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point in his own center of gravity that if one of the piano men had not gripped him, half jokingly, half in desperate earnest, my father would have taken a header and lofted down all that distance to the place where the lawn sprinklers were just sputtering on.
    The automatic timer sprayed spidery water all over the two piano men near us, who flinched a little and said formal, manly things, like “Goddamn it,” “For Christ’s sake,” making a show of not getting very upset by the water.
    I was sure the piano would fall.

CHAPTER SIX
    For an instant I considered taking an elevator, but a small boy was hammering on the elevator doors, shouting.
    Everywhere you looked an EXIT sign was blinking off and on, or a clothes dryer ate coins without turning on. It used to be nicer in this building, and I hoped that someday, maybe when Mom came back to us, we could afford to move.
    My feet made loud echoing slaps all the way up.
    Dad was there, opening the door, showing me to the space the piano would occupy, a space of bare carpet. Potted palms and easy chairs were lined up against the wall.
    By then the piano was slowly lurching into the room, the strong men easing her through the wide open glass doors, the quilt folding back around one of the ropes, mahogany gleaming.
    My dad hovered close by, biting a knuckle, and the men heaved it into place, grinning with the strain, and then with relief.
    â€œMaybe a little bit this way,” my dad said.
    I stepped over to the piano and hefted it myself, feeling how lean I was, surrounded by these men in green denims and baggy Bay City Delivery T-shirts, filling out those shirts pretty well, too, paunchy but with deep chests. I put some leverage into it, and felt my effort shift the piano.
    â€œGood,” said one of the men, with an accent, German or Scandinavian, that made the word sound guttural, an approval of my assistance that came from his bones.
    â€œGood work,” he said.
    The concert-scale piano was too big for this room—way too big. In recent years my dad had made do with Casio keyboards, and always had access to a Yamaha at the college. The piano men folded the packing quilts, called down to the rope holders, made notes on a clipboard, having Dad sign by the X .
    My dad gave them each a tip, a crackle of currency. He was paying for the piano by cashing in a certificate of deposit, the last of his inheritance from his parents’ estate. Our furniture was mostly rented from EZ Life Home Furnishings on Frontage Road.
    Mom and he shared expenses, but she was always gone, finishing her Ph.D. in animal biology, writing her dissertation on the tule elk. They are large, slow-moving creatures, cows with antlers. The species had been almost extinct until a lingering herd was rescued and allowed to roam some acreage north of the Bay Area. I had visited Mom a few times in her trailer, computer software and scientific journals stacked all over.
    Mom spends her time studying with Dr. Urquist, the celebrity zoologist, and Dad has his girlfriends, a new one every three months or so. Women like his upbeat chatter, his ability to tell a joke one moment and sit down and play a sonata the next—and not just hit all the notes, but render it with feeling. After several weeks, however, Dad’s women tend to screen their calls, and drift away to new terrain.
    There is no great emotional explosion. It’s just that Dad has only one act, one opening episode of his one, personal TV series, a guy with a winning smile and a gift for music. Months pass and you never see much more than that. It’s just more small talk and a chance to go see a jazz guitarist he just heard about.
    Dad clips grocery coupons out of the Sunday paper, keeping them in alphabetic order in the top kitchen drawer, paper towels right after meat loaf mix. I hear Dad on the phone sometimes, sounding full of high-octane enthusiasm for one of his new friends. I know he has another side, a side