The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver Page B

here,” he said. “For not hanging up on me the way I hung up on you. For not leaving yet.”
    “Don’t thank me yet for that one. My right leg here is just about to lead the way from this table.”
    He swallowed a smile that was just beginning to take form. “You know what I mean.”
    I hate to attribute charm to my father, but there was no other word at the moment that fit. He smiled, and the scar stretched along with it like a flattened rainbow.
    I looked back to the lone patron, but it was just my father and me. The light was no longer piercing the window and instead was glimmering against the cement outside, reminding me that it was dangerously close to fifty-five minutes inside the bar.
    “I really have to go,” I told him. I was actually a bit proud of myself for completing the task under time.
    “Look Noa,” he said, changing the subject. His voice cracked. “You should know it’s not completely my fault that I wasn’t around for you.”
    “I find that a little hard to believe.”
    He focused, curious. “I can’t blame your mother for not talking about me, if she didn’t talk about me. Did she?”
    I didn’t respond.
    “I mean, who would want to raise her daughter knowing that the father was an alcoholic and would always be an ex-con?” he laughed to himself. “At that time, I’d probably keep me away from my child, too.”
    A coarse tip to his shaky forefinger ran around the lip of the water bottle. He was nervous, true; that was not something to be debated, but it was almost an hour that I’d spent inside the bar, and at that point in my life, I followed my own dictum, despite my father’s superficial lament. I stood from the table. He rose to meet me.
    “Please, Noa,” he pleaded. “Stay a little bit longer. Let me get you something to drink. To eat.” He smiled. “To punch?”
    A half grin slipped from my chest, but I was already on my feet with my bag over my shoulder, and I could feel the second hand of my watch pulling me toward the door. I would not stay past one hour.
    “Another time,” I said.

Chapter 7
    A T FIRST, WE MET BIMONTHLY: ONCE AT HIS DIVE BAR , B AR Dive, in North Philadelphia, and the next at a restaurant of his choosing in Center City. Having consumed most of his meals at Bar Dive, the prospect of even tasting the hors d’oeuvres on Restaurant Row brought him to Center City more than I would have liked. Usually when it was my turn to visit, I took the subway in the daytime to him, but only when a faint hint of daylight still skimmed the sky in ornaments of coral and indigo, and only the bus in the evening once those ornaments were no longer. Over those few early visits when we were just starting to learn each other’s habits, I grew accustomed to riding the bus home late at night. The crack addicts, prostitutes, and night students from Temple were the only people riding anyway. We quickly grew to recognize one another’s scent. We knew to stay away from one another, to clump together when a new face boarded, when the local multiple personality jumped in, throwing punches in the air as she walked by. (Her name was Clara. And other times Claude.) Sometimes my father would be waiting for me near the bus stop. Sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes he was early. And sometimes we talked until the only recourse was the bus home.
    I refused to invite him up to my apartment when he came my way. My studio on Fortieth and Baltimore was becoming more and more colonized with rodents and I could actually hear my neighbor’s orgasm at precisely 11:35 in the evening every Friday night. My fatherdidn’t need his long-lost child’s veneer of prosperity to become such a pauperized image, so I continued to insist upon innocuous safe havens in Center City, Rittenhouse Square, and more culinary hideouts on Restaurant Row. I knew he wouldn’t complain, at least not at first. We ended up limited to a small section of Philadelphia, since he specifically insisted upon rummaging around