Playing Without the Ball

by Rich Wallace

  “Yeah,” she says. “But certain things just don’t.”

  “Certain things do.”

  “Unlikely things usually don’t.”

  “You never know,” I say.

  “You never know.”

  She leans into me, her chest pressing into mine, and gets her face about two inches from me. Her eyebrows are soft, the color of a Labrador retriever. Her expression shifts almost to seriousness, and she steps on my right foot. She’s shorter than I am, maybe by two inches.

  And then she does kiss me, not romantically or with her tongue, but on the lips, just briefly.

  She draws her face away and locks onto my eyes again. “Maybe someday,” she says.

  And she looks vulnerable for once. Up close, she doesn’t look any older than me. She puts her hand up to the corner of my mouth and sweeps her fingers slowly down to my chin, over the soft stubble. I kiss her thumb.

  She steps back and recrosses her arms, then laughs. “Ooh,” she says. “You almost had me there for a second.”

  I like fresh parsley, but the bunches they sell it in are too big for my needs, and most of it would go bad in my refrigerator. So I pick it up and shut my eyes for a second, breathing it in, then place it back in the pile.

  The supermarket greenery is in neat, tilted rows, gardenlike, with a mirrored area behind it, and they spray the stuff with water every now and then so it stays moist and fragrant. The brussels sprouts are tight little globes with delicate outer layers.

  What I take is stuff I can just rinse and eat, like bell peppers and cucumbers, the smaller, pickling kind. Carrots I buy already bagged, the tiny ones already peeled.

  I linger here longer than the average customer, probably longer than anybody. I always come here first, and sometimes I come back again after getting juice and canned stuff and cold cuts in other parts of the store. It has the feel of a jungle maybe. Or a nursery.

  The bar is packed for the New Year’s Eve party, and Shorty’s brought in a third bartender, an older guy named Roy who’s helping out in the kitchen some. Mostly he’s just running the food out to the bar for me.

  Spit opened with an entire set of fast, old rock songs like “Seven Days” and “Midnight Confession.” We’re jumping. I haven’t left the stove, but the music permeates the whole building. Shorty wants me to bring out trays of wings and egg rolls just after midnight, and I can shut down the grill once that’s done.

  Spit comes in and puts her arms around me from behind.

  “Good tunes,” I say.

  “Sarita’s all-night dance party,” she says. “I’ll change the pace a little later. But tonight is pure entertainment.”

  I turn to face her. She’s looking wiry in a man’s white tank top, clearly with nothing under it, and the jeans with the ripped knees. She’s put crayon-red highlights in her hair.

  There’s a knock on the doorframe, and the attorney is standing there in a grayish blue sweater. “Hello,” he says.

  “Hey,” she says, in a tone about as neutral as I’ve ever heard from her.

  “Taking a break?” he asks.

  “A short one,” she says. She looks at her wrist, which happens to be bare, and says, “Ooh, it’s getting late. Better get out there.”

  She punches my shoulder and squeezes past him. He takes a half step into the kitchen and just stands there for a few minutes, watching me turn hamburgers. Then he clears his throat. “Do you sense that she’s settling down at all?” he asks me. “I mean, I think she’s starting to mellow.”

  I try not to smirk too much. “Maybe some,” I say, although I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  “I think so,” he says. He raises his hand in a kind of wave or salute. “Well,” he says, “have a good night.”

  Bo stops in a little later. I’ve never seen Bo dance or anything; he just sort of makes his way around the room, looking like he’s confiding in the guys he stops to talk to. “Everything under control here?” he asks me, taking on a mock-managerial role.

  “Just swell,” I say.

  He nods, taking a swig from his beer. He takes off his Harley cap, brushes his hair back, and puts the cap back on. “We’ve got big plans for you, son,” he says.

  “Thanks, boss.”

  He leans against the door frame, one foot in the kitchen and one in the bar room, facing out at the dancers. “Lot of flesh out there,” he says.

