river swirled with fast, confusing currents and sometimes appeared to flow in two different directions.
xi.
I DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH that night and was so exhausted by the time I got to school and stowed the painting in my locker that I didn’t even notice that Kotku (hanging all over Boris, like nothing had happened) was sporting a fat lip. Only when I heard this tough senior guy Eddie Riso say, “Mack truck?” did I see that somebody had smacked her pretty good in the face. She was going around laughing a bit nervously and telling people that she got hit in the mouth by a car door, but in a sort of embarrassed way that (to me, at least) didn’t ring true.
“Did you do that?” I said to Boris, when next I saw him alone (or relatively alone) in English class.
Boris shrugged. “I didn’t want to.”
“What do you mean, you ‘didn’t want to’?”
Boris looked shocked. “She made me!”
“She made you,” I repeated.
“Look, just because you’re jealous of her—”
“Fuck you,” I said. “I don’t give a shit about you and Kotku—I have things of my own to worry about. You can beat her head in for all I care.”
“Oh, God, Potter,” said Boris, suddenly sobered. “Did he come back? That guy?”
“No,” I said, after a brief pause. “Not yet. Well, I mean, fuck it,” I said, when Boris kept on staring at me. “It’s his problem, not mine. He’ll just have to figure something out.”
“How much is he in for?”
“No clue.”
“Can’t you get the money for him?”
“Me?”
Boris looked away. I poked him in the arm. “No, what do you mean, Boris? Can’t I get it for him? What are you talking about?” I said, when he didn’t answer.
“Never mind,” he said quickly, settling back in his chair, and I didn’t have a chance to pursue the conversation because then Spirsetskaya walked into the room, all primed to talk about boring Silas Marner, and that was it.
xii.
THAT NIGHT, MY DAD came home early with bags of carry-out from his favorite Chinese, including an extra order of the spicy dumplings I liked—and he was in such a good mood that it was as if I’d dreamed Mr. Silver and the stuff from the night before.
“So—” I said, and stopped. Xandra, having finished her spring rolls, was rinsing glasses at the sink but there was only so much I felt comfortable saying in front of her.
He smiled his big Dad smile at me, the smile that sometimes made stewardesses bump him up to first class.
“So what?” he said, pushing aside his carton of Szechuan shrimp to reach for a fortune cookie.
“Uh—” Xandra had the water up loud—“Did you get everything straightened out?”
“What,” he said lightly, “you mean with Bobo Silver?”
“Bobo?”
“Listen, I hope you weren’t worried about that. You weren’t, were you?”
“Well—”
“Bobo—” he laughed—“they call him ‘The Mensch.’ He’s actually a nice guy—well, you talked to him yourself—we just had some crossed wires, is all.”
“What does five points mean?”
“Look, it was just a mix-up. I mean,” he said, “these people are characters. They have their own language, their own ways of doing things. But, hey—” he laughed—“this is great—when I met with him over at Caesars, that’s what Bobo calls his ‘office,’ you know, the pool at Caesars—anyway, when I met with him, you know what he kept saying? ‘That’s a good kid you’ve got there, Larry.’ ‘Real little gentleman.’ I mean, I don’t know what you said to him, but I do actually owe you one.”
“Huh,” I said in a neutral voice, helping myself to more rice. But inwardly I was almost drunk at the lift in his mood—the same flood of elation I’d felt as a small child when the silences broke, when his footsteps grew light again and you heard him laughing at something, humming at the shaving mirror.
My dad cracked open his fortune cookie, and laughed. “See here,” he said, balling it up and tossing it over to me. “I wonder who sits around in Chinatown and thinks up these things?”
Aloud, I read it: “ ‘You have an unusual equipment for fate, exercise with care!’ ”
“Unusual equipment?” said Xandra, coming up behind to put her arms around his neck. “That sounds kind of dirty.”
“Ah—” my dad turned to kiss her. “A dirty mind. The fountain of youth.”
“Apparently.”
xiii.
“I GAVE you a fat lip that time,” said Boris, who clearly felt guilty about the Kotku business since he’d brought it up out of nowhere in our companionable morning silence on the school bus.
“Yeah, and