Free Father's Day by Simon van Booy

suite on a honeymoon night.
    Jason leaned his forehead against the cool glass. The linens on the bed were pure white, and the pillows stuffed with real feathers. Jason wondered if the woman’s robe on the back of a chair was made of silk. He tried to imagine the feel of it between his fingers.
    On a white carpet was a pair of high-heeled shoes with red soles. One of them lay on its side. There was a silver champagne bucket with fake ice, and a cork had been set next to a pair of flutes on a side table. Two leather passport holders read HIS and HERS .
    On a cabinet were framed photos of the couple throwing leaves at each other in Central Park, unaware of the camera or that they were being watched. Another picture showed them in the cockpit of an airplane wearing headsets and pointing at the instruments.
    Jason wondered where the couple was now. A warm bed maybe, ankles touching in the darkness, the soft rush of breath. They would soon wake up and go about their lives. They would look at things in the newspaper and read bits aloud between mouthfuls of toast. They would dress slowly enough to make love, then take a cab uptown to pick out plates and silverware, napkins and candlesticks, for parties where people came to laugh and share their lives. One weekend they might rent a car and drive out to New Jersey or Long Island. That was where they’d be living when their child was born. They would return late from the suburbs with catalogs from brokers and bags of apples or peaches from a farm stand.
    With his bruised forehead and bloodied nose against the glass, Jason realized he would never spend a night with a woman who wore silk, nor lay back on a pillow of feathers, nor rest his bare feet on a white carpet, nor possess any photographs of himself lost forever in a single moment of happiness with another person.
    There had been someone once. A woman called Rita, with whom he would make love at the beach in summer, and stay up all night smoking cigarettes and going over their lives. But she was gone now.
    Then Jason thought of his father. Wondered if there had ever been a time of happiness in his life: a moment when he felt he was safe and that somebody cared for him.
    J ASON FELL ASLEEP on the train back to Long Island.
    The guard thought he looked down on his luck and just clicked his ticket punch in the air.
    When he got home, stumbling around the house in bloodstained clothes, heavy with the stink of liquor and urine, he caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror and thought again of his father.
    Then he took a pillowcase off the bed and cleared out all the beer from his refrigerator. In the freezer were two bottles of vodka, and he put those in the pillowcase too.
    After going through the house, then getting a hammer from the garage, Jason dragged the pillowcase of beer cans and liquor bottles into the backyard. Morning had come and the blue air was cool.
    Jason’s next-door neighbors were having breakfast when they heard glass breaking from over the fence. Enrico looked at his wife, then stood up from the table. His children, Hector and Carla, stopped eating. “I know it was him who smashed our mailbox last summer.”
    Enrico’s wife put down her spoon and touched her husband’s hand. “Just pray for him, Papi,” she said. “Ask God to help him like he helped us.”

XIX
    T HE NEXT TIME Wanda came over, she brought pizza. It was something she knew they both liked and hoped it might get them talking.
    Harvey carried it inside and they ate on the couch. When it was finished, Wanda tossed napkins into the empty box and asked Jason if he currently had employment.
    â€œNot enough to be ineligible for disability,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint you, Wanda.”
    â€œYou misunderstand,” Wanda said coolly. “I think it’s good to work—whether you tell us about it or not.”
    Jason admitted that he supplemented his disability benefit by selling things