Christmas Eve

I’m spending two weeks with my father while my mother’s in Maracaibo with her husband. After my father left, she married this guy who’s like a piece of stale bread. He’s a mustache and a pair of glasses—to me, that’s all he is. He’s got a bunch of rifles he keeps under the bed, and every couple of months, he’ll take a trip to South America to hunt quail. My father says he’s a pussy, that real hunters go after panthers and bears, not little birds. What pisses me off is that my mother’s into that shit. When my father had a boat she never came, but now she’s in the jungle somewhere, pointing a gun at the air.

After the divorce, my father went the opposite way: he quit all his cases and stopped going to work. Then he started hanging at Duffy’s and seeing all these girls. Last month, he moved in with Captain Liz.

Two days ago, he was making French fries and started a fire in her kitchen. It didn’t spread too bad, but the cabinets all melted and the stove was a total loss. When I heard the sirens from the pool, I knew it was my father: it’s not the first place he’s burned down.