SECOND CITY by Robert Glick
From the hotel balcony, magnificence: the smell of hyacinth, the street below sparkling emerald and saffron. Mom lies on the bed, in her terry cloth bathrobe, fanning herself and reading scripture. She’s wrecked from the heat, your father says. Let’s you and me take a boat ride. He has orchestrated this Bangkok vacation, in what he calls “our second city of angels.” Generally you shy away from him, and your mother would enjoy the floating market, but she says go ahead, he wants words with you. Your father forces his Dodgers cap over his silvering, nail-length hair, and soon you’re racing along in a taxi with broken seat belts. He clears his throat. I’ve always been faithful to your mother, he declaims. You feel queasy, as if having sucked in diesel exhaust. Please don’t let him confess some ancient affair. He drapes his arm over your shoulder and adds: probably more faithful to her than to you. You slump down, turn to the window, imagining mermaids in purple silk who glide below the boats full of mangosteens. His regret is pathetic, weak-minded, far more nauseating than his potential indiscretions. Subtracting 8 hours of sleep and 12 work hours, he says, there are 4 free hours left in the day. How many hours do you think a child deserves from his father? You reply: one more than a child gets. Your father retracts his arm. The drone of the air-con crowds out the space between you.
The taxi stops at the dock. Your father hands a bill to the driver and the driver frowns. He has a widow’s peak, dimples, a boy’s thin moustache. No change, he says. No change. Oldest trick in the book, your father tells you. The driver empties out his pockets; his wallet contains only the paper strips from fortune cookies. Your father snatches back the money. Find some change, he says, or you get zip. The taxi driver sizes up your father, who actually looks like he would relish a fight; a fat crooked vein is pulsing on his temple. You are embarrassed by and proud of his righteous aggression. Eventually the driver reaches into the glove box. Smiling, he says, Look here! Found some change! I thought you might, says your father. He flings open the taxi door. When he steps out, though, he runs his head smack into the doorframe. Armadillo! he yells. You snicker; your mother won’t tolerate bad language. Still, your dad’s in pain. He staggers down the pier, towards the floating market, the canoes splayed with little river octopus. You catch up to him. Muffler fumes and burnt sugar spoil the air. You grasp his arm. Don’t try to wheelchair me! he says. He wrenches himself away. His eyes give off a panicked bewilderment; he doesn’t know how he got here. He disgusts, terrifies you. If only you could let him drift down the river. He is, for the first time, old, and you reach out to him again.
Robert Glick’s fiction has appeared in Passages North.