“What?” roared the voice, and there was a clatter of slippers on the neutral carpet of the stairs. Alan didn’t want to look but found that he couldn’t help himself, his head inexorably turned toward the sound, until a pair of thick legs hove into sight, whereupon Marci leapt into his lap and threw her arms around his neck.
“Ge’orff me, pervert!” she said, as she began to cover his face in darting, pecking kisses.
He went rigid and tried to sink all the way into the sofa.
“All right, all right, that’s enough of that,” her father said. Marci stood and dusted herself off. Alan stared at his knees.
“She’s horrible, isn’t she?” said the voice, and a great, thick hand appeared in his field of vision. He shook it tentatively, noting the heavy class ring and the thin, plain wedding band. He looked up slowly.
Marci’s father was short but powerfully built, like the wrestlers on the other kids’ lunchboxes at school. He had a shock of curly black hair that was flecked with dandruff, and a thick bristling mustache that made him look very fierce, though his eyes were gentle and bookish behind thick glasses. He was wearing wool trousers and a cable-knit sweater that was unraveling at the elbows.
“Pleased to meet you, Albert,” he said. They shook hands gravely. “I’ve been after her to unpack those books since we moved here. You could come by tomorrow afternoon and help, if you’d like—I think it’s the only way I’ll get herself to stir her lazy bottom to do some chores around here.”
“Oh, Da!” Marci said. “Who cooks around here? Who does the laundry?”
“The take-away pizza man does the majority of the cooking, daughter. And as for laundry, the last time I checked, there were two weeks’ worth of laundry to do.”
“Da,” she said in a sweet voice, “I love you Da,” she said, wrapping her arms around his trim waist.