by Dan Ames
“No, she’s having physical therapy. On her knee.”
“Oh, okay,” he says and produces several thick folders from the briefcase in his hand. “Then would it be all right if I left them with you?”
“Certainly.”
She leads him into the kitchen, takes the folders, and puts them on the table next to the packages.
“You must be very proud of your daughter,” the recruiter says. Anna feels a flush of guilt. She is proud; she just hasn’t shown it.
“She’s a wonderful, brave girl,” she says. She looks at him and sees that he’s looking at the envelopes on the table. “Have you ever seen her play basketball?” she asks.
“No, I haven’t.”
“She’s a warrior. That must sound funny to you, being in the military and all. But she’s a fighter. Always has been. And when she has a basketball in her hand—” Anna stops herself.
Checks her watch. The post office doesn’t close for another hour.
“Well, why am I telling you? I should just show you.”
She goes to the computer, double clicks the movie file, and hits PLAY.
Chapter 58
For the second time, Samuel finds himself momentarily forgetting about his plans, and like the first time, he finds himself thinking instead about Beth Fischer.
The video has been playing for only thirty seconds, but Samuel is already captivated by her play. Samuel knows confidence when he sees it. Having been a starter, practically a star, on both the Silver Lake football and basketball teams, he knows a pure talent when he sees one.
Beth Fischer simply has it.
The street expression about having game, about having skills, doesn’t apply to Beth—she’s beyond that.
Granted, he knows it’s a highlight film, so all of her mistakes, her turnovers, her bad passes, her missed shots during a cold streak, have all been edited out. Still, Samuel instinctively knows that there probably wasn’t a whole lot of editing. She’s the kind of player who doesn’t make many mistakes.
And there’s one really interesting play. Whoever shot the video, probably Silver Lake’s audio-visual club, captures the clock in the background. Silver Lake down by a point. Less than twenty seconds left. Samuel watches, his palms sweaty, his heart beating faster, as Beth steals the ball and races down the court.
“Why…” Anna is saying.
But Samuel is watching Beth’s legs fly, her arms pump as she takes the ball in, strong and sure, watches as the short, stocky point guard crashes into her, watches as the ball falls through the hoop.
“Wow,” Samuel says.
“…is that in there?” Anna says. “The accident?”
Samuel turns to her, sees her pale face. Her hands are shaking. Hasn’t she watched the video? Or did she just not make it through until the end?
“The ultimate highlight,” Samuel says.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the ultimate highlight. It shows her winning the big game, making the ultimate score. It’s perfect.”
“But it shows her injury…”
“…and what a great sacrifice it was,” Samuel counters. “The ultimate sacrifice. Your daughter’s a winner, Mrs. Fischer. She’ll do whatever it takes to win. Whoever gets this video will see that in an instant.”
She stands stock still. Samuel can see that she’s momentarily at a loss for words.
“Mrs. Fischer?” he asks.
She jumps, as if he’d pinched her. She checks her watch. “Oh! I got so caught up in the video…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to get these to the post office today. It closes in ten minutes, and Beth’s got the car.”
“No problem. I’ll mail them for you.”
Samuel sees the flash of doubt pass through her eyes.
“If these coaches—I assume that’s who you’re sending these to, college coaches…” he says, his voice smooth and confident. Inviting trust. “If they don’t respond like I did, if they aren’t blown away by what she can do with a basketball, then they don’t deserve to coach her.”
The look of distrust disappears, replaced by a warm gratitude. “Oh, thank you…”
“Samuel.”
“Samuel. You don’t mind?”
“As much as I want her in the Navy, she belongs on a basketball court. If she doesn’t get a scholarship,” he spreads his hands wide, “then we’ll talk again. But until then, I’m glad to help. Your daughter can really play.”
Anna smiles and rushes back into the kitchen, scoops up the manila envelopes, and places them in Samuel’s arms. “I haven’t told Beth about sending these out. I’m not sure how she’d…well, she doesn’t know I’m doing it, okay?”
“Okay,” Samuel answers.
“All right, go. You’ve got my daughter’s future in your hands.”
“Happy to make the assist,” he says, then points to a thumb drive next to the computer. “What about that one?”
“That’s just an extra. Don’t worry about it.”
Samuel smiles.
“I better hurry then.”
Chapter 59
Samuel glances at the packages on the seat beside him. They look like little goslings, waiting to take flight. Somehow innocent and embryonic. He knows they are the seeds that could grow into Beth’s future. Her dreams of playing basketball and going to college. It’s all wrapped up in these little packages, assuming her rehab is successful.
He has a brief image of him and Beth, together somehow. Why not? It makes perfect sense. Two athletic, good-looking people. One man, one young woman. Both with bright futures. Destined to do great things.
He drives through the main part of downtown Silver Lake. The sun is bright, and he feels blinded by the harsh images. The light seems to probe inward at him, and he feels the pain in his temple.
Finally, he sees a fast food restaurant and pulls in behind it.
The images of him and Beth together dissolve with the scent of greasy burgers and fries. It could happen, he thinks. He’s had to live with a lot—he’ll live with the things he’s done for a long time.
