Playing Without the Ball

by Rich Wallace

  “Please call her.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean now. As soon as you hang up with me.”

  “Yeah.”

  There’s a long silence. I’m in the tiny hallway between the bathrooms at the diner, standing next to the pay phone.

  “Jay.”

  “Dad.”

  “You want to come out here?”

  “No.” I don’t say it as strongly as I feel it. “Not really.”

  “You can come now. Finish school out here.”

  “Screw that.”

  “You’re still coming when you graduate?”

  “If I graduate.”

  “What do mean, if?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think school’s the place for me anymore. I got cut from the basketball team.”

  “So you want to quit school because of basketball?”

  “Not just that.”

  I hear him take a big breath and an exhale. “Listen. This isn’t the best time to talk about all this. You’re upset because you got cut and you’re alone on a day that we’ve always been together. Things will be looking better by the weekend, I’m sure.”

  He’s probably right. “I know,” I say.

  “They will. Now call your mom. Call collect. And call me back in a couple of days. Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I love you, kid.”

  “I know.”

  “Keep your chin up.”

  “See ya.”

  I hang up. The diner is virtually empty—who eats at a diner on Thanksgiving? But I’m starving and I don’t feel like having Cheerios again. So I take a booth.

  There are two old burnouts way down the end of the counter drinking coffee, a guy about my father’s age at the register, and the new waitress. We’re the only people in here.

  The waitress smiles at me and comes over with a question ing kind of look on her face. “Hi,” she says. Her name tag says Brenda.

  “Hey.”

  “Just you?” she says.

  “Uh, yeah. Just need a quick bite.”

  “Oh. You need a menu?”

  “Nah.”

  “Okay. Well we have turkey and stuff. Maybe you already had enough of that today?”

  I smile and nod, lying with my gestures. “I think I’ll get chicken salad on a roll. With, um, fries and a Coke.”

  “Sure. You want cranberry sauce? We’re giving it away.”

  “Nah. Maybe a salad, though.”

  “Okay.”

  She comes back two minutes later with the Coke and a big bowl of salad. There’s extra things in it like raw broccoli and carrot sticks. The waitress is wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans, and her ponytail is starting to unravel.

  “The sandwich’ll be ready in a minute,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  She walks away nicely and I feel the kind of pang I’ve been getting a lot of lately.

  After she brings the sandwich, she goes to the end of the counter to check on the coffee guys, then comes back down to my end and sits at a booth in the corner. There are about twenty small clear salt shakers on the table, and she starts filling them from one of those big cylindrical containers, leaning way over so she doesn’t spill any. She’s more or less on the periphery of my vision, so I can watch her without being obvious. When I glance up, the guy at the register is giving me a look. Maybe that’s her father, I don’t know. But he doesn’t like the way I’m looking at her, and he’s probably right about that.

  I ought to tell her that I work at Shorty’s. Maybe she’ll come by. Spit’s playing tomorrow night; it would be fun, even though I’ll be working.

  She comes over and asks if everything’s all right. I say it’s great. “You’re new, huh?” I say.

  “Yeah. We just moved here. So I’m stuck working the holiday.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “You too?”

  “Not today. But all weekend. Over there,” I say, pointing across the street. “At Shorty’s.”

  “What is that, a bar?”

  “Yeah. Good place.”

  “You tend bar?”

  “Uh, no. I cook.”

  “Oh. That’s what my boyfriend does. He made that sandwich.”

  Shit. “Oh,” I say. “He works here?”

  “Yeah. We both do.”

  So much for that idea.

  “I’ll get your check,” she says. “Unless you want some dessert or something.”

  “No. I gotta get out of here. But thank you.”

  “All righty.”

  Sprawling On a Pin

  Friday night Spit comes in during a break. Shorty lets her keep wine and beer for the band in here so they don’t have to go up to the bar. She takes a wine bottle out of the refrigerator and pours a big glassful.

