No Romance Chapter 8

I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. 

Chapter 8. Protected by a God

            The villa was nice. There were fireplaces in every room, including mine. It was a nice room. A bit dark, walls of mahogany lit only by the flickering flames. Big fluffy bed. Air-conditioned. Enough space for a rough-and-tumble, if it were needed. Probably would be. A pleasant window with dark-colored curtains. Nice room, all around. Except for the assassin in it.
            Nothing like a struggle for one’s life before dinner, is there? I thought as I flipped the man on his back.
            He had come in with my pack, which made my day a whole lot better. I was even about to tip the guy when I realized I had no money. I apologized and turned my pockets inside-out to show him. And I was even sincere! Hadn’t brought anything of value to give to anyone. Sad day for him, but what can you do?
            So at first when he attacked, I thought that was why. And you don’t want to kill a guy just because he started a fight with you over your perceived impersonation of Scrooge McDuck. But then he drew out a knife. And I still thought he was just disgruntled.
            “Hey, whoa, whoa, wait!” I said. “You probably don’t get a lot of money, I understand that. Just gold, right? Probably fool’s gold, now that I think about it...oh, no, I wasn’t calling you a fool! Stop growling at me! You’re going to seriously hurt someone with—oh. That’s your point, isn’t it? No, I suppose that’s your point.” He swung the knife at me. “Really, guy? Really? You know who I am, you know what you are, you know the way this is going to end. Do you insist on me proving my theory that you have no soul? See, not just me, not just your boss, whoever he is, but even you don’t care if you live or die, you pointless lackey. Okay, fine, keep snarling at me, see if I care.”
            Within a minute he was dead. And with that incident I washed my hands of the figurative blood of all the henchfellows I killed till that point, and all that would ever pass away by my hand in the future.
            Now to get the actual blood off my hands.
            Before it dried, I wiped my hands on the couch. Then I went to the door and poked my head into the hallway. I saw a servant vacuuming down the hall.

“Some guy just tried to kill me; what should I do with the body?” I asked over the sound of the vacuum.

            “We’ll get to it when we clean your room,” he said without looking.
            “My room’s already been cleaned, though,” I said. “I just got here.”
            The servant turned the vacuum off and turned around to face me.
            “But now it obviously needs to be cleaned again, doesn’t it?”`he said, rolling his eyes. “We’ll take care of it while you’re eating dinner. We’ll break our backs getting your every dead body out of its every room, being careful not to get blood over everything, then further breaking our backs to clean any spots that the blood got to, perhaps having to spend all night scrubbing and washing like Lady Macbeth just to get a damned spot out. Does that work for you? Does it?”
            “Okay, great, thanks,” I said. “I almost broke my back in there, too. We have so much in common. Thanks, really. I appreciate it.”
            And I withdrew into the room.
            Now why, I thought, surveying the body. Why why why? Why did you try to kill me? Who sent you? What were you trying to accomplish?
            The quantity of the questions outweighed the one simple answer. Vanasmas, obviously, for some reason or other. He was the only one so far to openly threaten me with death. Did he threaten, or just state point blank that he was going to kill me?
            Semantics, semantics. Who even cares.
            Then the call for dinner came through a ring of the phone on the nightstand. The person on the other end of the line informed me where to go and how to get there. Then they informed me that this call would cost $3.99 a minute and would be charged on my credit card. I hung up and went to the bathroom to wash my hands before dinner.
            “Oh,” I said. “Could’ve just done this with the blood...”

Belly roaring at me, I stepped over the fallen assassin and left the room.

            “Thanks for getting that body, chief,” I said to the servant, giving him a friendly pat on the back as I passed him.

“I’ll be expecting a nice tip,” the servant called after me, but by then I pretended I was too far away to hear.

---

            I arrived early in the dining chambers. That’s a fancy term because it was a fancy room. Huge, like a cathedral, but very very empty, ceiling, walls, and floor all made of dark wood, and lit only by a massive fireplace with a blazing, though quiet, fire. Arranged around the fireplace were some pieces of plush velvet furniture. And in the very center of the room was a square table, two chairs on one side, two chairs on the opposite. Some dinner things lay on the table, plates and forks and knives and that kind of thing. Other than all that, the room was empty.

