“Sure,” I tell him, but for a while he nods his head, just barely, as if he has a lot more to say. Then he starts to get up and I stand too, and pull the TV tray out of his path. He looks at Antiques Roadshow on his way out of the room. A woman is holding a lamp with a gilded base and a landscape painted across the shade. “They got taken on that one,” he says, “it’s a piece of crap,” and walks down the hall.

He must have gotten up, as he usually did, sometime during the night. I find him in the dining room the next morning, on his side, on the floor next to his chair. His legs are bent and his robe is open around him. His right arm is stretched out straight and under the elbow a small puddle of blood has thickened up like a wax seal. “Dad,” I say as I step around him and see his purple face against the gold shag carpet, his eyes shut and his mouth scrunched up as if he’s just heard a piece of infuriating news. I pull his chair out of the way. I drop down to one knee and say “Dad” again and touch the terry cloth robe over his shoulder. He won’t let go of this pissed-off face. A line of congealed blood stands between his nose and the carpet. I want him to wake up, to cut this shit out. And then, because he looks so horrible, and because I’m about to touch his skin, I realize nothing would frighten me more than if he opened his eyes. I’m still saying the word Dad and I know I should feel for a pulse in his neck, but I can’t make my fingers push into that mass, so I reach down to his wrist and say Dad again and touch it. The wrist is hard and cold. The underside is dark purple.

“My father’s dead,” I tell the operator at 911.

She’s astoundingly calm. She tells me to check to see if he’s breathing.

I give her my address.

“Sir,” she says, “you should feel for a pulse and check to see if your father is breathing.”

And this is why I’m a terrible human being: the operator is saying this to me, and I’m thinking about all those envelopes of Ragazzino cash that will be handed to me at the funeral parlor. I’m thinking about what I could do with that money in Vegas.