He pulls the car in next to the dumpster, gets out, walks around the car, scoops up the envelopes, and tosses them into the dumpster. He gets back in the car and drives away.
Samuel can live with what he’s done. And if Beth never knows, she can live with him.
Maybe even love him.
Chapter 60
Beth wants a neutral setting. Not her home. Not his home. All she can come up with is the Silver Lake gym. It’s open—for gymnastics practice.
She hobbles into the gym, and the rubber bottom of her crutches squeak softly on the tile floor. Her brace is cinched tight over her sweat pants. Her Silver Lake letter jacket has a dusting of snow on its shoulders that instantly begins to melt. Her brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail.
The smell comes back to her—all schools and their gyms smell the same. That odd combination of musty books and stale popcorn. She walks past the glass cases, ignores the pictures, medals, and trophies.
At the door, she sees that the gymnastics squad has pulled out the mats along with all of the equipment: the parallel bars, the balance beam, the horse, and the big mat for the floor routines.
Beneath it all is the basketball court.
It’s not the first time she’s been back since the accident. She came for the last game her team played: the one where they got blown out. But Beth had still been in shock about what happened to her, too blown away by the fact that her knee was gone. She’d still been in a daze.
Now, standing at the door, she realizes the enormity of what had happened. She looks at the gym, remembers the fans, the cheers, the screaming. The signs with her name on them, proclaiming her to be something bigger than life. It’s all gone now.
Beth sees Peter waiting about five rows up around the half-court area. He’s dressed in jeans, black hiking boots, and a black leather jacket. He looks good, Beth thinks. She walks along the perime
ter of the court and when she gets to him, he starts to get up as if he’s going to help her.
“I can do it,” she snaps at him.
He sits back down.
Beth pivots and swings herself up, one leg at a time, and sits a few spaces down from him. She’s momentarily out of breath. A girl—Beth thinks her name is Kathy Brandemuhel—is doing a routine on the uneven bars. She finishes and does a dismount, stumbles, and falls to her knees.
“At first, I thought I would never want to see you again,” Beth says. Her voice is soft but firm.
Beth sees Peter flinch but goes on.
“I don’t think there’s any way you’ll ever know how much you hurt me.” Her voice trembles, but she has to keep it together. After Samuel left, she’d thought about how she’d left it with Peter and realized that it wouldn’t do. She wasn’t one for loose ends, and besides, they’d had quite a bit of time together. It just wasn’t right to end it like that. She needed to tell Peter what an awful thing it was for her, and then she could move on. A clean break.
“To tell me that you wanted it…us to continue—”
“Beth—” he begins, but Beth cuts him off.
“That we would see each other after you went to Marquette and then—”
“I didn’t—”
“For you to—”
Peter turns to her, his face flushed, his voice heated. “Look, Beth, it was a mistake. A terrible, rotten mistake.”
“No, it was more than a mistake. A mistake is trivial. This was a breach of trust. A willful, destructive—” She stops herself. She isn’t here to lay a guilt trip on him.
On the mat, a girl takes a running start and does three consecutive handsprings before flipping in the air and landing perfectly, her arms raised toward the ceiling.
“I came here,” she says, “for three reasons. One, I wanted you to know how much you hurt me.”
“You can cross that one off your list.”
“Two, I wanted you to know that it’s over and that I wish you luck at Marquette. I don’t have any bad wishes for you. I wanted you to know that I’m not that kind of person. You obviously had some…issues…emotions, or whatever, that you couldn’t tell me and so eventually they were communicated to me.”
“Jeez, Beth. Can I say anything?”
“Yeah, that’s number three. I want to know, for my own sake, no bullshit, why you did that. Why you were there with her. You don’t have to tell me, but I want to know.”
She can see the hesitation in his eyes. Behind him, a girl takes a running start, hits the springboard, pushes off from the vaulting horse, does a flip in the air, and lands, stumbling, but without falling.
“Tell me the truth, Peter. The only way you could hurt me again is to feed me some line of crap like I’m a total moron.”
He heaves a deep sigh and starts talking, using his hands. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. At first, it seemed like it was the booze.” He stops and looks at Beth, an expression of frank, open honesty. “Like I drank too much, the music was loud, I was feeling good, she came on to me, and I just turned my brain off. Before we met, before we started seeing each other, it happened once in a while.”
He stops and puts his hands in his pockets. “But I know that wasn’t the only reason. I’ve had plenty of other opportunities that I’ve never taken. So why now? Was it your injury? Was it Vanessa? Something about her? And I realized that it didn’t have anything to do with anyone but one person.” He stops and looks at Beth again.
“Me. It was all about me. It started with the scholarship. The full scholarship to Marquette to play ball and study and to get the hell out of Silver Lake. It went to my head. It went straight to my head, and I’d just been feeling like the king of the world. Pretty pathetic, right?”
Beth can see the dark intensity on his face, the true ring of self-flagellation. He’s being honest.
“Afterward, I felt like the biggest jerk in the world.”
“Okay,” Beth says, “I’ve heard enough.”
