at the water now, yet his expression didn’t show any fear or distress. Was this what he wanted, to die? Would he be giving the man his wish?
The cell phone rang, da-da-da-da, the tone growing louder as he fumbled to pull it from his pocket. Amy.
“Simon,” she said, “what’s going on? Your message scared me.”
“You all right?”
“I had a little problem earlier, but it’s over with. What’s happening with you?”
“Nothing,” he said, watching Paul in the water. “I just was wondering where you were.”
“I’m at the office, but I need to talk to you.”
The head went under again, creating a little depression of water above it, then sank out of sight.
“Yeah, okay, but you’re breaking up. I’ll meet you at home later. I love you.” He pressed OFF and stared into the water. It was remarkably smooth, like a sheet of dark green paper, barely a ripple of disturbance.
After some time, he couldn’t say how long, Simon dove in himself.
He entered by the back door and hurried dripping over the kitchen floor to the laundry room. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it in the dryer. Then he undid the belt to his pants, let them fall to the floor, and stepped out of them.
“Hey, Dad, what’re you doing?”
Simon whirled about and pulled his pants in front of himself, then felt self-conscious doing that. He had always tried to be easy about his nakedness in front of his son, and besides, he was still wearing boxers. He tossed the pants into the machine. “I’m just drying some clothes, Davey. They got wet.”
The boy pointed at his father. “You’re hairy.”
“That happens as you grow older. You’ll get hair on your chest, too, in a few years.”
“No I won’t. I’ll pull every hair out.”
“Good luck with that.”
Davey stepped into the laundry room and boosted himself onto the washer. “How did you get so wet?”
Simon spun the dial to twenty minutes and pulled out the knob. The old dryer rattled on. “Well, I was drinking soda coming home and had to stop fast. The drink spilled all over me.” The lie came easily to him, no thought needed. He just opened his mouth and there it was.
“It must have been a really huge soda.”
“It was, from Burger World.”
Davey reached out and poked his arm. “You shouldn’t drink and drive, Dad. You could be arrested for that.”
“I think I’d get off easy since it was Sprite. But you’re right, I shouldn’t be drinking anything. Both hands on the wheel.” Simon saw his son’s eyes drift downward toward his wet, clinging boxers. He grabbed a towel from the pile on the washer and began drying himself. “Let’s not tell Mom about this, okay kiddo? I don’t want her to worry about my getting in an accident.”
“You mean you don’t want her yelling at you?”
“She doesn’t yell, she lectures.”
“Okay, I won’t tell.” Davey leaned back on the washer, as if getting comfortable in a familiar chair. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Then you wouldn’t have to tell her about me and Kenny, would you?”
“Kenny and me. What’d you two do this time?’
“His mom caught us playing mumblety-peg.”
“Mumblety-peg?”
“We weren’t throwing at ourselves, we were just tossing his jackknife at his sister’s teddy bear. If you hit him you lose.”
“What is it with you and knives all of a sudden?”
“You played mumblety-peg when you were a kid, didn’t you?”
Simon debated his answer. “A couple times, I guess.”
“So you know, knives are cool.”
“They aren’t so cool when they cut you. If you don’t stop playing with them I’m going to ground you for a month or however long it takes to get your attention.” The boy struck the washer with his heels in a rhythm, one two, one two. Simon grabbed the legs to silence them. “Are you listening to me?”
“So we have a deal?”
It was the wrong thing to do, bargain with your kid over playing with knives. No parent in his right mind would do it. Perhaps he wasn’t in his right mind, temporary insanity taking over, or more precisely, situational insanity. But how many times could he claim that? “Okay,” he said, “this once, so as not to upset Mom, we’ll keep our secrets.”
The boy spit on his hand and held it out. “Seal it.”
“I’m not spitting on my hand, Davey.”
“Then the deal can be broken.”
Simon lifted his hand in front of his mouth and made a spitting sound. The boy clenched their palms together, then turned them, grinding them together. Simon had forgotten this intimate adolescent ritual, how binding it