Fitz Read Online Free

black and nasty, like some underground oil deposit, buried deep in his soul.
    “What right have you got to even say my name?” Fitz says. “Tell me that.”
    “None. None whatsoever.” His father raises his hands off the steering wheel then, and Fitz tenses, but it’s not an attack, just a gesture, a mini-surrender: he shows his palms and returns them to the wheel.
    At the window now, there’s a perky blond girl wearing a headset and an apron who tells them what they owe. Fitz remembers that he’s got his father’s billfold jammed in his hip pocket. He pulls it out and extracts a ten. He gives it to his father, who thanks him and passes it up to the girl.
    She makes change and hands it to his father, who in turn passes it to Fitz. She hands over their drinks next, two tall, lidded paper cups. His father sets his in the console’s cup holder between them.
    The girl gives them a big smile and tells them to enjoy their day. Maybe she imagines the two of them are on some nice family outing, Take Your Son to Work Day or some such.
    Which reminds Fitz. “You need to call your office,” he says. He’s thought this through and has a kind of outline in his head, but he’s let himself get flustered and forgetful. He needs to getback on track. He needs to stay focused. “Tell them you’re not coming in today.”
    “They’re gonna want to know why.”
    He pulls his father’s phone out of his pocket and thrusts it at him. “Tell ’em you’re sick,” Fitz says. There’s a word his mom likes. “Tell ’em you’re
indisposed
. Tell ’em whatever you like. I don’t care. Tell ’em you have plans.”
    “Because you have plans for me,” his father says. “Is that right?”
    “Oh yes,” Fitz tells him. “Most definitely. I have plans. Big plans.”

7
    Fitz has always been fascinated by fathers —the various types, their behaviors. When he visits his friends, he studies their dads, like a zoologist doing field research. He likes to catalog the various species he observes. There are the lawn-and-garden dads, guys who smell like gasoline, who spend the weekends mowing and edging, blowing leaves and whacking weeds. There are hunters and fishermen, the ones with camo jackets and tackle boxes, boat hitches on their trucks. There are the sports guys, coaches and superfans, sitting on the sidelines in their portable chairs, hollering encouragement and advice. Dads read the paper; they grill meat; they pay bills. They drink beer and watch football, remotes glued to their hands. That’s how they are on television anyway. Most TV dads are a little clueless, big kids. Bad dads turn up mostly in movies and lit class: the Great Santini, Huck’s dad—they’re angry and mean and sometimes drunk.
    But this man at the wheel, his dad, is not so easy to classify. He’s got his eyes on the road, headed down Lexington Avenue now, just as Fitz instructed him, toward Como Park. If he is a baddad—of course he is!—it is a different kind of bad. He is quietly, almost invisibly, bad. If he were a disease, they’d call him a silent killer.
    Now that phrase, it occurs to Fitz, could make a good blues song:
You’re a silent killer, baby
. It’s crazy to be thinking about songs now, in the front seat with his dad, his hand on a gun, but it’s just how his mind works—he can’t help himself. He thinks up a good phrase, hears some choice expression, he wants to write it down, fiddle around with it, see if it turns into anything worth showing Caleb.
    Fitz wishes Caleb could be here with him. Caleb is peculiar and superstitious, full of tics and rituals and crazy fears—there are certain streets he doesn’t like to cross, some chords he seems to dread—but he’s shrewd, too. He sees into people. Caleb would have some take on his father. He could help Fitz see beyond the briefcase and cell phone, help him see what’s in the suit.
    What’s he listen to?
That’s what Caleb would want to know. When he talks, Caleb puts a little