Now I cadged a painkiller from Francesca and tried to ignore the pressure of my dehydrated brain against the top of my eyeballs. The room was silent apart from the film’s clicking passage and the whine of the projector’s fan. It was hard to give the film its due (whatever that was), between hangover and my sense of Abraham, back with the projector, watching us watch from across a distance of empty seats. Hard not to feel his disappointment in this venue on the back of my neck. I waited for that one strange flare of yellow and red: there it was. Twenty-one minutes passed.

“This is how your father tortures these people who love him,” whispered Francesca. “By subjecting them to such darkness.”

I didn’t reply. I could have used even more darkness at the moment.

The second excerpt was a surprise. A dispatch from the frontier: my father had discovered a green triangle with blunted corners, one trying and failing to fall sideways against the phantasmic, blurred horizon.

The triangle occupied perhaps a quarter of the frame’s area. It trembled, tipped a degree, nearly kissed earth, jumped back. Progress was illusion: two steps forward, two steps back. Impossible, though, not to root for it. To feel it groping like a foot for purchase. Daring, hesitating, failing.

I was unexpectedly moved, forgot the room, forgot my headache, suddenly wept for the triangle’s efforts, a tragedy in no acts. Francesca handed me a tissue from her purse. Prisonaires, triangles, I was a pushover these days. Then it was done, and the lights came on. No one clapped-they’d forgotten how, or perhaps the film had persuaded them to fear that their hands, urged together, would fail to meet.

Zelmo Swift appeared at the front and taught us to be brave: a clapping sound could indeed be produced. He led the way. We applauded and my father came to the front, was seated before another microphone, though he hardly needed it to be heard in the sparse room. The few questions that came were either timid or inane. Abraham took them politely.

“Have you ever considered adding a soundtrack?”

“You mean conversation? Or music?”

“Uh, music. It would give you something to listen to.”

“Yes, it would do that. And then, yes. We’d be listening to music.” He paused. “It’s something to think about.”

Another asked about the progress of the film since the second excerpt. What did it look like now?

“I find a paraphrase almost impossible. Some progress has been made. You’d see a superficial resemblance to this sequence, I think.”

“Is the triangle-” This is what the questioner had really wanted to ask. “Is the triangle, uh, lower? Has it finished falling?”

“Ah,” said Abraham. He paused a while. “The green, yes. It continues in its struggle. More or less as you saw.”

There was a hush within a hush.

“Will it ever -?” someone managed. The question on everyone’s lips. That unfinished falling had broken a lot of hearts, not only mine.

“I prefer not to speculate,” said Abraham. “That’s the daily task, in my view. A refusal to speculate, only encounter. Only understand.”

Zelmo, waiting in the wings, could stand it no longer. He swept up the microphone. “In other words, folks, stay tuned. Abraham Ebdus isn’t done yet. Pretty amazing.” Yes, the film had gone into extra innings, but Zelmo the Chair, Zelmo the Connoisseur, he wasn’t one of those philistines getting a head start to the parking lot, no sir.

With that the spell was broken. My father’s fans drifted from the ballroom, checking their pocket schedules. Maybe somewhere in the building R. Fred Vundane was seated on another panel, if they were lucky. Abraham hurried back to prevent the hotel’s employee from rewinding the film incorrectly, and Zelmo and Francesca surrounded me again.

“You’ve got a plane to catch,” Zelmo said merrily.

“There’s plenty of time.”

“Sure, but my car’s waiting downstairs. So-”

“You better go, dear,” said Francesca.

I was too blurry to fight. Zelmo was a thug by nature, and Francesca a thug of love, and together, in the name of convenience and some irritating secret agenda, they would cheat me of a half hour more in my father’s company. He’d fly back to Brooklyn and another year or decade would go by. But I’d made no use of the visit so far, and there wasn’t a lot of potential in half an hour at the Marriott, not with Zelmo and Francesca and my hangover all circling, making their claims. I slung my bag over my shoulder.

“Son.”

“Dad.”

“It was good to see you. This-” He waved. “Impossible.”

“The new segment was beautiful.”

He closed his eyes. “Thank you.”

We embraced again, two bird-men briefly touching on a branch. I’d showered but already reeked again of the liquor working through my pores. I wondered if my father thought I’d come to Los Angeles in the middle of a breakup, or a breakdown. I wondered if he’d be right to wonder.

Then I smudged Francesca’s face and was escorted downstairs, through the lobby, and into the backseat of Zelmo Swift’s chauffeured, window-tinted limousine.

Disneyland was distantly visible from the gray suburban freeway strip, a clutch of spires like a sinking ship in the industrial sea.

“You don’t like me,” announced Zelmo, with no regard for the driver’s hearing. On the leather-plush seat there was plenty of room between myself and the lawyer. I suppose it seemed I wanted to climb out the window.

“What do you want me to say?” I needed orange juice, a toothbrush, a blood transfusion, a Bloody Mary, Abigale Ponders, Leslie Cunningham, a Thneed, someone to watch over me, a miracle every day-anything but a moment of truth between myself and Zelmo Swift. I needed a volume knob on Zelmo Swift.

“Nothing. I’m doing this out of respect for your father and Francesca.” He took an envelope from his jacket and placed it beside my hand.

“What is it?”

“An accident. You’ll understand when you look. I go all out for my guests, Dylan. Whatever you might think of ForbiddenCon, it’s a moment in their lives, I like to make it a big one. We usually do a ‘This Is Your Life, Abraham Ebdus!’ kind of thing at the Saturday banquet. Surprise appearances from the past, very sentimental.”

I opened the envelope. A single sheet, two typed paragraphs. Some legal secretary’s notes, unsigned. Nothing official, but dry legalese aspiring to the official, language dead with indifference to its subject.

Ebdus, Rachel Abramovitz, conviction for forgery, conspiracy, Owensville Virginia, 10/18/78, sentence suspended. Subsequent arrest and indictment, Lexington, Kentucky, 5/9/79, accomplice armed robbery; bail flight, whereabouts unknown; warrant issued 7/22/79.

And:

Ebdus, Rachel A., last verifiable address, 2/75: #1 Rural Route 8, Bloomington, Indiana, 44605.

“I hope you don’t feel I was prying,” said Zelmo. “We have an excellent research staff at my firm. What they discover is out of my hands.”

“Why am I seeing this?” What I meant, really, was: Why am I learning this from you? Why in your limousine, Zelmo?

He understood. “Abraham wanted me to destroy it. He wasn’t interested. Francesca spoke to me privately.”

“So Francesca’s wishes prevailed over my father’s?”

“She’s well-intentioned, Dylan. She thought you had a right.” His voice rose to a declamatory, courtroom-finale level. “You shouldn’t be furious with her. It’s difficult coming into a family, knowing what’s right to do.”

I glanced at the sheet again, and felt Zelmo’s eyes on me. I wanted to fly at him in my rage, but I sat. Fuck you looking at? I wanted to ask, then throw him in a yoke.

But I sat, a white boy saying nothing.

“Forget it, if you want,” said Zelmo. “I’ll destroy the traces.”