My footsteps echoed as I entered, adding my bodily presence to the minimalist display. It was quite a lonely place. I put my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket and whistled to pass the time. Interesting sound, an echoed whistle. A lot more resonant.

I stopped when I heard a bit of noise coming from an open doorway on the other side of the room. Given that it was quite a ways away, I didn’t hear any details, but enough to know it was something of a commotion. I stepped nearer to hear better while maintaining my casual air. Listening further I determined the marvelous fact that a kitchen lay on the other side of that mahogany wall, marvelous because I was blasted hungry and it seemed to be proof that food was indeed forthcoming. Then I started paying closer attention to the voices.

One of them I recognized.

“He’s not who you think he is!” said a demure voice. “I know why he’s really here. He’s here to stop us.”

The other was pretty easy too.

“You’re just jealous because you have no children to comfort you in your old age. Now leave me be. Well, no, I want you at dinner. I want you to meet him.”

“Is that where we’re going?” said Vanasmas. Then, finding himself in the doorway to the dining chambers, “Oh.” He looked up and down and back and forth as if lost, as if he had never seen this room before. He wore the same thing he had worn when he met me in the prison: vest over tattooed bare skin and parachute pants. Golbez hadn’t changed either. Hawaiian shirt and camo pants. And of course I still wore my jacket and all else beneath it. It seemed we were all in the clothing we’d wear until the end of the story.

“Hello,” I said with a little motion of my hand. Some might call it a wave. I’m not sure what it really was.

“Good evening,” Vanasmas said stiffly.

“Jackie, old boy, let’s fulfill our hunger by filling our bellies and making them full. And talk!” Golbez slapped me heartily on the back. “Two or thirty years worth of time to go over! Catch up on things, as they say! I say, let’s all sit down.”

I took my seat on one side of the table; Golbez set his bulbous self down across from me, and Vanasmas sat on his right, my left. He was looking at me very irately. I didn’t really care. He made me laugh more than anything. And I don’t laugh much.

“Jackie, this is Vanasmas. He’s my spiritual advisor. A holy one! Very spiritual.”

“Nice to ‘meet’ you,” I said with a blank face that was on the verge of turning into a smirk, but had originally been something of a stony glare.

“Yes, Jack McDowell,” he said. “Nice to meet you, as well. As our friend and father Golbez said, I am his spiritual advisor. I believe the spirits play a very strong role in our life, stronger than most common people think,” he said earnestly. “I see them everywhere.”

“Oh, I feel very similarly,” I said.

Servants came out from nowhere bringing food. Bowls of soup, bread and butter, a rice dish, a giant hunk of some kind of meat smack in the center, and a few other inconsequential things. Then, as soon as the servants were there, they were gone.

“So Vanasmas,” I said, laying out my napkin, “does your name mean anything in your native language?”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you for asking. It means ‘The Stealthy One’.”

“It means ‘Running Rat,’” Golbez said as he took a spoonful of soup.

“Ah, I heard Norrigan North saying that earlier,” I said conversationally. “I’m not sure if he likes you very much.”

“North’s endorsement is hardly desired. Most men do not have a good feel for the spirits, and him especially. I care about those whose lives are touched by the spirits the most.”

“That would include me,” I said, smiling quietly to myself.

“That would also include me!” Golbez said in his gravelly voice as he tore a piece of meat off with his mouth and started chewing. “I feel very spiritual at times. And I try to always hearken to the spirits when they beckon me or tell me to do something.”

“Don’t you run a smuggling crew?” I said, and ate a spoonful of the rice, then ate several more.

“I run a business of repute!” Golbez cried suddenly, the outraged voice echoing all around the chamber. “I am the mayor of this town!”

“Mm-hm,” I kind of said as I chewed.

“We have strict labor laws here, Jackie,” Golbez said, just the teensiest threat in his voice, or maybe it was defensive pride. “And because of them, our workers work hard.”

I reached for my glass of water and gulped it down. One last significant swallow and I could speak again. “So this is something legitimate to all this, then? This whole island is some kind of town?”

“And I have been voted to be their mayor! Everything that goes on here is perfectly legal.”

“We do what pleases the spirits,” said Vanasmas, still perfectly calm, and seeming very genuine. “The spirits are pleased with diligence and efficiency. We all work very hard here and get a lot done.”

“Making loads of money is a spiritual experience for me, Jackie,” Golbez said, and burped. “Who are you to say any different?”