  “What’s up?” she says.

  “Not much. Good crowd.”

  “Definitely.” She reaches into her pocket and takes a fat white pill out of a prescription bottle. “I still got that crappy throat from this cold,” she says.

  “What’d you do, go to a doctor?”

  “No. I found these in my mother’s medicine cabinet.”

  “Oh.”

  “I better take two,” she says. “This cold sucks.” She chases them down with half the glass of wine and wipes her mouth. She punches her chest with a fist, her bracelets bouncing on her bare arm. “Righteous,” she says. She shakes her head and gives me a goofy smile.

  I keep getting visitors. Bo sticks his head in around midnight and gives me that faintly theatrical look, wide-eyed, like he freezes for a second, expressing mock surprise at finding me here. That’s how he greets everybody.

  Bo’s maybe twenty-two, but he’s a comfortable regular. He’s small, with long curly hair and a little blond beard. He’s always wearing a Harley-Davidson painter’s cap, and he’s an expert with a cigarette. Everybody likes him, the way he nurses a beer. Even the old guys who’ve been coming here forever and won’t change their routines for nothing. They’re out there tonight, on their regular stools. They don’t care if Spit’s on and it’s wall-to-wall kids, or it’s a weeknight with the TV and three other old guys.

  “Bo,” I say.

  He nods. “Keeping busy?”

  “Not too right now,” I say. “What’s going on out there?”

  “Take a look.”

  I come to the door. It’s the regular scene. At least the regular scene when Spit’s group is playing. Lots of denim and bare navels. Navels and those little green bottles of Rolling Rock seem to go together. Along with Marlboro Lights, I’m afraid.

  I clean up the kitchen about 1 o’clock because there’s not likely to be more orders. The band is still on when I finish, so I lean against the doorframe to catch the end of the set. The room is still pretty full; a few girls are dancing, and a few couples. The frenzy level is high, and the noise, but Spit is gyrating very slowly, eyes closed, furiously singing “Ironbound” in the bright white light:

  I walk these streets like litter

  I walk these streets like rain

  He talks, he cheats, he hit her

  He makes me share her pain

  Julie the elbow-icer is one of the ones on the floor, dancing with her girlfriends. I melt a little more. A scruffy guy in a loose flannel shirt with brown and black squares moves over and motions something like “you want to dance?” She grins and shifts her attention toward him. They dance until the song ends, then he asks if he can buy her a drink. She smiles and says, “no thanks.” He gives a sheepish smile and goes back to the bar. Another song starts and one of Julie’s girlfriends comes over to her. I see her raise her eyebrows and they laugh and start dancing again.

  I’m the boy who washes dishes, who’s not even supposed to be out here. But I’m watching her dance and it’s like I’m an arm’s length from cracking this, an arm’s length that might as well be a light-year.

  I go out in the alley, look up at the moon. It’s one of those clear, cold nights, and
though the bar is noisy you can step out into the lot and be right in your own quiet space.

  The church league. I guess that has to be my answer. No sense giving it up now. The cold air feels right against my face, here in this corner of the evening.

  Spit’s in the kitchen when I go back, leaning against the table. “Thirsty as hell,” she says. She takes another dose of the antibiotic and chugs another glass of wine. “You okay, bud? You look, I don’t know … odd.”

  “Nah. Just regular.”

  She yawns. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But regular sucks.”

  “You know better,” she says. “Goofy optimism, remember?”

  I rub my hands together. I’m not so down, really. “Just reflecting on life,” I say, trying to sound ironic.

  “Life. Yeah.” She climbs up on the table to sit. “Purge it, man. Force the moment to its crisis.”

  I give her what feels like a blank stare.

  “Eliot,” she explains. “The real one. Go.”

  I feel myself blush. She’s different tonight. Way wired. “Frustration. You know, sexually.”

  “Hey,” she says, “tough it out. The human body can endure.”

  “Yeah? Like forever?”

