Playing Without the Ball

by Rich Wallace

“Looks? Maybe she values sincerity or something, or a sense of humor?”

  “You mean mine?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “She hardly knows me.”

  “She’s not stupid.”

  “No. She’s not.”

  Spit leans into me, then gently breaks away. “You ever think about why you want her? … Besides her ass, I mean.”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Is that the sort of thing I have to answer? I mean, even to myself?”

  “No. Not if you’re not ready to. But I have a pretty good idea.”

  “What?”

  “She seems like someone you could meet on equal ground. Find some balance; support each other.”

  We look at each other for a few seconds, one of those understanding looks that secure the bond between us despite everything.

  “Listen,” she says, “I gotta go back on. Here’s the plan.” She starts grinning so stupidly that I know she’s going to bust my chops, but I’ll take it. “You come up onstage with me and I’ll go, ‘Julie, this young man can’t live without you. Do you have it in your heart to forgive him?’ Then we’ll go into a long medley of Barry Manilow songs until she melts into tears.”

  “You got it,” I say. I must be turning red from blushing, but I love it when she yanks my chain. “Spit?” I say, and she turns from the doorway.

  “Yeah?”

  “You suck, but thanks.”

  “You suck, too. You’re welcome.”

  I stay in the kitchen, but Julie doesn’t visit this time. I think about things. I will talk to Kaipo, because I like the guy and I think Beth is great. She’s made me feel welcome. Maybe I can help her out.

  I keep busy. I straighten up the stuff on the shelves of the walk-in refrigerator, then I sweep the floor and wipe the counters with a rag.

  See, I am kind of, I don’t know, confused or something. Like right now Julie is the only woman I want, and it feels like I’ve wanted her forever. But last night I was starting to feel that way about Beth, and I don’t have to count backwards very far to find a couple of others. Dana. Maybe that’s not so foolish, though. Maybe there’s a thread running through this besides my desperation. Maybe they all have something in common. Something like a sense of who they are.

  Spit takes another break after 11 and I poke my head out. Julie’s over by the jukebox with Nancy, talking to a couple of guys, but her eyes are on the kitchen when I look out. She looks away.

  I can’t just walk over there and talk to her, because I have to be discreet in here. Deliver food or stay in the kitchen is supposed to be the rule, although I’ve gotten away with lots more than I ever thought I would. Tonight I think I’ll behave.

  I go out in the alley for some air. I lean against the brick wall with my arms folded, not really thinking much, just in a state of inertia. It’s cold out.

  I go in and Julie’s standing there, looking at the menu that’s taped to the door of the walk-in.

  “Hi,” I say, sort of tentatively.

  “Hi.”

  She turns to me. And the way I read her face it’s softer, but with a line of defense I still need to get through.

  “Your friend apologized to me,” she says.

  “Oh …. Can I?”

  She tilts her head quickly to the side, then back up. “You can.”

  “Then I will. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says flatly.

  “Why’d you come back?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Got kicked out of Dinger’s.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  There’s an edge in her voice that doesn’t make this easy, but I figure she’s testing me. Maybe I can be funny. “So this was your only option, huh?”

  She raises her eyebrows, shakes her head slightly. “No. That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was an option,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s the right one.”

  Nancy appears in the doorway, probably according to plan. She gives me a kind of disapproving look, somewhere between amusement and disgust. “You ready?” she says to Julie.

  Julie’s got her mouth half open, with her tongue peeking out between her teeth. “I guess,” she says to Nancy, though she’s looking right at me. “We can’t stay,” she says, this time to me. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  “You be back tomorrow?”

  She shakes her head. “Maybe next week,” she says. “We’ll see.” She starts to go, then gives me a long look. “I’ll keep my options open,” she says. She finally shows a hint of a smile. “Be good.”

  Buying Pretzels

  The week drags to the point of excruciation, speeding up only during my moments on the basketball court. We beat New Covenant on Sunday, and I go to the church afterward just to avoid being alone in my room. It’s okay; I’m not hooked into this church thing, but I’m not repulsed by it either. I’m neutral about it, but it gives me a chance to be around people who actually care about things like school and faith and what their parents think. I stay an hour, talking to Beth mostly, who’s fascinated by the fact that I live alone.

  Monday I work. Spit comes in all excited.

  “Guess where we’re playing?” she says.

  “Carnegie Hall?”

  “Prufrock’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  She looks surprised that I don’t know. “It’s a big club. In Scranton. Two weeks from Thursday.”

  “Great.”

  “It is great. Thursday is big. It’s the party night in any college town.”

  Thursdays are big for me, too. This week we play the Cardinals. Next week it’s Kaipo. We win them both and we’re champions.

  “Guess what else?” she says.

  “What?”

  “They asked me to be an assistant gymnastics coach at the Y. Isn’t that cool?”

  “Yeah. You going to do it?”

  “Definitely, man. Definitely. I love those little kids. I can’t wait to get started.”