“You see, the problem with organized religion,” Vanasmas said, remaining quiet and cool while Golbez seemed more like a volcano threatening to erupt, “is that it is too confining. It is a prison, and all its adherents are prisoners.”

“It puts so many restrictions on you, so many rules and boundaries!” Golbez said, all of a sudden standing, leaning forward on the table towards Jack, and making gestures to parallel his speech. “Everything I do, I have spiritual reasons for doing so. My business practices bring me peace! They help me feel good about myself! They are perfectly natural! When I lie with a woman, I am hearkening to the ancient cry of nature! I respond to it and so am all the more at one with it. Artificial rules suppress my individuality and spirituality. The first thing that must go is guilt! I succeeded in that a long, long time ago. Guilt, the enemy! I don’t want to feel guilty for doing the things I do. I want to do them and also feel good about myself! And because of Vanasmas’s help, I feel perfectly fine these days! And isn’t that what life’s all about? It sure is what the spirits have helped me to do! They make me feel so at one with nature! We get rid of guilt, we get rid of pain, and we get rid of those pesky consequences of unhindered sexuality like babies and diseases and messy emotions and whatnot. Then we can truly meld with nature, with our spiritual selves, and be more full, vibrant human beings! This is what I’ve discovered. And it’s all true because I feel it’s true, and I really really want it to be true. And that’s the part, the very important part Vanasmas has played in my life, Jackie. All these life lessons I’ve learned from myself: he’s confirmed them.”

He sat down in his chair and shoved a huge bite of meat into his mouth.

“Well, I know exactly what it’s like to be a prisoner,” I said after a moment’s silence. “So I can identify with those feelings.”

“You been in jail, Jackie?” Golbez said, raising up a forkful of meat.

“No,” I said.

“Yes you have,” he replied with a full mouth. “I put you there.”

“Oh, yes, that jail. I’ve been there. Vanasmas tried to kill me while I was in there, by the way. That’s why I ran and we had that whole chase sequence. Sorry, didn’t want to bring it up, thought it might be rude. No offense, Vanasmas. No hard feelings, either. I don’t blame you. We’re all just doing what we’re built to do.”

“That’s how I feel, too, Jackie!” Golbez said, eyes brightening. “We just obey our own impulses. They are the sweet, melodious sounds of nature calling.”

“Or the gods,” I said, but a bit under my breath so no one heard me. “But you did hear the part about Vanasmas trying to kill me, right?” I said louder to Golbez.

“Oh, I did, I did,” Golbez said, nodding as he went at more food. “And I’ve had a talk with him about it. Vanasmas, no more assassination attempts on my boy, you hear?”

“Of course, Golbez,” Vanasmas said humbly. It sounded good, but then, when Golbez wasn’t looking (focused on his food), Vanasmas shot me a very brief glare. It made me smile. He was the only one who could. Make me smile, I mean. And seeing my smile made him even more angry, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Which made me smile further, and...

...so forth.

Yes, anyway, I had a question.

“So what kinds of things do you smuggle?” I asked Golbez.

            “I’m not really sure,” he replied.
            Wait, what? “You don’t know?”
            Golbez shrugged. “Does it matter? Just odds and ends, here a little, there a little, that kind of thing.”
            Wasn’t expecting that.

“Oh, we used to smuggle drills from some company called Grunnings, or such,” Golbez continued on. “But that was a very long time ago. I haven’t even heard it mentioned for at least fifteen years.”

“But you do make money in all this?”

“Presumably. I’m sure not losing any money, that’s for sure!” he said, again with that belly laugh of his.

“And all the workers you have? They’re slaves?”

“Kind of,” he admitted casually. “It wouldn’t be an inaccurate term.”

I sighed and frowned. I was hoping the whole situation was something I didn’t understand. “I suppose I should confess: I am here to stop you, you know,” I said as I put a mouthful of a meat into my mouth, hoping it was chicken.

Vanasmas kept his eye on me. He knew. He understood.

But Golbez didn’t. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

I sighed again. “I’m metaphysically obligated to halt this smuggling operation.”

Golbez put a napkin to his mouth and nodded understandingly. “Ah,” he said. “I see.”

“That’s my prison,” I explained. “That’s how I’m imprisoned. I have to dismantle this place. I’ve done similar things several times before. I don’t have much choice in the matter. I’m sorry.”

