I set the phone down and considered whether making such a trip was even possible given my present capabilities. San Jose was a six hour drive almost all the way back the way I had come. I was using my mother’s old ride, a twelve-year-old Korean SUV with over two hundred thousand miles on the odometer. But seeing Dad was the whole point of my journey, and passing up the opportunity, whatever the hardship, was not an option. I said, “Give me the address and I’ll be there sometime tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a satellite phone with me, so I’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”
“Good, good. Let’s plan on meeting up tomorrow, then.”
Dad gave me directions to a bar in San Jose and a number where he said I could reach him most hours of the day. Driving north was slow, dusty, and anesthetizing right up to the moment I crossed the state line, at which point the road smoothed out and the seemingly endless fields and orchards finally gave way to the Spanish tiles and beige stucco of civilization. There was no need to call Dad on the road; the bar was fairly easy to find. In a heavily Hispanic neighborhood dominated by small shops full of lime candy and glass-bottled Pepsi, the place Dad had led me to was the only building around with tinted windows and a mounted air conditioner on the roof. I walked with the gift cradled under my arm and found Dad already seated at a table across from the bar. He looked to be drinking tequila on the rocks, or something similar that necessitated the salt and lime arranged before him. Upon seeing me, he stood and shook my hand with an affected and almost dainty grip—squeezing the lower halves of my fingers between his thumb and palm—as if he were already working to erase whatever brutish impression he thought I had of him based on the beating he gave me the last time we were together. We sat down facing each other across the table.
He looked me over and said, “I see you’ve finally filled out some. That’s good. You were very thin the last time we were together.”
An unexpected move. Right out the gate, he was criticizing my appearance as well as bringing up last time. I smiled and slid the package across the blue tiled tabletop. I said, “This is for you. It’s a special reserve bourbon all the way from Kentucky. Very hard to find this far west.”
Dad held the box up to the light and squinted as he read the label. He said, “That’s very generous of you,” which after five years of mutual silence was still the closest he could bring himself to saying, “Thank you.” He set the gift on the edge of the table and took another drink from the dripping glass at his side. His hair had receded since I last saw him, bringing the bullet shape of his skull into full prominence, a long-awaited prophecy finally fulfilled. He was still imposing even in his graying years, though the strength and energy he once exuded was now offset by an obesity that brought to mind images of old Parisian men at street tables, quaffing wine and soup by the vat until their faces were as red as those of the hypertensive aristocrats of Baroque portraiture. He didn’t appear to be very comfortable with his new build. For the first few seconds we were sitting together, in fact, he seemed to be holding his breath, and when he finally did exhale, it caused him to wince while holding his hand against his bloated stomach. His eyes were even watery.
I said, “You don’t look so good, Dad. A bit under the weather, maybe.”
He inhaled slowly through puckered lips. He said, “Think it’s a hernia. Woke up yesterday with this pain in my side and it hasn’t let up since.”
“You should get it looked at. Might be something more serious.”
“I don’t trust doctors this far inland. If it’s still with me tomorrow, I’ll head into the city.”
“I could drive you. If you need a ride.”
His eyes opened wide. Whatever pain he was in had either subsided or didn’t matter as much to him now. He said, “When have you ever known your father to need a ride?”
“I just thought—”
“Well think again. Better yet, go out to the back parking lot and take a look at my ride. Brand new Lexus convertible, straight off the factory line.”
“Wow. You must be doing well, then.”
“I don’t have any complaints. And if I do, they melt away when I get behind the wheel.”
“You’re not worried about leaving it out there in this neighborhood?”
“I have a clamp. Old school, but still the best security available.”
“Right. Well, I’m happy for you. Sounds like things are really coming along.”
He nodded graciously and filled his fat face with more liquor. “And yourself? What are you up to these days? I assume you have a job of some sort. Or at least I would hope so.”
I glanced at the bar behind him. The waitress had seen me come in, but she was taking her sweet time getting to my drink order. Perhaps she was already well acquainted with Dad, and thus trying to limit her face time with him. “I earned my real estate license a couple years ago. Been doing some mid-range work here and there, mostly around Hayward and Oakland. I know, the East Bay is shit, but I’m hoping to break into some higher end properties before long.”
Dad smiled and patted my arm. He said, “Bigger deals will come in time. You’ll see. Right now, the important thing is that you’re staying hungry and alert. You’ve got ambition. That’s good. I was afraid, years ago I was afraid you were never going to find a sense of purpose. The way you talked the last time we saw each other, all that stuff about God, it had me worried you were going to be a daydreamer forever. Glad to see you’ve finally made up your mind about wanting something out of life.”
“I didn’t really have a choice, Dad. Having to fend for yourself forces you to make those kinds of decisions.”
His smile disappeared. He stared into his glass of tequila and shifted his sitting posture. Either the pain was on the upswing or the discomfort caused by my response was manifesting itself physically. “No one said you had to wait all this time to contact me. Unless you think I’m so petty as to hold a grudge for—”
“Dad. Stop. You’re the one who keeps bringing up the past. If it were up to me, we’d agree to put that awful night behind us and concentrate on the moment at hand. Doesn’t that sound like a better course of action to you?”
“It does. It really does.”
“Good. So here’s what I’m thinking. I’ve been on the road all morning and I need a drink. And I’m guessing this place wasn’t designed to keep up with the likes of us. So I say we take this primo bourbon back to your place and see where the day takes us from there.”
Before I had even finished speaking, I knew Dad’s interest was piqued. He arched an eyebrow and shook the ice in his otherwise empty glass. “Where do you imagine it will take us?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve got the number of some ladies on the peninsula who put your valley girls to shame.”
He didn’t laugh or make randy comments like you might expect a man to do in such a situation. He simply took out his wallet and placed a folded bill on the table next to his glass. Between his weight and the constant pain he was failing to hide, getting up from his seat proved noticeably difficult for him. He pressed both hands flat against the table and pushed himself up with such strained force I worried the legs might give out. I wondered if he could even handle being with a woman in the condition he was in, or if he was merely determined to prove his virility to me as I had once been forced to prove mine.
He stood breathing heavily with both hands at his lower back. Lines of sweat glistened across his bald head. He said, “All right. Let’s get moving.”
Growing up in one of the more affluent parts of the Bay Area, I had seen plenty of luxury cars when I was young, but nothing quite so luxurious as the German convertible Dad somehow had acquired. He drove with his seat back as far as it would go and still his stomach nearly engulfed the steering wheel. I tried to picture him driving alone with the top down, his remaining hair tousled by the wind, the very picture of graceless middle age striving and fighting against the dying of the light. I didn’t have much time to think, though, before we arrived at a tract of small condos with the same drab, weather-faded look that betrayed most US-era properties in the region. Dad huffed and panted his way up the short staircase. The symptoms of his illness were becoming increasingly unpleasant to witness; walking behind him on the steps, I could smell the sickly, bilious farts seeping silently out of him, and had to breathe through my mouth to keep from gagging. When we got to the door, he couldn’t find his keys in either of his front pockets. He looked back at the staircase with an expression of pure misery before remembering he had stuck them in his back pocket. I followed him inside.