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"They're pretty cool, Dad." You think he looks like a
bird, his light lean frame and hooked nose and windblown
hair. Birds have hollow bones; maybe he does too. It
wouldn't surprise you. Not much surprises you about
your father, not anymore; not hollow bones nor wax-and-
wire wings. You have gotten used to living in the shadow
of his brilliance, gotten used to knowing you will never
measure up. Sometimes, you think you can see it in his
eyes, when he looks at you - the disappointment, the
realization that you did not inherit his gifts. You have
never spoken of it, but you think that his hopes for you
must have been high, and his disillusionment must have
hurt.

"Be careful," you add.

"Oh, I'll be all right." He steps up to the ledge of the
roof, turns his face up to the sky. There are still
skyscrapers towering above you, but the air is clearer here,
and you can see so far, across the harbor, out to sea. But
he glances back at you before he jumps. "Here goes
nothing," he says, and launches himself into the empty
aIr.

For one moment, one awful, heart-stopping moment,
he plummets out of sight, down, and you cry out and bite
down on your knuckles, hard, keeping in the scream - but
then, thank the gods, he comes back into view, flapping
hard and grinning. "Success!" he declares, a light in his
eyes. You sigh in relief, let your knees buckle onto the
concrete of the roof, and sit there, watching him soaring
past, unsteady, but so alive.

iii. One time when you were fifteen, you snuck out
with Dad's boss's daughter, Ariadne - before she started
seeing that guy Theseus, before he left her with no
warning and she stopped talking, stopped seeing anyone

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