“What does she want?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Why does she want to see me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dad?”

“Just do it, all right? For me.” Pause. “As a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Think you can handle that?”

“Sure, Dad,” I said.

“Good.”

“As a favor.”

“Are you busting my chops?”

“Nah, it’s just this is almost like a real father-and-son thing. Calls on the phone. Favors and stuff. Next thing you know, we’ll be having a catch in the yard.”

“Last time we had a catch I threw a high pop that hit you in the face. You ran off crying.”

“I was eight.”

“You want to try it again?”

“No.”

“Good. Now that that’s settled, go see the old lady.”

The address he gave me was a small row house on the southern edge of the Northeast section of the city, my father’s old neighborhood. A gray woman, round and slumped with age, cautiously opened the door and gave me the eye as I stood on the stoop and announced my presence. I assumed this was the old lady my father wanted me to see, but I was wrong. This was the old lady’s daughter. She shook her head when she learned who I was, shook her head the whole time she led me up the creaky stairs that smelled of boiled vinegar and crushed cumin. Whatever the mother wanted with me, the daughter didn’t approve.

“I knew your father when he was boy,” said Zanita Kalakos in that crypt of a room. “He was good boy. Strong. And he remembers. When I called him, he said you would come.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Kalakos. So how can I help?”

“I am dying.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“I know, Victor.” She reached up and patted my cheek. “But it is too late for doctors. I’ve been poked, prodded, sliced like roasted pig. There is nothing more to be done.”

She coughed, and her body heaved and contracted with a startling ferocity.

“Can I get you something?” I said. “Water?”