“You shittin’ me with this toy car, man?” Charles is bent over in the passenger seat of the MG. His knees are squeezed up to his chin, and his Afro is squashed against the fabric of the convertible roof.

I pass him a joint. “Think of it as a white man’s pimpmobile.”

“A white midget, maybe. So what happened to that groovy van?”

I deliver Odysseus’s obituary.

“Bummer.” Charles’s knees are pressed so close to his face that he’s having trouble getting the joint to his lips. The British clearly don’t consider anyone over six feet two inches when they design sports cars. In the dimness, small drops of sweat glisten on Charles’s forehead. Yesterday and today have been scorchers, and it’s supposed to get worse before it gets better. I wonder if that’s why the paterfamilias didn’t insist that I drive his Mercury this week. He must have heard a weather forecast and decided he’d rather be in his business car with its AC. “Your old man really drive around in this thing?”

“Mostly to and from tennis on the weekends.”

Charles wipes his forehead with his sleeve. “What’d you say his business was?”

“Different stuff.” I find myself reluctant to tell him that my father owns two relatively small companies as well as some real estate. Nor do I want to mention that the paterfamilias has achieved the ultimate goal of capitalistic suburban life: not having to commute to the city. He’s reached that venerated state of “making his own hours,” which basically means taking time to play as much tennis (and chase as much tail?) as he wants. Coincidentally, one of the main tenets of the cultural revolution is also breaking out of the nine-to-five “rat race.” The paterfamilias once told me he thought of himself as an “iconoclast.” (According to the dictionary, “a person who attacks cherished beliefs or institutions.”) I guess that’s true in some ways, but it’s definitely not in others. He’s still pursuing the almighty dollar, still paying his workers less than they deserve, and no doubt charging higher rents than he needs to.

Charles exhales a cloud of smoke. Back in the church basement a little while ago, I showed him the order to report for the armed forces physical examination that had come in the mail, and told him why I was giving up on the personal-moral-code CO. He admitted that the argument’s success rate has been negligible so far but added that, according to the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I said I could dig that, but Lao-tzu probably wasn’t facing one-in-five odds of getting his ass shot off.