  Spit’s belting out “You Can’t Hurry Love,” and Bo’s got one leg going in time. Suddenly he straightens up and pulls his legs in tighter.

  Julie steps past him into the kitchen. I haven’t seen her in a few weeks. She’s wearing a sweatery vest with no sleeves over a blue T-shirt, and she’s got on little gold hoop earrings. I probably show a bit too much enthusiasm on my face when I see her, but I can’t help it.

  “Howdy,” I say. Then I wince a little, which I usually do when I use words like that.

  “Oh, it’s only you,” she says, teasing already.

  “And it’s only you.”

  “How’s life?”

  “Great,” I say. “Where you been?”

  “Ah, you know. School, the holidays. Busy.”

  “Playing tennis?”

  “Some,” she says. “You?”

  “I got in a basketball league. At the Y.”

  “Fun.”

  “Yeah.” I’ve got egg rolls in the deep fryer, so I give the basket a shake. “So, you on a break between semesters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You going to Florida or anything?”

  “I wish,” she says. “No. I’m waitressing every night till school starts again.”

  “How’d you get tonight off?”

  “My uncle died.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “It was like seven years ago.”

  I laugh. “I should have tried that.”

  “Hey, you could still get a phone call. It’s not too late.”

  “Nah. This is the place to be anyway. And I’ll be finished in here by one.”

  Her eyes get a little wider. “You gonna stick around?”

  “Sure. I’ll be greasy and sweaty and I’ll smell like cheese steaks, but so will everybody else by then.”

  “Or they’ll be too drunk to notice.”

  “That too.” Actually I’m already calculating. I can get the kitchen reasonably tidy in about half an hour, then race upstairs, scrub my face and armpits, gargle furiously for a minute, and put on a clean shirt and a baseball hat. But that’s two hours away yet. She could easily get snagged by someone else.

  “When do you get a night off from this place?” she asks.

  “Just weeknights,” I say. “Why?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Duh,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I start grinding my teeth. “I’m only seventeen, you know.” I don’t know why I say that, but I do.

  “So I heard,” she says. She looks around. “So am I.”

  “Get out.”

  “No, I am.” She giggles. “I got a great I.D.”

  “You lied.”

  She flicks up her eyebrows and gives me a coy smile. “You work here. I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

  “I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You aren’t really in college then?”

  “No, I am. But not at the U. At Weston Community.”

  I narrow my eyes. “And you really play tennis?”

  “Yeah. I’m on the team.”

  “And your name really is Julie?”

  “Yes.”

  I look down at her chest and point. “And are those things real?”

  She sticks out her tongue, just the tip. “Jerk.”

  “Let me see your I.D.”

  She takes out a driver’s license with a birthdate that would make her twenty-one. “It’s a stretch, but it works in here,” she says. “And we get into Dinger
’s over in Weston. No place else yet.”

  “You’ve tried?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Cool.” I turn in a hurry and lift the basket out of the fryer. “Shit,” I say, because the egg rolls are overdone.

  “Nice going,” she says.

  “You distracted me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “They’ll be all right. Everybody’s drunk, remember?”

  She tilts her head. “Not everybody,” she says. “Not yet.” She gives me that pistol-point thing with her hand again and turns to leave. “See you later, Jay.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  I watch her go. Then I step outside, into the alley, where it’s cold and windy, and there are wispy clouds blowing past the moon. “Yes!” I say in a shouted whisper, raising my fists to the sky.

  Spit comes in after the third set, dripping with sweat. She goes over to the sink and gets a glass of water, something I’ve never seen her do before. She drinks the whole thing in one gulp.

  “Do me a favor?” she asks.

  “Sure.”

  “Can I borrow a shirt?”

  “Yeah. Come on.”

  We go up to my room and she pulls her shirt over her head. I avert my eyes, but then I figure she could have gone in the bathroom if she cared, so I look back.

