Toby by Todd Babiak Page B

were just about to hire a taxi. A taxi. How much would that have cost, do you think?”
    “Forty dollars.”
    “At least. You have that kind of money to dump in the toilet, but your father and I are in altogether different circumstances.”
    Edward walked a line of grout on the tile floor, his arms out for balance. His mouth was open, a seven-year-old at his birthday party five minutes before he opens his presents. Every ounce of yesterday’s dourness had been drained away, replaced by delight. His hands and arms were free of bandages now, but a large rectangle of gauze remained on his head. He wore a pair of mauve hospital pants that covered the burns on his shins. “I’m a tightrope walker,” he said.
    Karen spoke through her teeth. “Do you see what’s happening here?”
    “Dad?”
    “Embrace me, my son.” Edward jumped off the tightrope and hugged Toby, gingerly. He whispered, “We’re just so blessed to be here together, the three of us. What’s the magic number? You remember the song. What is it?”
    “Three.”
    “It’s the magic number.” He broke out of the hug and raised his fist in victory. “Can I get a witness?”
    A number of the burn victims had turned away from CNN to watch and listen to Edward.
    Toby addressed his mother silently. She shrugged in response.
    “ Three is a magic number, ” Edward sang to his fellow patients. “Everybody now.”
    The patients backed into their chairs.
    “I left messages at home and at Alicia’s, on your cell, at work,” Karen said.
    “It’s been quite a day.”
    “You’ve had quite a day? You? Well, sonny, you missed your dad being Barry the Butterfly for the apprentice nurse.”
    “Oh, Toby, you have to meet her.” Edward returned to them. “She could be a model.”
    “It made her plenty comfortable when Cary Grant over here told her so. And that was before he did Barry.”
    Toby picked up his father’s belongings, in two white plastic bags, and his mother’s small leather valise. He led them to the elevator and began planning his afternoon. The bank would not immediately foreclose on his condominium. There were still two English-language stations on the islandto phone—then Toronto and Vancouver, where they knew nothing of what he had said in front of Roslyn School. A beast of ambition.
    For the first two floors, they were alone in the elevator. Karen continued to poke him about all the better things he had done today, in his family’s time of need. She counted each of his imagined exultations on her long fingers. “You went to a nice café on the Plateau, I would think, for a late breakfast. Perhaps you signed autographs for some teenage girls with their underwear showing. Oh, then what? A massage.”
    “I was fired this morning. And Alicia and I are finished.”
    “Finished,” said Karen. “What does that mean? Finished?”
    “Is there a clearer word for ‘finished’?”
    “You’re being funny.”
    “I wear the green hat.”
    Edward looked up at the fluorescent light on the ceiling of the elevator car. “Like father, like son.”
    Karen pressed her fingers to her forehead.
    The elevator stopped, and two women, doctors, stepped on, each with a cup of coffee. They whispered.
    “Is there anyone I can phone?” Edward poked Toby when he did not answer. “To make this right?”
    The elevator stopped again, on the mezzanine level, and a woman helped her one-legged husband into the car.
    Edward’s voice trembled. “Do they know who you are? Do they even know? Your boss, the Jew with the hair. He knows. He must!”
    There is a spiritual component to etiquette, an instinct that precedes and supersedes the most comprehensive book of rules. Toby could practically hear the doctors, the unfortunatecouple, bursting with perspiration. The car reached the lobby, and it seemed to take several lifetimes for the doors to open.
    “Do they?”
    The man with one leg murmured a plea in his wife’s ear. “ Let’s go. Quick, quick. ” One of