Barcelona Days
Page 21
“That thing last night…” Jack said. “What was that? That was super bizarre, I’m not gonna lie.”
“Well, good, I’m glad my new friends are so honest.”
“I’d never seen that move before. I thought you were gonna get her in a triangle choke and drop her to the pavement.”
“Nah, just checking out her earrings.”
“She was a little shook. Whatever you did, I don’t think she saw it coming.”
“Oh yeah?”
“But when I tried to talk to her about it, she acted like it was nothing. Like she’s cool with everything, like she’s in complete control. I just never know what to make of any of it. One minute she’s having a nice time, the next she’s saying something insane. A lie for lying’s sake. Like she’s deliberately trying to see how big an idiot I am.”
“A lie like what?”
“She’s just, I dunno, always saying shit, and then if I look at her funny, she says I’m so gullible, like, Who would believe that? Like—here, perfect—yesterday, she started to tell me that one of her roommates in Paris had been fucking murdered last week! And that was one of the reasons she had to get out of town—so she wouldn’t be dragged into talking to the cops and have to spend more time in France. Then when I looked at her all shocked and concerned, she started laughing hysterically, like I was so fucking dumb, how could I believe her? And then she just snaps back to being totally normal.”
“Normal, then, as a baseline of two or three fake names goes, right?” she said.
“Right. Which, to be fair, is maybe more normal than dropping MMA moves on someone,” he said, grinning.
“What can I say—that’s how they teach you to defend when the attacker’s back is to goal,” she said, smiling. “Just checking out her earrings, seeing if she dyes her hair…”
“She’s harmless. Just a little weird sometimes. I can’t crack it.”
“So,” she said, a little drunk still, and desperately wanting to know, “what is it about her, then? I mean: What’s it like with her?”
“What do you mean? You know her.”
“I mean, is it just unadulterated in its greatness?” She watched his face change as he caught on. “Or is she one of those who’s all show until the bedroom and then is actually kinda timid and quiet and sweet and deferential when it all comes down to it? I know girls like that. All this big talk and then a different person once you get her back?”
“Um,” he said, kicking a seedpod. “Not really that one.”
“So she’s into it, she’s loud, she’s what she seems?”
“You’re just gonna keep pushing, huh?”
“Gimme one thing! I’ve always cared more than is polite. But we’re bros now, right?”
He laughed. “I dunno, she…she’s young. It’s not over till she says it’s over. One of those.”
It hit her sharper than she’d anticipated. She’d brought it on herself but hadn’t expected it.
“She really gets to you, huh?” he said.
“I don’t know why,” Whitney said, quickly. “I did it, too. The acting-older thing. The projecting yourself forward a few years in an effort to, I dunno, get there faster. It’s so dumb. She’s just gonna piss some people off along the way, she’s gonna burn bridges. Then she’ll graduate, get a job, get beaten down in some useful ways and probably some ways nobody should. And then she’ll wish she’d just shut her mouth and made some more friends along the way. My boss used to say, ‘I wish somebody had told me when I was your age: These people, they’re going to be in your life forever—on the way up, and again on the way down.’ It’s a long road. Then again, she can probably blow up her life and land on her feet in New York or Paris, or go back to L.A. and settle into whatever. Or better yet: Chicago, with the basketball star of her dreams.”
He chuckled half-heartedly. He was checking over his shoulder to make sure they didn’t get hit by the tram.
“Or,” she continued, wading into the non-reaction, “maybe I don’t know anything about her, or you, for that matter.…We’re all strangers.”
“No, no,” he said. “You’re probably right. I was just thinking about that advice from your boss. Just coming up in an industry or whatever.…I’m basically in the same boat as her, when you think about it. Seven years older, but nothing to show for all this time over here. I’m starting at the bottom again. I’m going home, probably for good. Back in the house.…Have you ever gone back to live at home?”
“Home’s not—I mean, when I left, I really tried to leave. I go back now and again to check the boxes with my folks, make sure people know I’m still alive and that I still like a few of them. I drink beers with my brother and his idiotic girlfriend. But I don’t have a ton that’s left there. The old teammates I do keep up with, they have different things going. Husbands, dogs—fucking babies. I sit through stories about hunting trips. Updates on their yards. Long recaps of the after-work kickball leagues they play in. It’s different than being from a place where people from my work wind up, you know? It’s different for Will, or even how it’ll be for you.”