“No, you haven’t. You haven’t heard enough. Because you know what? I’m just a slightly-above-average basketball player, who will maybe have a moderately successful college basketball career and then if I’m lucky, play in Canada or Europe. I’ll never be in the NBA, come on. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t want to think about Beth Fischer—a class act, smart, funny, beautiful—whose friendship I threw away because of some supremely stupid arrogance created by a run-of-the-mill scholarship. So it’s not over, and I’m not going to let you piss away your future by joining the damn Navy, Beth.”
“What are you talking about?” Beth says, the anger exploding from her. Several of the gymnasts turn to look at them, her voice echoing in the gym. “Who do you think you are? Now you’re my career advisor? I don’t think so.”
She gathers up her crutches.
“I’m not going to let it happen, Beth,” Peter says. “The military is all wrong for you. I’m responsible for what happened, and your future isn’t going to be a part of the debris.”
She stands and negotiates her way down the bleachers to the gym floor. She turns back and looks at him.
“You had your chance to be someone important in my life, Peter. But you blew it.”
Chapter 61
The perfume is right. The makeup is right. The clothes are right.
It’s the damn knee that’s wrong.
Beth, sitting on her bed, looks down at her leg, at the thick brace that joins the two normal parts of her leg like some mutant Tinker Toy. It’s thick and bulky and just plain ugly.
Slowly, she unbuckles the brace. She winces in pain and thinks about what her doctor would say. What Judy, her physical therapist, would think. They would no doubt tell her that being impatient, that pushing things too soon will have only the opposite result—she’ll have to be in the brace longer and do more physical therapy.
Well, hell, she thinks, I’ve got a date.
No, she corrects herself. It’s not a date. Samuel is a Navy recruiter and he wants me to join the Navy. It’s that simple, nothing more. This is business for him, a salesman working on closing the deal. It’s pleasure for me, she thinks. I’m already leaning toward going into the Navy, but I’m not going to tell him that. I need some male company, and I like Samuel.
Still, she feels bad. She’s using Samuel. Using him to get her out of the house, to help her forget about Peter.
Beth pushes the brace aside and looks at her knee. Even with the latest in arthroscopic laser surgery, the scars are inevitable. There was just too much damage. Too much rebuilding needed to be done. Hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?
The knee has finally stopped draining, and the healing is well underway, although that night—when she’d tripped running from the image of flesh on flesh in Peter’s Explorer—well, that hurt in more ways than one. She’d lost about two weeks of healing with that little fall.
She sets the brace aside and selects a bandage wrap from her dresser drawer. According to the handy schedule her doctor and Judy put together, this stage wasn’t supposed to happen yet. Jumping the gun, they’d say. But there’s one thing those two are definitely not the experts on—just how much she wants to have a fun, normal evening.
Beth takes the scissors and cuts the bandage in half. She carefully wraps her knee, wincing often, her tongue pressed firmly against her upper lip in concentration. She needs to make it tight enough to provide the right amount of support, but mostly she’s worried about the thickness of the bandage. It absolutely has to fit beneath her jeans. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. She wants to achieve some semblance of normal.
It’s silly. She’ll still have her crutches. But that’s different. She wants to dress normally, to be able to sit at dinner, put the crutches out of sight, and feel like an adult again. She wants Samuel to be able to see her the way she used to look: whole.
She momentarily imagines Samuel’s face. He’s so handsome, so open, so trusting.
Beth feels guilty thinking about him. What exactly is she contemplating? Seducing him? Hah, she thinks. That’ll be the day.
She laughs out loud. Samuel is…what, at least five years older? An older man? That’s nuts! She hardly knows him. Still, the idea of an older, more experienced man excites her.
Beth, she tells herself, just relax, go out, see this movie, talk to Samuel about the Navy, and come home. Your knee is still fragile, and so are you. Enjoy yourself, but don’t throw yourself at him. Don’t let what happened with Peter push you in a direction you don’t want to go.
But, she counters, what if it is the direction I want to go?
She cinches the bandage tight, clips it in place, and puts on her jeans, then checks herself in the mirror.
Damn.
She looks good.
Chapter 62
“Now you know, that’s not really what the Navy’s like,” Samuel says.
“You mean the Navy’s not really full of good-looking guys saving the world without disturbing a single hair on their heads?”
Samuel shakes his head. “And not all Navy pilots end up in bed with some woman who looks like she stepped right off a fashion runway in New York.”
“Propaganda!” Beth says in mock alarm.
Samuel helps her through the theatre’s front door. “But some of the basic themes—honor, courage, commitment—those things really do exist,” he says. “I have to admit, though, I was pretty upset when I enlisted and didn’t get a single call from a supermodel.”
“So when I sign up,” Beth says, “I shouldn’t expect a hot action hero to be knocking on my door?”
“Ordinarily, I’d say no,” Samuel answers. “But in your case, it wouldn’t surprise me if that happened.”
She laughs, flushes slightly at the compliment.
The theater wasn’t crowded, not surprising as the movie hadn’t gotten the greatest reviews. It was called Depth Charge, about some obscurely famous search for an enemy sub during World War II. It had all the classic Hollywood elements: sweaty young sailors; a stowaway aspiring actress, who ends up being the main character’s love interest; a ton of special effects; and a happy ending.