(…) Why not you drive us over, starting today, pull up by the courts where today you’ll – here, look, see how I unscrew it? the cap? With the soft very outermost tips of my gnarled fingers which I wish they were steadier but I’m exerting control to control my anger at that chin and lip and the cape of snot and the way your slant and goggle like some sort of mongoloid child’s when you’re threatening to cry but just the very tips of the fingers, here, and the most sensitive parts, the parts bathed in warm oil, the whorled pads, I feel them singing with nerves and blood I let them extend . . . further than the warm silver hip-flask’s cap’s very top down its broadening cone where to where the threads around the upraised little circular mouth lie hidden while with the other warm singing hand I gently grip the leather holster so I can feel the way the whole flask feels as I guide . . . guide the cap around on its silver threads, hear that? stop that and listen, hear that? the sound of threads moving through well-machined grooves, with great care, a smooth barbershop spiral, my whole hand right through the pads of my fingertips less . . . less unscrewing, here, than guiding, persuading, reminding the silver cap’s body what it’s built to do, machined to do, the silver cap knows, Jim, I know, you know, we’ve been through this before, leave the book alone, boy, it’s not going anywhere, so the silver cap leaves the flask’s mouth’s warm grooved lips with just a snick, hear that? that faintest snick? not a rasp or a grinding sound or harsh, not a harsh brutal Brando-esque rasp of attempted domination but a snick a . . . nuance, there, ah, oh, like the once you’ve heard it never mistakable ponk of a true-hit ball, Jim, well pick it up then if you’re afraid of a little dust, Jim, pick the book up if it’s going to make you all goggle-eyed and chinless honestly Jesus why do I try I try and try just wanted to introduce you to the broiler’s garage and let you drive, maybe, feeling the Montclair’s body, taking my time to let you pull up to the courts with the Montclair’s shift in a neutral glide and the eight cylinders thrumming and snicking like a healthy heart and the wheels all perfectly flush with the curb and bring out my good old trusty laundry . . . laundry basket of balls and racquets and towels and flask and my son, my flesh of my flesh, white slumped flesh of my flesh who wanted to embark on what I predict right now will be a tennis career that’ll put his busted-up used-up old Dad back square in his little place, who wanted to maybe for once be a real boy and learn how to play and have fun and frolic and play around in the unrelieved sunshine this city’s so fuck-all famous for, to enjoy it while he can because did your mother tell you we’re moving?

(…) That we’re moving back to California finally this spring? We’re moving, son, I’m harking one last attempted time to that celluloid siren’s call, I’m giving it the one last total shot a man’s obligation to his last waning talent deserves, Jim, we’re headed for the big time again at last for the first time since she announced she was having you, Jim, hitting the road, celluloid-bound, so say adios to that school and that fluttery little moth of a physics teacher and those slumped chinless slide-rule-wielding friends of no now wait I didn’t mean it I meant I wanted to tell you now, ahead of time, your mother and I, to give you plenty of notice so you could adjust this time because oh you made it so unmisinterpretably clear how this last move to this trailer park upset you so, didn’t you, to a mobile home with chemical toilet and bolts to hold it in place and widow-webs everyplace you look and grit settling on everything like dust out here instead of the Club’s staff quarters I got us removed from or the house it was clearly my fault we couldn’t afford anymore. It was my fault. I mean who else’s fault would it be? Am I right? That we moved your big soft body with allegedly not enough notice and that east-side school you cried over and that Negro research resource librarian there with the hair out to here that . . . that lady with the upturned nose on tiptoe all the time I have to tell you she seemed so consummate east-side Tusconian all self-consciously not of this earth’s grit urging us to quote nurture your optical knack with physics with her nose upturned so you could see up in there and on her toes like something skilled overhead had sunk a hook between her big splayed fingerling’s nostrils and were reeling skyward up toward the aether little by little I’ll bet those heelless pumps are off the floor altogether by now son what do you say son what do you think . . . no, go on, cry, don’t inhibit yourself, I won’t say a word, except it’s getting to me less all the time when you do it, I’ll just warn you, I think you’re overworking the tears and the . . . it’s getting less effect . . . effective with me each time you use it though we know we both know don’t we just between you and me we know it’ll always work on your mother, won’t it, never fail, she’ll every time take and bend your big head down to her shoulder so it looks obscene, of you could see it, pat-patting on your back like she’s burping some sort of slumping oversized obscene bow-tied infant with a book straining his pronator teres, crying, will you do this when you’re grown?