I had expected Vanasmas to, at some point, say, “I knew it!” But he never did. Just kept glaring at me, taking bites of his food only very occasionally.

I continued on as Golbez slurped his soup.

“I came here with the intention of finding out more about myself, not to beat up bad guys,” I said. “But maybe that’s the answer, and the only answer there is. Beating up bad guys is who I am. It’s what I am. But then the mystery of it all how did I come from someone like you? That’s my question.”

“Well, old boy, we’ll just have to swap stories and see whose is most compelling,” Golbez said as he buttered a piece of bread. “This may indeed turn into some kind of war, but let’s talk first, get to know each other better. Then, if it comes down to it, it can be a truly tragic father-against-son kind of thing. An epic battle!”

And he took an epic bite out of the over-buttered bread. Except that he ate it upside-down, with the butter on the bottom side.

“Now tell me more about yourself and these metaphysics,” he said as he chewed.

And I all of a sudden felt very animated indeed. The gates burst open and genuine emotion spilled out. Much like what happened with Annie the other night.

“I’m stuck in a prison, Dad. Like a snail in its shell. It follows with me wherever I go. In everything I do, I’m compelled to be a hero. To stop evil, or sometimes just a slightly skewed perspective on the world. It’s like I’m in a movie, a string of sequels. Constantly doing the right thing, constantly winning battles, jumping chasms, swinging across on vines or ropes, getting hurt only where scars look most tough and attractive. Wherever I am, danger follows, but never quite catches up, because I win no matter what. I have no damb choice in any of it. For years it’s been like this.  Years. And...I just...called you Dad.”

I just called him Dad.

Was that me? Or was it...them?

I shook my head and refocused on my surroundings. Neither Golbez nor Vanasmas seemed to have noticed my word choice.

“And you didn’t try to kill yourself?” Golbez asked as he spread more butter over more bread.

“I did try — four times. That’s how many new motorcycles I had to get. But it never worked. The fifth time was when something happened: a movie producer saw me do it, and saw me walk away from the crash without a scratch, and right then and there, before asking if I was okay or not, he offered me a job as a stuntman for a new film he was working on. I tricked stunts in those films like no one else could. I survived some scenes where the character in the movie died. But death can’t happen to me. Whoever’s controlling this won’t let me die, as much as certain other people want me to.”

            I glanced at Vanasmas and suddenly remembered. (Golbez was still concentrated on his food.)
            “For example... Someone tried to kill me just before dinner. A few minutes ago. Came into my room to deliver my pack that I left back in the jungle when you guys first caught me. Drew a knife. I had to defend myself. So now he’s dead.”
            “I’m very sorry about that, old boy! But it sounds like for you, that’s quite a regular occurrence!”
            “I almost forgot it happened. That’s how ‘regular’ it is.”
            “Let’s help you forget about it completely. Vanasmas, fetch us some drinks! Jackie, what’re you having?”
            “Bourbon,” I said instantly.

“Fetch me a blueberry-pomegranate slushie,” said Golbez. “Mixed with some quality bourbon, like Jackie’s. And get whatever you want for yourself.”

Vanasmas stood and bowed his head slightly to Golbez. “I will consult with the spirits on this matter of my choice. It may take time for me to find the answer.”

Vanasmas exited, his footsteps not echoing as loud as mine had, as he was wearing soft-sole moccasins. Golbez, having finished his meal, leaned back in his seat. His outlandish voice calmed down and he seemed much more sober.

“So you overheard us as we were coming in?” Golbez said.

“I heard a little.”

“He thinks you’re not my son. But clearly you know Malandra, and clearly I knew Malandra, and we both seem like honest folks, so I see no reason to disbelieve you.”

“Who does Vanasmas think I am?”

“He thinks you’re a hero only here to save the day and smash our little empire. Which you’ve admitted you are, but no one says you can’t be both that and my son.”

“That’s the question I’m trying to figure out,” I said. “There has to be a link between us, some reason my life is this way and your life is that way. But what is it?”

Vanasmas entered with a tray of drinks much sooner than I expected. It must have been easy for the spirits to choose the spirits.

Sorry about that one.

Golbez glanced at Vanasmas but then back at me. “In a moment I’ll tell you my story, old boy, and we’ll see if we can figure it out together. Avert a great war, if we can. Ah, my Running Rat! Set these down here, there’s a good chap.”

