A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Drunken Confession

Emily pressed the buzzer beside the door of her father's condominium, and after a lengthy pause he opened it, a glass of whiskey in his hand. "Emily, baby?" he slurred, looking at her with bloodshot eyes in an unshaven face bearing a three-day growth of beard. "I didn't know you were coming by tonight." Completely ignoring the presence of her husband, he looped his arm around her shoulders and drew her inside.

He was drunk, Emily realized with a pang of frustration and sorrow as she looked around at the gloomy interior of his place, not dead drunk but stumbling drunk. Once, he'd been a virtual teetotaler, but during the past several years, his bouts of drunkenness had been occurring with increasing frequency. "Why don't you turn on some lights," she suggested gently, reaching out and turning a single lamp on in the living room.

"I like the dark," he said, reaching behind her and turning the lamp off. "It's safe and sweet."

"I prefer a little light so Emily doesn't fall over something and kill herself," Dick said firmly, reaching out and switching the lamp back on.

"What made you decide to come by?" he asked Emily as if Dick hadn't spoken. "You never come to see me anymore," he complained.

"I was here twice last week," Emily reminded him. "But to answer your question, I came to talk about business if you're up to it. Dick's accountant has some questions he needs answered before be can prepare tax estimates or something."

"Sure, sure. No problem, honey. Come on into my study where I keep all your files."

"I have several phone calls to make," Dick told Emily. "You talk to your father and I'll use the phone in the—" He looked around for a phone and couldn't see one in the living room.

"In the kitchen," she explained, and he nodded, already heading off in that direction.

Emily followed her father upstairs into the bedroom he'd converted to an office years ago, and he sat down behind his desk, which was the only clear surface in the house, if one discounted the coating of dust. The credenza and file cabinets that lined the wall behind him were covered with dozens and dozens of framed photographs of Emily—Emily as an infant, a toddler, a child of four, Emily in her ballet tutu, in her Halloween costume, in the costume she wore for her first starring role; Emily at thirteen with her hair in a pony tail, at fifteen with her first corsage from a boy. Now, as Emily looked at the photographs, she realized for the first time that he was with her in nearly all of them. And then she noticed something else—the light from the lamp on his dusty desk was shining brightly on the glass inserts in all the picture frames as if they'd been recently cleaned.

"Whadyou want t'know about, honey?" he asked, taking a swallow of his drink.

Emily considered mentioning his need for some sort of treatment for what had clearly become an alcohol addiction, but the last two times she'd brought that up, his reaction had been first crushed and then enraged. Summoning her courage, she plunged tactfully into the Liam er at hand. "Dad, you know how grateful I am for the way you've put all my money into a trust fund and managed it for me all these years. You do know that?" she prompted when he crossed his arms and seemed to stare through her.

"Sure, I do. I've socked away every cent you made and guarded it with my life. I never took anything for myself but an hourly wage of twenty dollars and only when you insisted I had to do it. You were so cute that day," he said wistfully. "Sixteen years old and confronting your old dad like a mature woman, telling me that if I didn't draw a larger salary, you were going to fire me."

"That's right," Emily said absently. "So I don't want you to think for a moment I have any doubts about your integrity when I ask you the next question. I'm only trying to understand your reasoning. I'm not complaining about the money I lost."