Frightened, Redmond was speechless.

“Is that clear?” repeated Mr. Mendavey.

“Yes, sir, that’s clear,” mumbled Redmond.

It wasn’t clear to Theresa Mendavey, though. Nor was she the least bit frightened of Hector. She chased after her father and caught him halfway up the grand stairway. Theresa grabbed his belt, stopped him in his tracks, turned him around, and spoke her mind. She told her father he didn’t have the right to speak that way to Rex Redmond. She said it was her house as well as Hector’s, that Rex was her guest and Redmond would stay as long as she wanted him to and sit wherever he wanted to.

“And,” she yelled, “as far as being a good father’s concerned, you suck the big banana.”

“How can you say that, Theresa? I took you to Disneyland, didn’t I?”

“You took me once, four years ago.”

“But I took you, didn’t I?”

It was ten minutes after her discussion with Hector on the grand stairway that Theresa Mendavey and Rex Redmond rode off into the sunset, three weeks before she would have graduated high school.

The old cripple was sitting on the edge of his bed, thinking about what Bette Davis had said.

She had said, “Old age isn’t a place for sissies.”

“And she was right,” the cripple said aloud. He stretched out on his cot, his hands behind his head, staring at his cracked ceiling and thinking about the world-famous hotsie-totsie television producer. The man was such a putz. Why was it that the guy you’ve been wanting to meet so badly and for so long ended up being a putz? It reminded the cripple of the joke where the wife says to her husband: If they held a contest for the biggest putz in the world, you would come in second. The husband says: Why second? Why not first? His wife answers: Because you’re such a putz.

Rotten luck to get that producer, he mused. But then luck hasn’t been my strong suit lately, has it? Lately? Try the last twenty-five years. Had a lot of luck for a while, though. Luck walked right beside me all through the sixties and seventies. And timing did too. Timing is just as important as luck. Luck’s a figment of your imagination. Timing’s real. Add courage and preparation. Luck, timing, courage, and preparation. The big four. I had them all. But then I made some bad decisions. Wasn’t thinking. Got careless. Never had anyone to help me figure things out. Nobody with my interests at heart. Just advisers with their own interests at heart. Bastards is what those advisers were. And now I’m too old to start again, even with all my friggin’ knowledge.

Too old.