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for himself grilled bass and a glass of wine.
    We were in a corner booth. I was surprised to find that he actually knew several people on the premises. A furniture salesman in a plaid jacket who patted me on the head and introduced himself as Artie. And one of the brothers from Samos, named Manny. And, finally, a tall seaman with a buzz cut named Gus. I remember them clearly because they were the first men with whom I saw my father socialize.
    He was his usual self, though I did glimpse another part of him—if only a sliver. With Artie, who was also a habitué of the athletic club, he continued the wrestling patter, and he and Manny bantered about the food. But it was Gus who interested me the moment I realized he and my father had been shipmates. Another first. When Gus referred to their sailing into Caracas at night, pictures opened up in my head: flickering lights, murky piers, a windswept harbor.
    Gus called my father Teddy, which I’d never heard anyone do. Though at ease, my father maintained his usual reserve, sipping his wine while Gus threw back several ouzos and chain-smoked Lucky Strikes. Gus was already a little tight when he joined us. The more he drank and talked, the more restive my father grew. He was still under the spell of the wrestling, which he didn’t want broken. Besides which, he didn’t feel safe around people who veered, conversationally or otherwise. Also, I was there.
    Calling for the check, my father ordered me to finish my dessert, a thick rice pudding, while he went to the men’s room.
    “Yeah,” Gus continued, “your old man and me have seen some places. Down in São Paulo an old woman read my future in chicken tracks. You know how?”
    I shook my head. He leaned forward, his breath like kerosene.
    “I give her five bucks. She wets down the dirt and has two chickens walk around while she talks mumbo-jumbo. Then she reads the tracks.”
    “How?”
    He shrugged. “How should I know?”
    “Maybe it’s a kind of alphabet.”
    “Maybe.” He lit another cigarette. “You’re a smart kid, huh?”
    “What did the tracks say?”
    “Eh?”
    “About your future.”
    He blew a string of smoke rings. “That I’d have three kids and live to be ninety.” He snorted. “Maybe the second part will come true.”
    “Do you have kids?”
    “Nope. Don’t like ’em. Present company excepted,” he added half-heartedly. “Anyway, for five bucks the old lady didn’t tell me much.” He laughed. “For another ten she said she’d cook me the chickens.”
    I tried to conceal my disgust. “Did she read my father’s future?”
    “No, he didn’t want no part of it.”
    “No part of what?” My father’s voice came up behind me.
    “I was telling him about the old lady in Brazil who read the chicken tracks.”
    My father grunted and examined the check. “Put on your coat, Xeno.”
    “You got a smart kid here, Teddy.”
    My father nodded while counting out some bills.
    “You never talk about him.” Gus was looking at me, smiling, but his eyes were cold. “I don’t know why not.”
    “Come on,” my father said to me.
    “Hey, one for the road, Teddy?” Gus said.
    My father shook his head.
    “Suit yourself. So you’re in town until Friday. Then you go home?”
    My father stiffened. “Then I
leave
home. I’m shipping on the
Hecate
for Barcelona.”
    Gus looked away, nodding vigorously. “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
    “Goodbye,” my father muttered, clutching my arm and leading me from the restaurant.
    On the sidewalk he tried to head off my questions. “Sometimes that’s what sailors say when they’re putting to sea: ‘going home.’”
    Speeding through the subway tunnel beneath the East River, I was thinking hard about this. “Do you think of a ship as home?” I asked him.
    Without missing a beat, he said, “You’d better think that way about your ship when you’re in the middle of the ocean. But, no, I think of our apartment as home.”
    I didn’t believe him. I