“The kickball thing, that’s what makes me most nervous. Well, not nervous…” He looked genuinely distraught. “I always pick the wrong word…I just know I’m gonna be playing in that league. Crushing it. Dominating at the park where my brothers and I grew up playing Little League. Then the same bars. Lollapalooza every August.…Honestly, that part—that might be why I was okay ducking that scene back there. I had this sudden feeling of: Am I really doing the same thing I’ve been doing since I was a teenager? Same jersey, even. But then I feel guilty about it, because the thing I’m worried about becoming is the life my brothers and my best buddies are living. It’s not like it’s horrible—it’s my favorite place in the world. But up there, up near the house…I’m gonna get sucked into all that because it’s my world to a T.”
“Who would’ve thunk there was all this existential roiling going on in that noggin!”
“It’ll be a good way to get back in with people. But when you were just describing it—the games under the lights, like when we were little—it’s this weird full circle, and I don’t know, dude…erasing the old memories with new ones. I like the fact that I’ve lived other places. I’ve been proud of that. I don’t have all that many grown-up memories there, and I just worry I’m gonna replace all the old stuff. When I was a kid, I’d see the old guys—who were probably, like, our age now—waiting with a case of beer to take the field after our game ended. I remember thinking that was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. It’s just gonna be weird to be one of those dorks hanging around the park, smashing beers on that field. That field’s for Gatorade and orange slices.”
“What a protector of innocence,” she said. “Jack Pickle: catcher in the rye!”
“Maybe I’ve just been over here too long,” he said, plodding ahead earnestly. “Alone for nine months out of the year, six years in a row. It’s been hard sometimes—like, really really hard. But I’ve also gotten used to it, these cities, these languages I can’t understand, the unfamiliari—”
“The grilled chicken.”
“Exactly.”
The pleasant lull that followed was filled with the screech of children in a park close by. An ivy-covered wall with portholes, and through the portholes, Whitney could see, dozens of kids scattering about. They couldn’t have been out of school yet—they seemed to stay in session until five each afternoon. But in this city, she’d learned, every day was meant to feel like Saturday.
“You need some work. You need some boring-ass office job to distract you. By Week Two, all these concerns will be behind you.”
“You hiring?”
She smiled sweetly. Then after a pause, she said: “Actually, want a distracting homework assignment?”
He glanced down at her from way up high.
“Once you get back this afternoon,” she said, “write down three ideas. Three movie pitches. And send them to me tonight? I’ll help you on the
next steps.”
“I appreciate that, but I don’t know if you know what you’re getting into. I truly have no clue what I’m doing. You don’t need to take pity on me.”
“I’m getting as bummed out by all this talk as you are imagining you all fat and sad on the kickball field, raising up the trophy at the end of the season like it’s the best win of your career. At least here we’ll have something to keep you busy, right?”
He mimed hoisting the depressing trophy. “This is getting too real!”
“Gotta keep you focused, engaged. Nobody wants to see that body go from elite BMI to, I dunno, what I imagine most guys on the North Shore look like by thirty, after too many imported sausages and cheese wheels from Pickle Products.”
“Ah, you refer to the standard-issue physique of the older Brothers Pickle. It’s not a bad bet, given what’s come before me.”
“Just keep a couple abs, huh? Not necessarily eight, or whatever you’ve got going on in there now…” She exaggeratingly peeked down the armhole of his jersey, a deep gap that showed off some ribs.
He laughed and the laugh made her fully recognize what she’d done. She’d not only peeked, but touched his arm, right above the elbow, at the base of his tricep.
“Well,” he said, “I do appreciate it. I’m embarrassed, but you’re probably right, it might cut against the…the way I’m taking this whole thing, like it’s an injury. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say: This week’s been like waiting to hear how bad an injury is. Waiting to hear if you’re okay, or if you’re gonna be out for the season—or if your career is over for good. The difference is I already know the deal. I know I’m never playing again. I know it’s a career-ender.”
Will followed Jenna to the edge of the body-spill that spread out from the stage. The band shell opened away from the water, so the mass, with no natural corral points, was just a thumping shifting whorl that beat like a pulse. They pushed into the rear of the crowd. Will would have stopped there and made camp on his own modest swatch of concrete, but Jenna pressed deeper into the jungle, hacking away with her machete.
She didn’t so much reach back for him as flash an expression of clear intention. She was going in and he could follow her or not. She edged into the mass with one shoulder forward. Perturbed male faces snapped hatefully to the source of pressure at their backs, only to see the eyes and the height, only to sense the smell of the blonde bountiful hair, and to acquiesce, to step aside, to make a narrow gap to pass. If Will left too much space between them, the gap would close before he had the chance to draft, sealing shut like a wound.