  Tuesday morning I wake up abruptly, dreaming about Julie. It’s 5:15. I take a quick shower and jog over to the Y, since I’m up anyway.

  I go into the gym, but there are only three guys in there. I go down to the weight room and see Dana on the leg-press machine.

  “No hoops today?” I ask her.

  She looks up and smiles. “No. I think that’s it for me,” she says. “I can’t risk an injury. Things are going too good.”

  “You clear six?”

  “Not quite, but I had three good jumps at it,” she says. “I won the meet at five-ten, then had them raise it for me. It’s there. It’ll happen.”

  “I’ll miss playing against you.”

  “Yeah. Maybe in the summer.” She looks me over for a second, but she’s all business. I do a set of pull-ups and some dips. I look over at Dana, eyes shut, benching about 120 pounds. On her way out of this town in a hurry.

  The only way to get my mind off Julie is to play basketball. Tuesday night I go back to the Y and get in a pickup game with some old guys in their thirties. They play every week and there’s supposedly an age restriction, but they usually need a couple of younger guys to fill out the teams. I stay on the perimeter because there’s a lot of beef under the boards and I don’t feel like blowing out a knee. It’s a slower game than I’m used to, but some of these guys can play. It’s fun.

  They all head out right at 9, going home to their wives and children. I’m energized from playing, but there’s nowhere to go. I walk up to Turkey Hill, get some Gatorade and Yodels, and wonder where everybody is.

  Alan and Robin would be together at one of their houses. Beth is probably home doing homework, with Brian on the edge of her consciousness all the time the way Julie is on mine. Spit could be anywhere doing anything, but I think the band is practicing in somebody’s basement, getting ready for their breakthrough in Scranton.

  Wednesday at lunch, I talk to Kaipo about Beth. He seems int
erested. Why wouldn’t he be?

  Thursday takes forever to get here, but it’s a definite marker in the week. First, it’s game night—a big game, too. Plus it’s the night before the weekend, and I’m praying that Julie will be back. If she isn’t, then next week will be more unbearable than this one was.

  We’ve got the first game, so I can put in a good warm-up in a near-empty gym. I show up an hour early and get moving slowly, shooting chippies and free throws before working up to more intense stuff. The path is clear: we win our next three (tonight, Sunday against the Baptists, and next Thursday against Kaipo) and we clinch the league. We lose tonight or next week—or worse, lose both—and we’re in trouble.

  Players from both teams start trickling in, and my energy level starts to build. I can block out everything for this hour on the court, exhaust myself, drain my emotions, cleanse my psyche.

  And I play my best game of the season. I own the lane, driving in and either beating my man for layups or nailing short fallaway jumpers. We build a double-digit lead in the first half and never let them in it.

  They put two players on me in the second half, but I keep finding the open man, which is usually Beth or Robin. They both get a couple of layups and the game turns into a blowout.

  I can rest easy tonight, for once.

  Friday night arrives and I’m pumped. I keep the kitchen clean, wiping down the stove after every hamburger, planning for an early escape if something happens. She’s never shown up before 9, and usually not until 10, but tonight could be different. She could be as distracted as I am.

  Spit comes on about 9:30. She’s sounding good. There’s a big loud crowd. People start dancing right away and I’ve got lots of energy flowing again, like right before last night’s game.

  I make myself stay in the back because I want her to come to me. This is my territory. But by 10 I figure she ought to be here, so I look out and around. She isn’t.

  I go out in the alley, talking to myself. It’s about twenty degrees tonight, but I’m pumping out a lot of heat. I walk back and forth a few times, jump straight up in the air, and go back inside.

  I try to keep busy, but there isn’t much to do. I keep checking out the bar room, but Julie never shows. By midnight I’m depleted. I don’t know where all the energy went, because I haven’t done anything but cook, wash dishes, and wait for her.

  I shut down the kitchen, watch the band for a few minutes, then go upstairs to bed.

  I don’t want to go through this again tomorrow.

  Saturday afternoon I walk over to the Y. There’s little-kid soccer going on in the gym, so I go down to the weight room, which is basically alien ground to me. I do some pull-ups, a couple of sets of bench presses, and about fifty crunches, then spend twenty minutes on an exercise bike.

  Soccer’s over by the time I head upstairs, and there’s already a three-on-three half-court basketball game under way. There’s a couple of guys from the Cardinals waiting in the bleachers, so I team with them to play against the winners.

  I play about an hour, then quit because I have to go to work. I’m psyched up from playing hoops, feeling good. But as I head down the steps, it hits me like an orange: if Julie doesn’t show up tonight, she won’t ever.

  I remain stoic throughout the early evening, doing my job, thinking ahead to tomorrow night’s game, cooking wings, listening to the jukebox. There is a chance, however slight, that I will join Spit onstage toward the end of the night. If Julie doesn’t show, I’ll say screw this and leave the old me behind, getting up there and singing, maybe more than even the choruses. I don’t tell Spit that I’m thinking this, but I feel like I’ve got an open invitation.