  She shrugs. “No biggie, bud. I haven’t had sex in almost a year and I’m all right.”

  I smirk. I don’t like her this way.

  “Well,” she says, “that’s not entirely true.”

  “No?”

  “Not if you count this afternoon.”

  “Today?”

  She takes another swig of wine, this time from the bottle. “Well, it barely registered. But yeah.”

  I’m wondering who this could have been with. A guy in the band, maybe? But she worked all day.

  “We had nothing to do, so he calls me into the office and asks if I want to smoke some grass with him.”

  Oh, shit. “You went to bed with the lawyer?”

  “A couch.” She laughs. “He had really good grass. I hadn’t been high in a long time, so I said what the hell. Then, you know. Whatever.”

  Whatever. “The fat lawyer?”

  “It was just recreational.” She giggles. “It’s pretty hilarious until you think about it.”

  I shake my head.

  “Why do you care?” She says it with a smile, but with a bit of a challenge, like she’s testing whether I’m jealous. She puts her arm across my shoulder. “Come on, let’s crash,” she says. “The room is spinning and I’m beat.”

  I wake up to the soft sound of gagging and find Spit all hunched up, puking on my bed. I lurch away and turn on the light, checking myself for vomit. “Spit?” I say.

  Her skin is very pale and there are tiny drops of sweat all over her face. She’s still got her eyes closed and she doesn’t answer right away. Then she groans. “My stomach is killing me,” she says.

  The puke looks bloody and I turn away fast.

  “I’m dying,” she says.

  “You are?”

  “Oh, shit. No. But I ought to. Oh, shit.”

  I don’t know what to do. It’s 4 o’clock in the morning. I look around the room, out the window.

  “Get an ambulance.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Oh, shit. Go on.”

  I run downstairs to the bar and dial 911. I tell them the situation and they say they’ll get right over. I’m not sure if I should go upstairs or wait by the back door till they get here. Son of a bitch. I go back upstairs.

  She’s throwing up again when I get there. “They’re coming,” I say. I go into the bathroom and wet a washcloth. I wring it out and put in on the back of her neck. I really don’t know why.

  She manages to say thanks. I go outside and the ambulance pulls in about three minutes later, lights flashing but no siren. Two paramedics get out and I point to the stairs.

  They go up and one of them takes her pulse.

  “You the boyfriend?” the other one says.

  I shake my head. “No. Just a friend, man. She was just crashing here tonight.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Spit … Sarita.”

  “What does she have in her?”

  “A lot of wine, I guess.”

  “Any drugs?”

  “I don’t know.” I never know with Spit. “She was taking some cold medicine. A prescription. It’s in her shirt pocket.” I look for the shirt. “Over there.”

  He frowns. “Anything else?”

  “I really don’t know. It’s possible. She was smoking grass this afternoon.”

  “Okay,” he says. “She have parents?”

  “A mother.”

  “You better call her.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “Oh.”

  They start talking to Spit. She’s not exactly coherent.

  “We’ll take her in,” one guy says. He looks around the room. “You better come along.”

  I sit in the waiting room for at least an hour, but they aren’t telling me shit. They said she’ll be all right; that’s about all.

  I’ve been nodding on and off in a chair, wishing I’d brushed my teeth. I look up and there’s a heavier, older, more conservative version of Spit by the desk. It has to be her mother.

  She comes over and takes a seat, smiling at me.

  I smile back. She seems pleasant. Kind of pretty for her age and the time of day. “You Spit’s mother?” I say.

  “Yes. I’m going in to see her in a moment.” The mother does have an accent. New Jersey Hispanic.

  “They said she’ll be okay,” I say.

  “Yes. This time. But this isn’t the first time. And probably not the last.” She squints a little and looks me up and down. “And who might you be?” she asks.

  “Oh. I’m Jay. I work at the bar. Where her band was.”

  “Ah,” she says. “And you are not having your stomach pumped this evening?”

