But there was no sense in delaying the inevitable, so he got out and walked up to the door. Dad pushed it open just as he reached it.

“Jack!” He thrust out his hand. “You had me worried. Thought you’d forgotten.”

His father was a tall, thin, balding man tanned a dark brown from daily workouts on the local tennis courts. His beakish nose was pink and peeling from sunburn, and the age spots on his forehead had multiplied and coalesced since the last time Jack had visited. But his grip was firm and his blue eyes bright behind the steel-rimmed glasses as Jack shook hands with him.

“Only a few minutes late.”

Dad reached down and picked up his tennis racquet from where it had been leaning against the door molding. “Yeah, but I reserved a court so we could warm up a little before the match.” He closed the door behind him. “Let’s take your car. You remember where the courts are?”

“Of course.”

As he slid into the front seat, Dad glanced around the interior of the Corvair. He touched the dice, either to see if they were fuzzy or if they were real.

“You really drive around in this?”

“Sure. Why?”

“It’s…”

“Unsafe At Any Speed?”

“Yeah. That, too.”

“Best car I ever owned.” Jack pushed the little lever in the far left of the dashboard into reverse and pulled out of the driveway.

For a couple of blocks they made inconsequential small talk about the weather and how smoothly Jack’s car was running after twenty years and the traffic on the Turnpike. Jack tried to keep the conversation on neutral ground. He and Dad hadn’t had much to say to each other since he’d quit college nearly fifteen years ago.

“How’s business?”

Dad smiled. “Great. You’ve been buying any of those stocks I told you about?”

“I bought two thousand of Arizona Petrol at one-and-an-eighth. It was up to four last time I looked.”

“Closed at four-and-a-quarter on Friday. Hold onto it.”

“Okay. Just let me know when to dump it.”

A lie. Jack couldn’t own stock. He needed a Social Security number for that. No broker would open an account for him without it. So he lied to his father about following his stock tips and looked up the NASDAQ listings every so often to see how his imaginary investments were doing.

They were all doing well. Dad had a knack for finding low-priced, out-of-the-way OTC stocks that were undervalued. He’d buy a few thousand shares, watch the price double, triple, or quadruple, then sell off and find another. He had done so well at it over the years that he finally quit his accounting job to see if he could live off his stock market earnings. He had an Apple Lisa with a Wall Street hook-up and spent his days wheeling and dealing. He was happy. He was making as much as he had as an accountant, his hours were his own, and no one could tell him he had to stop when he reached sixty-five. He was living by his wits and seemed to love it, looking more relaxed than Jack could ever remember.