“I have a head cold.” His voice sounds wet and thick. “Oh no, Dad, I’m so sorry.” He shrugs, coughs into a handkerchief. “It is what it is,” he says. “But my temperature is eighty degrees, which seems low.” “Indeed,” I say. I make a mental note to replace his thermometer, which is doubtless from the 1960s and the mercury all leaked out into somebody’s butthole decades ago. Probably my own! That might explain a lot, actually.