“The spirits whispered to me quite clearly what I would want,” Vanasmas said in his calm voice, sans emotion. “Here is your slushie, Golbez.”

“Thanks,” said Golbez, and he took a hasty swig, spilling some of the blue substance on his white mane.

Vanasmas set a bottle of amber-colored liquid near my plate and a fancy crystal glass next to it, all without a word.

“I don’t actually drink much,” I said conversationally, picking up the bottle and examining it.

“You don’t drink much?” Golbez said, looking at me with profound but temporary distrust. “And you call yourself my son.” He tipped back his drink again.

Of course my reason for this was that I knew it was poisoned right away. This trick had been tried on me too many damb times. One clear indicator in this case was that Vanasmas hadn’t actually gotten a drink for himself. This implied that he had spent his extra time not deciding what he himself should get, but in finding the poison and applying it properly. Also, I think the gods told me, but I could be wrong. I, after all, am the one narrating this part of the story, and I don’t get direct words from the gods describing everything. But I can sense the general cloud of their plots and prose and ways and means from time to time, especially during important moments.

I wavered between accusing outright and staying silent about it and just not drinking, thinking I could get some entertainment out of watching Vanasmas squirm nervously. But in doing that I’d be prolonging Golbez’s reaction, which I also wanted to see. I wasn’t entirely sure of his political persuasion at this point, whether he was secretly on Vanasmas’s side or really being honest with his son, so this route might get some answers for me.

I considered accidentally spilling some of the bourbon on Vanasmas’s dinner, which he had not finished, to see if he would still eat it. But then I remembered that most people wouldn’t eat it after a drink had been spilled on it anyway, regardless of the poisoned state of the drink. That’s me trying to be sneaky. But subtlety isn’t my strong suit, so I decided to point it out openly instead, albeit in an innocent way.

“So Vanasmas, you didn’t get yourself a drink,” I said. “Did the spirits forget about you or did you forget about the spirits?”

Vanasmas looked at me again, though this time it was more of a frightened, wide-eyed kind of stare. He had forgotten.

“Darn it!” he exclaimed, pounding his fist on the table.

Golbez lowered his slushie from his face and looked from Jack to Vanasmas. “What? What does that mean? What---”

“It means my drink is poisoned,” I said in a deadpan voice. “Dear, dear, foiled again.”

“Vanasmas! Oh, Vanasmas, is this true?”

Vanasmas looked as angry as a two-year-old being denied a cookie.

“Yes,” he said in a low voice, out of the corner of his mouth.

“He’s also the one who had the guy try to kill me in my room.”

“How in all of Moon Base do you know that?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Vanasmas’s eyes flitted up to mine. “How did you know?”

“I am protected by a god,” I said sardonically, and was about to reach for my glass to take a drink for stylistic flair before I remembered the whole deal with it being poisoned.

“There are no gods,” Vanasmas said, leering at me. “Not yet.”

“Vanasmas Sintagoras Johnson!” Golbez shouted. “I can’t believe you wasted an entire bottle of bourbon on such a trick! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Go to your room right now! No more dinner, and no dessert, either.”

The villain’s third attempt to kill me frustrated, he left the dining chambers, but not with his metaphorical tail between his legs as I would have thought. No, he walked swiftly with shoulders square. Hm.

“Come on, old boy, let’s relocate to the fireplace, on those soft chairs over there,” Golbez said. “And we’ll discuss wonderful things, cabbages and kings and all that.”

Then he burped.

---

“My father was from Hampshire and my mother smelt of potato berries. My mother, a poor girl in India at the time of British occupation, married a Scotch soldier. Hence ‘MacDowell.’ So I’m half and half. And Malandra was very, very white, so that makes you quarter and three-quarters.”

