The Squeak in the Floor

Before she died, my mother told me where to find my father — and that I’d met him once, when I was four.

I don’t remember it. Couldn’t be bothered to care. He clearly didn’t want me. And I’d gotten good at pretending that meant I didn’t want him either.

So when a lawyer found me last fall, sleeping under a bush in Central Park, and told me my father had died in his San Diego home and left me his house and half a million bucks, I didn’t grieve.

I smiled.

Twenty-six. Homeless. Sober for all of thirty-seven hours — by coincidence, the same length of time my father had been dead when they found him.

Funny how things align.

I’d burned through everything. Lost the job. Lost the girl. Drank away the rest. I’d done things I’d never admit out loud. Begged. Stolen. Felt the burn of bile after vomiting up a half-eaten slice of pizza I’d pulled from a trash can. Sucked dicks for cash behind the porno theater off Christopher Street. At a nearby truckstop.

You understand.

It’s 1998. If I was gay, I would just tell you. I’m not. I was hungry.

I didn’t have any money.

They did.