It went like that for an interminable stretch of awkwardnesses and apologies, as Jenna pushed in closer and closer to the band shell. Then, at a seemingly arbitrary point stage right, she pulled up and stopped, having determined that the spot satisfied some triangulation of sight lines and acoustics and space, at least enough for her to dance around the way she wanted. Will was proud to have stuck close enough in her wake. He would never have made it otherwise. Never dreamed of attempting it. He’d received his share of grim looks, but he would never see these people again. He could act a little selfishly for once.
It was inarguably better up there. He’d paid for two tickets and only used one. He was entitled to a little something extra, wasn’t he? It had been his last hundred-euro bill. He still wasn’t sure why he’d pulled it out of his wallet, who he was trying to prove something to—Jenna or Jack or Whitney or the scalper? It was as though an idea beyond his own calculus had popped his wallet from his pocket and produced the cash. Or maybe he just genuinely wanted to go in. To follow the jean shorts and the black leotard into the crowd, exactly as it had gone. Maybe he had known Whitney and Jack wouldn’t make it through together. And that it might do him and Whitney some good to spend a few hours apart. After last night. After this morning. She clearly needed some more time alone. As he perhaps needed to stand before some speakers and blow his face off for a couple hours. They could use the jostle, they could use the fresh air. He could use a pulse in his body that was different from the dumb little skittering heartbeat he’d been living with these past few days. Go ahead, he appealed in the direction of the stage: Change up the rhythm of my blood, please.
As though sensing the plea, Jenna’s hand reached down the front of her leotard and emerged with two tiny tablets between her thumb and forefinger, tablets that had been concealed between her breasts. She placed one in her mouth and reached toward Will with the other.
“What is it?” he said.
She opened her mouth wide and said Ahh.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “It’s mild.”
He kept his teeth clenched, and then opened, tentatively, and her fingers were in his mouth before he could retreat. She kept her fingers there until he swallowed, and then she removed her hand and smiled contentedly. She turned back to the stage and found a gap between the male shoulders in front of her. He looked at the sky and waited.
The ashcloud gave the outdoor show the sensation of indoor-ness. The thump beat back from the clouds like an echo, like the reverb of a cathedral. The lights on the stage reflected off the low belly of the silver sky, and the blue lasers disappeared up into its wool. It seemed the ashcloud had grown denser since lunch. Like it had added a dimension. The way a school of fish balls itself into something enormous when under attack. It was as though, Will thought, the ashcloud knew its days were numbered.
“It’s definitely going to rain again,” Will said at a lull.
“Huh?” Jenna said.
He pointed at the cloud and she shrugged and kept moving in her four square feet. Her arms were at her side, but she’d found a way to dance maximally in a small amount of space. He gave in. He tried it himself. It was steamy. The air was thick. He was still wearing his dumb jeans and he was starting to feel the heat in his pants. The heaviness. They would be stuck here forever, wouldn’t they? He had no choice but to let it in. He opened his pores. He opened his mouth and his nostrils and the rest of the holes in his head. Then he closed his eyes. He accepted an exchange, a passing of something important from the stage into his body, and something important of himself into the concrete and the crowd. It was probably just sweat, but it felt significant. He couldn’t have checked his phone if he wanted to. He couldn’t have escaped this place if his life depended on it.
Jenna was lost in something all her own, a field of consciousness she seemed to have no trouble turning on and up and into. All this was normal for her. But it was something else for Will. He’d resisted at first. But now he melted into it. He was down the road, wherever it was heading. It made him feel more interesting. He was keeping up with the beat. It was effortful, it was work. He’d reached a plane that resembled that floating point of a long run. The lights were pulsing now. They were fixated on something new—not just the DJ pumping the air, but a team of dancers or singers or models, somebodies dressed as kangaroos, moving in unison. Hopping and boxing. A master choreography that had been worked out for months. There was narrative. There was a war with winners and losers. There was enough of whatever it was in his brain to elevate him to a still higher floor. The dancing had brought it back out of him. He had fallen into it and now he was out of himself, watching himself, watching the way he had let himself slide into this place, the furthest he’d been gone in a long while. It was a much-needed loss of control.
There was a sudden flash of light, greater than any of the pulsing blue lights onstage. It didn’t take Will long to spot the lightning in the low clouds, the warning shot. The branches of electricity didn’t reach out for the land or the water, but bounced around wildly up into the mass, a rubber ball in an empty apartment. Because of the nature of the music, the ability to hand off the beat from one DJ to the next, nothing changed at first. The music kept coming, even as the kangaroos scattered. A stagehand came out and waved to the engineer at their backs. And still, due to the hit of the interminable beat, only some of the crowd seemed to have noticed.