  She folds her arms but doesn’t cover her chest. Round, flat tits, like an inch-thick slice of grapefruit. Dark nipples. “The shirt?” she says.

  I open my closet door and point to the pile of T-shirts on the shelf. “Take your pick,” I say.

  She thumbs through them and picks up the yellow basketball shirt, with STURBRIDGE UNITED METHODIST on the front. She tilts back her head and laughs. “This’ll do.”

  She puts it on and heads for the door.

  “Wait,” I say.

  “What?”

  “What’s with you and the lawyer?”

  “Not much.”

  “No?”

  “’Fraid not.” She shrugs. “Stanley seems to have lost sight of what brought us together in the first place.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sex and drugs.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “That’s all I was looking for,” she says. She pulls the collar of the T-shirt up to her nose. “You ever wash this thing?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “You might use a little more soap. Come on. I’ve got two more sets to do.”

  I follow her downstairs and stand in the doorway awhile, wondering how this is going to end up. Julie is leaning against the bar, with her friend on the stool on one side of her, and a burly guy about thirty on the other. They’re doing shots of something. I look at the stage and I see Spit, who’s been looking at me looking at Julie.

  It’s close to 12, so I go in the kitchen to reheat the wings and the egg rolls. I just throw them in the microwave, then put them on platters. I get Roy to help me bring them out, and we set them on tables over by the jukebox.

  I’m watching Julie the whole time we’re setting up, but she doesn’t seem to notice. But as I push my way back through the crowd I feel a hand on my shoulder, and it’s her.

  “You done?” she says.

  “No. But soon.”

  “It’s three minutes to midnight.”

  “I know. You drunk?”

  She shakes her head. “Nah. I just had a couple of beers. And one shot of Jack Daniel’s.”

  The big TV is on over the bar, and you can see the giant lighted ball about to drop in Times Square. Julie glances up at it, then looks back at me. “I want to dance,” she says.

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “Nothing. But I want to dance with you.”

  “I can do that. Give me a half hour.” I start moving again and she stays with me. She puts a hand up between my shoulder blades to maintain contact, and I can feel it all the way down to my ankles. We get to within eight feet of the kitchen when I find Spit blocking my path.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She says hi to me, but she’s looking straight at Julie.

  “You going back on soon?” I ask.

  “Right after midnight.”

  She’s still looking kind of hard at Julie, who says hi. “You’re a great performer,” Julie says.

  Spit hesitates, looks at me, and starts bunching up my shirt, the one I’m wearing, between her fingers. “Thanks,” she says. She looks back at Julie. Then at me. She leans over and kisses me on the lips, holding it there for about four seconds. Her mouth is very warm, even feverish. “Happy New Year,” she says to me. She turns to go back to the stage, but gives Julie a gentle poke in the sternum. “You too,” she says.

  Suddenly people start counting down from ten as midnight is about to hit. When everybody yells, Julie grabs my arms and kisses me, and I taste the bourbon. She gives me a flirty kind of smile and pushes me toward the kitchen. “Go clean up,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I spend about twenty minutes making the kitchen look presentable, but it’ll need at least another hour in the morning. I run up the stairs to my room and decide that I can shower in two minutes, gargling the whole time. Even with the shower going I can hear the music loud and clear, and I stay in there for the length of “No Surrender.”

  I towel off, put on fresh clothes that will smell like smoke the second I enter the bar, and run the blow-dryer on my hair until it’s partly dry.

  Julie’s by the bar with her friends again. I work my way over and touch the back of her neck.

  She looks at my damp hair. “What’d you do, go home?”

  “Yeah. I live upstairs.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I got a room here.”

  “You mean all the time?”

  “Yeah. That’s home.”

  “Oh.”

  Her friend turns to me and smirks. “You again?”

  “Me again. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Nancy.”

  “That’s a good name,” I say. “Aren’t you a little young to be out this late, Nancy?”

