Fridays at Enrico's Read Free Page A

written. She liked instead Clark’s story about Hook the Hawk. She had heard around school that Clark had thrown the finished story into his wastebasket, and his wife had fished it out and sent it to the Atlantic Monthly , and that he had also thrown away the final draft of Ox-Bow , which his wife dutifully fished out of the wastebasket and sent to Random House. Clark apparently suffered from these bouts of depression, where he thought his work stank badly enough to throw away. Jaime knew the feeling. In fact, it was coming over her now.
    She heard the thump of the front door and assumed her mother was home. She undressed and was walking naked down the hall to take her shower when she saw her father coming up the stairs. She shrieked and ran back into her bedroom. “Daddy!” she screamed. With the door safely shut she gathered her wits and laughed. I’m so cool, she thought. Properly dressed in her old pink chenille bathrobe she ventured out of her room again. Her father was in the master bedroom, lying on the bed, fully dressed except for his jacket. He lay on his back, looking at the ceiling. He was a short plump man withround rimmed silver glasses, blue-and-white-striped shirt, a bright red knit tie, yellow-and-green-striped suspenders, oxford gray pants, and cordovan wingtip shoes buffed to a creamy shine. Jaime loved her father, but she knew he was drunk. Otherwise, why would he be home?
    â€œI’m sorry I screamed at you,” she said.
    He did not look at her. Instead he pursed his lips tightly and breathed heavily through his nose. The heavy smell of liquor floated through the room.
    â€œDay off?” she asked brightly.
    â€œI got fired,” her father said grimly. Jaime laughed and went into the bathroom to take her shower. She had the water running and was just stepping in when she realized he was not being sarcastic. He really had been fired. In an instant she saw it all going up in smoke, the house, the family, college, her career. Her father had been fired. Probably for being a drunk, although up to now she had assumed that most reporters were drunk most of the time. But maybe her father was an especially drunken reporter. She’d never gone down to see for herself, but she had heard about the long afternoons and evenings at Hanno’s, the bar in the alley behind the paper. Drunken reporters sitting around talking about sports and Hemingway. Her father right in the middle. Until now.
    The fear lived in her stomach. She let the hot water hit her neck. She was nineteen. Could she get a job? Would she have to, to help support her old parents? Maybe her mother could get a job. Her mother had worked. She could work again. Jaime soaped her breasts and wondered if she could get a job as a call girl. She imagined herself walking down a hotel corridor, dressed in slut clothes, knocking at a numbered door. And having the door open to reveal a grinning Charlie Monel. No. She knew she could not work as a prostitute, not even for the experience. Not even for the money.
    At dinner her father explained. He had napped, gotten up, drunk a couple of cups of coffee and then a Martini before dinner, and now he was charming and relaxed. Apparently he’d been fired in some sort of mix-up.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said. “I have a grievance I can bring up before the Guild, I have my severance, we won’t be out on the street, and besides, I can alwaysget a job at the Examiner . The Examiner ’s been after me for years. Nothing to worry about. I’m sick of Abe and his goddamn nonsense anyway. It’s time I moved on.”
    By the end of dinner he was talking about finishing his novel. This was very upsetting for Jaime, who remembered all her father’s stories about the great novel he would write, which would move them over the hill and into the real Pacific Heights. As a child she had ransacked his desk and everywhere else in the house, and she never saw any novel