            Strange. Like my mother, I was also very, very white.
            “I must suppose, as your skin is also very, very white that Malandra’s genes were the dominant ones when you were conceived. Her genes probably drop-kicked mine like she did to me several times throughout the course of our marriage. Tough ol’ gal, your mum. I loved it. It didn’t last too long, and I regret to say it was entirely her fault. She scared me. For instance, I almost died during childbirth.”
            Golbez cleared his throat.
            “You almost---” I started.
            “I was just being honest with her! One is supposed to be honest in marriage, aren’t we? Aren’t we, laddie?”
            “What did you say?”
            “I just commented that she smelled rather atrocious while she was pushing. You’ll understand that yourself, young man, should you ever find yourself in a delivery room. But she, oh, she couldn’t appreciate me for my honesty with her. She stopped pushing long enough to kick me in the head. She even snarled at me, like a beast! That was the thing that really scared me. I didn’t want anything to do with her after that. Or maybe I did, but I was too scared to go near her. And soon enough and for whatever reason, she ran away one day, apparently with our child, with you. Then my fear turned to fury, and I---! Well, the fear part outweighed the fury, so I arranged for my hitman to deal with her. I hope you don’t mind me telling you all this, old boy. Long, long ago in the past. A good...I don’t know how many years. How old are you?”
            “I’m thirty.”

“Oh? Now that you mention a number, I seem to remember it being thirty-one years ago that all that happened. And I NEVER remember things wrong.”

An utterly serious expression cemented on his face. Then it cracked.

“No wait, I’ve been wrong before!” he said, laughing and slapping his knee. “I forgot all those times. Hah hah! Well, anyway, I never found out what happened to my hitman. After he went off in search of her he just disappeared. And for whatever reason, he stole my bloody map. Took it with him.  I didn’t need it anymore, of course, but I know someone out there has it, and someday they’re going to use it to steal my treasure. That’s kept me unsettled for these long three decades. Three decades, is the right number? Anyway, quidquid. All that’s under the drawbridge, as they say. So let’s draw it up and keep anything else from entering our little castle, our little Moon Base.”

He took a slurp from his blue bourbon-slushie.

“You’ve been out here for thirty years?” I said.

“As have several of my associates!” Golbez said. “Blake is much older than he looks, and North’s been around longer than I have. And Dr. Aperture, too, has been with me through it all. Malandra, of course was with me at the beginning. I came out here with nothing but a map, my closest associates, and twenty million dollars. And look what I’ve been able to accomplish! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“How did you get so much money?”

“Oh, excellent question, old boy. The answer contains twinfold information! I got that money from a raffle at a Smugglers Seminar, to be a free opportunity to start your own smuggling ring. And that was where I met your mother, actually! She was at a Female Self-Defense Summit at the same hotel. It was just as I was setting out to be a corrupt businessman. I wanted to start a villainous enterprise. Because of the Z in my name, you see. So when I saw an ad in the paper for the seminar I decided to attend. Happenstance that both my seminar and her summit were in the same place. That morning her little women’s thing was having a big fancy breakfast, with waffles and omelettes and crepes and all sorts of delicious and delightful breakfast-related foods. And I had thought that that women’s breakfast was just the hotel’s normal breakfast buffet, so I wander in and have one of the most delicious breakfasts of my life, without noticing that everyone around me was female. And when I did notice it, I rejoiced. So I sat down at what turned out to be your future mother’s table. I looked around at all the women sitting there at that table, then turned to the woman next to me and with a very happy grin, said, ‘You’re rather...husky, aren’t you?’ She then round-house kicked me in the face. It was the most attractive thing I’d ever seen. We got married the next day.

“So with that money won from the raffle at the Smugglers Seminar, and those wonderful people who I found and hired all around the same time, we set out for Rainswept Isle with that map and plotted our villainy. Dr. Aperture was particularly good at that sort of thing. Out here, science has no boundaries. He can experiment on anything he wants and on whoever he wants. I supply him with money and resources for his experiments, and he gives me gizmos and gadgets and so forth when I need or want them. I haven’t checked on him in a while, come to think of it. And he has been talking with Vanasmas quite a lot...hm....”

            “Golbez?”
            He snapped awake.

“Oh! Yes...I have to say, Jackie old boy, I’m very sorry about the poison incident. I don’t even remember if I was complicit in it or not. I could have been, you know. But Vanasmas, he’s a much more reliable character than I am.”

            “Character?”
            “Person. Did I say character? Hm....Golbez...zzz...”
            And he was asleep. Leaning back in his easy chair, bootless feet up on an ottoman, hands clasped over his belly, looking fat and happy and utterly content. The fire continued to blaze in the fireplace and cast flickering light on the whole of the empty, echoing room. The snores complemented the glow and resonated throughout the room, just as my whistling had.
            So. That was my father.