  She looks at Julie. Julie smiles and shrugs.

  “What do you know about it?” Nancy says.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “We gonna dance?” Julie says.

  “Sure. You coming, Nance?”

  “I think I’d fall over if I tried to stand,” Nancy says. “I been on this stool for about a hundred drinks.”

  “Well,” I say. “Happy unconsciousness.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I’ll stagger over later.”

  So I dance with Julie, mostly fast, for about half an hour, until Spit takes her final break.

  I ask Julie how she happens to be in college at seventeen.

  “Special program. I’ve always been advanced academically and way behind socially,” she says. “But I’m catching up.”

  “Guess so.”

  She wipes her forehead. “Let’s get some air,” she says.

  She starts to pull me toward the front door, but I tug harder toward the back. “We can go out through the kitchen,” I say.

  So we go out behind the place, in that squarish dark area between the buildings.

  “Cool spot,” she says, looking around. You’ve got sort of an h-shaped open area here and we’re riding the hump of it, with Shorty’s behind us, facing Main Street, and the used-car building about fifteen feet across from us facing Church. The alley goes straight from Main to Church on one side, but on the other side it only comes halfway up, from Church to where we’re standing. It dead-ends into the continuation of Shorty’s building, the back side of apartments, and other stores. So standing here we couldn’t be seen from either street.

  I lean against the building and she looks up and around, at the fire escape, the window boxes, the stars. She comes over and leans against the building, next to me.

  “This is the kind of spot they used to write songs about,” she says. “Like ‘Up on the Roof.’”

  “Or ‘This Magic Moment,’” I say,
leaning toward her.

  She rolls her eyes and laughs at such a lame come-on, but she lets me kiss her anyway. In a second we’ve got our arms around each other. We make out for about five minutes, until the back door swings open. It’s Spit.

  “Oh,” she says. “Sorry. I was just looking for some air.”

  “Us too,” I say.

  She nods slowly, studying us. “Sorry,” she says again. “I gotta go back on.”

  She leaves. I nuzzle Julie’s neck. “Wanna go in?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  I kiss her again. “You sure?”

  “Maybe not.” So we make out until the music starts. Mostly you just feel the air pulsing, but it’s enough to dance to, so we start moving together. Eventually, I say, “We’ll be closing soon. Let’s go in.”

  “Sure,” she says.

  We dance for the rest of the set. When it ends, I’m wondering if I should ask her to come upstairs, but I’m thinking I ought to wait until next time. I’ll get her phone number, set something up.

  But Spit comes over and puts her arm across my shoulders. “Thanks for keeping him warm,” she says to Julie.

  Julie takes a step back, but looks at me hard. “What’s going on?” she asks.

  Spit answers before I can. “Bedtime is what’s going on,” she says to Julie. “Come on, I’m beat,” she says to me.

  Julie grabs my arm, pinching it. “You’re sleeping with her?”

  “Sometimes,” I say, sort of in a daze. “But we’re not—”

  “We’re not monogamous,” Spit says, stepping between us. “But I’ve got the right of first refusal.”

  Julie looks really pissed and confused, but she just stares at me.

  “Come on, stud,” Spit says. “Party’s over.” She gives me a little shove.

  “Hey,” I say as Julie walks away. “Wait.” She turns and gives me the finger and a sneer. She’s gone.

  I turn to Spit. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Come on,” she says. “You want me.”

  “I do, huh?”

  “You know you do.”

  “Yeah, and you’ve known it, too. Why did you have to pick tonight?”

  “I’m a spur-of-the-minute chick, honey.”

  I shake my head. “What’s with you?”

  “Come on. You want it, you got it. I’ve got more to offer than she does.”

  I push my way toward the front door and Spit follows. But when I get to the street, Julie’s nowhere to be seen. “Shit,” I say. I stare up Main Street, blinking hard. The bar is emptying out, people spilling out to their cars.