He’s finally fallen off a bridge. Or jumped.

Or perhaps he’s in a hospital, maybe burned like Mr. Grigio. It happens all the time, kids set fire to drunks.

But the call was from his father, the operator said. Five quarters, a nickel, a dime.

“Adam? That you, son?”

“Pop, what’s the matter?”

“Well, I need a couple hundred. I want you to get it for me.”

Relief and anger, a kind of emotional see-saw.

“I gave you money last time I saw you. Because of that I came here like a tramp. I had to borrow money myself, an advance from the hospital.”

“I know you haven’t got it. I said get it for me. Listen to me. Take another loan.”

“Why do you need it?”

“. . . Sick as a dog.”

Suddenly it was easy. He had to be drunk right now or he would not be playing the game so stupidly. Sober he was shrewd and dangerous. “Go to the medical school and tell Maury Bernhardt, Dr. Bernhardt, that I sent you. He’ll call me and I’ll tell him to give you whatever care you need.”

“I need money, the money.”

There was a time, he thought, when I would have hocked something to see that you got it.

“No more from me.”

“Adam.”

“If you’ve drunk up the two hundred, and it sounds as if you have, sober up and get a job. I’ll send you ten dollars eating money.”

“Adam, don’t do this to me. Be merciful. Son . . .” The sobbing came on cue. He was intelligent; he could cry simply by facing reality. It was pretending hard enough to laugh that was difficult.

Adam waited until the spasm had passed, weakening only slightly. “I’ll add five to that. Fifteen dollars, but that’s all.”

At toll rates, his father blew his nose leisurely in Pittsburgh. When he spoke again the old gentleman-among-churls arrogance was back in his voice. “I’ve got a quotation for your collection, word-waster.”

“Pop . . .” But then he waited warily.

“‘I’m sorry you are wiser,

I’m sorry you are taller . . .’

“Got it?”

Adam repeated it.

“Yes,” Myron Silberstein said, and hung up, oh the old bastard, a man who cherished exits.

He stood there with the telephone to his ear, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry, his eyes closed against the insistent drumming in his head, growing louder. For his thoughts, he felt himself seized by the angel, lifted, hurled through the icy darkness, caught by the terrible waiting hands and hurled again. When he replaced the receiver the telephone rang immediately and he obeyed the operator’s demand for thirty cents more.