  I smile, hold back a laugh. “No. I don’t indulge.”

  “You’re wise,” she tells me. “Wiser than Sarita, I see.”

  I tilt my head. “I don’t know about that.”

  She raises her eyebrows, then stands up. “I’ll go and see her now. Perhaps you should, too.”

  “I don’t think they’ll let me.”

  “I’ll let you. Come along.”

  We walk to the emergency room and I punch a square red button to open the doors. Then I push another square red button to open another set.

  There’s a guy sitting on a bench with blood on his shirt and his right hand wrapped in gauze. We walk past him and look into an empty room, then walk to the next one.

  Spit’s lying on a bed in there with an I.V. tube in her arm. “Hi, Mom,” she says weakly. She stretches out my name. “Jay.”

  “You’re alive,” I say.

  She laughs. “Yeah. But that eternal footman was leering at me big-time.”

  Her mother puts her hand on Spit’s forehead and frowns. “Oh, daughter,” she says.

  “Oh, Mommy.”

  I let out a sigh of relief, but suddenly I feel like I’m intruding. I give Spit a little wave. I catch her mother’s eye and say good night.

  They both say good-bye. Her mother says thank you.

  I leave through the sets of double doors and I can’t wait to get home and back to sleep. But then I remember what my bed looks like and imagine how the room smells. I look up at the clock; it’s 5:37. I rub my eyes. I guess I’ll go get breakfast.

  I have to wait fifteen minutes for the diner to open, so I sit on the steps with my eyes closed. At about five of, a waitress opens the door. I look up and she smiles at me.

  “Going fishing?” she asks, like she’s making a joke.

  “No.” I turn my head toward her. “Just had an unusual night.”

  I know this woman, sort of, because I have breakfast here a couple of days a week. She’s kind of like you’d expect a morning waitress at a diner would be, sort of motherly.

  “Come on in,” she s
ays.

  I sit in a booth even though I’m alone, because it’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than the counter. I rub my eyes with my fists.

  “Do you know what you want, honey?” the waitress asks.

  “I guess pancakes. With fried ham and orange juice. A huge orange juice.”

  I figure I’ll ball up the sheets and dump them in the sink for now, drag the mattress out into the hall, prop the window open with a brick, spray deodorant around the room, put on a warm sweat suit, climb into my sleeping bag, and stretch out on the floor. I’ll do laundry this afternoon. I can deal with all this. But only after I get some sleep.

  Nine-and-a-Half

  My mother left home the same evening I got hit in the chest with an orange she’d flung across the kitchen. I didn’t get hurt, and the orange had been aimed at my father, but she left in tears anyway, saying she was no good for me.

  I was nine and I didn’t agree, but I see it clearer now. She was a drunk and she hated my father, who she accused of sleeping with every warm body he could get into. The funny thing is, in the eight years that he and I lived alone together, he never slept with anyone that I know of.

  The orange didn’t hurt, like I said, and I don’t think the verbal assaults did either. “You’re just like your father” has always been her most frequent statement to me, though in what way I was like him was never made clear. I think it’s her way of praying that I don’t turn out like him. I suppose that’s the best she can do for me.

  Monday. I take a tray and push it along the lunch line, looking around the cafeteria for Alan Murray. I don’t see him. The two girls in front of me are giggling, talking back and forth. One’s short and the other’s tall, but they’re both slender and they’ve got tight faded jeans on and attitudes that make it clear this school is just water off their backs. “So I went out with him,” the shorter one is saying, “but, like, just to make Kurt jealous.”

  The taller one turns and looks my way. I meet her eyes but I don’t hold them.

  I take a hoagie and a chocolate milk and get out of line. And I see Alan over in a corner, sitting with two black guys. If you count Alan, there are nine-and-a-half black guys in the whole school. One of the guys with him is Jared Hall, who starts at forward. The other one is Anthony something, and he doesn’t play sports that I know of.