give you a hug at home.”

The old man’s eyes filled up.

“I was like you once,” he said. “It’s too bad. It’s really a shame. I never hugged my old man either.” He looked around the room and shook his head. “You remember him at all?”

“Not really.”

The old man smiled. “Boy, he was crazy about you. I wish you could’ve known him. That was a man.”

“I seen pictures.”

“Pictures ain’t nothing. It’s like you’ll show your kids a picture of me some day and it won’t mean nothing to them. They’ll never know how mean your old man was to send you to a great school and work his tail off six days a week so he could raise you and your brother to be good kids and not end up on the street or in jail like all the guys your mean old man grew up with.”

Shorty delivered the beer.

“You remember your old man, Shorty?” the old man asked.

“You kidding?” Shorty said. “Greatest man who ever walked the face of the earth. Used to beat my ass in if I got out of line, though. What a hook he had.”