  My voice sucks? So what, it’s the only one I’ve got.

  Shorty comes limping into the back about ten to 9.

  “I need you to run to the store,” he says.

  “Which one?”

  “The supermarket.” He’s handing me a twenty. “We got no pretzels,” he says. “I don’t know how the hell I let that happen, but I did. Take my truck. It’s out back.”

  I won’t make it to the market in town in time, so I head out to the twenty-four-hour place on Route 6. I hardly ever drive, but Shorty’s truck is a piece of shit so I’m not too worried. He’s got a Lynyrd Skynyrd tape in, so I listen to “Free Bird” live on the way out.

  I figure I should spend the whole twenty, which yields ten assorted bags of Sturgis, Rold Gold, and Snyder’s.

  The band is on by the time I get back. I make two trips to the bar with the pretzels. I’m walking back to the kitchen after the second trip, when Julie steps out of the bathroom.

  Ironically, the pretzel trip had put her out of my head for the first time all week. We lock eyes and my face gets warm because I sense that hers does. Her look says that she’s happy to see me and that she doesn’t want to let on that she is.

  “Hey, stupid,” she says.

  “Hey … you.”

  “How’s the hamburger business?”

  “Great. How’s waitressing?”

  “It’s a living.”

  She’s friendly again, sort of like before. But I’m no better at reading her than I ever was. Either way, I don’t want this to be the last time I see her, and I don’t want another uncertain week like this last one. So I muster up all the courage I have, which is just barely enough to nod my head toward the kitchen. “Come on,” I say. “I wanna talk to you.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I can listen.”

  I’m struck again by how cute she is—the tight, athletic body; the eyes that hold me when we speak—but that also makes me think about what Spit said, why I want her besides what she looks like. And I think in part it’s the mystery, the fact that I really don’t know much about her, even though I like what I see. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Like Spit said: I think we’re in a similar place, or maybe just emerging from one.

  “I like you,” I say.

  She nods slowly, a firm little smile on her lips. “That’s good.”

  No breakthrough yet.

  “I really like you,” I say. “I was scared to death I’d never see you again.”

  She shrugs. “Well, here I am.”

  I let out my breath. “I know. But what I don’t know is why.”

  “Why not?”

  “I mean, are you here because of me, or do I just happen to be here?”

  She tilts her head slightly. Her mouth softens. “You.”

  The word comes out rounded; it hits me like a bullet and spreads through my chest. This is a first—a bigger first than what happened with Brenda or Spit, or what might have happened with Julie the first time around.

  I sense a wall coming down. She’s leaning against the sink, and her smile no longer has that glint of ice in it. And suddenly I don’t really want her here, because I don’t want her to be some chick who has to chase after some guy in a bar.

  So I do a manly thing and set up a barrier for myself, another stick for me to jump over. “Would you want to go out sometime?” I ask. “Like for real?”

  She looks me up and down. “I might,” she says. “We were headed in that direction once.”

  “I know. I didn’t intend to get sidetracked.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  We stare at each other for a few long seconds. I’m thinking Shorty would let me borrow his truck some weeknight. “So?” I ask.

  “That would be nice,” she says. “I’ll give you my number.”

  She leaves soon after, and I don’t make any attempt to touch her. I think she got what she came for, and I know I did, too.

  I’m still confused as shit, but I’m happy as hell. I wouldn’t trade that combination for anything.

  Leftover Rice

  Sunday whips by because all the pressure is off me. I’m absolutely flying all morning, like I could probably get my hand above the rim, and I can’t wait to get on the basketball court.

  I stayed up late last night, staring at the phone number writt
en by Julie’s own hand, dancing by myself to a Steve Earle tape, and breathing in the sweet, cold air coming through my wide-open window. I finally crashed at 4 and woke up this morning around 9.

  The Y opens at 10 on Sunday, and there are half-court games going on all day. I get a late breakfast at the diner and walk over there, ready to play for two or three hours, even though we’ve got a game tonight. I can run all day, so I’ve got no concern about tiring myself out. Plus a half-court game is more about passing and cutting. All it’ll do is help me settle down, get into a groove that should carry over to tonight.

  The phone call will happen tomorrow evening. Shorty’s already agreed to the use of his truck, so I’m figuring a movie the following Monday, since I’ll be working and playing hoops most of the week. I’d ask her to one of my games, but she’d be too much of a distraction.

  Playing this afternoon is the right thing to do, because I’m overpumped and my first couple of games suck as a result. But I do get settled after a while and start playing well. The mix of players ranges from freshmen up to about age forty, and the skill range is at least that wide. I don’t do anything stupid like challenge the big guys underneath. I’m more concerned about an injury than getting tired, so I play a true point guard position, controlling the offense, but mostly looking for assists.

  Life goes in cycles; I know that. I’m starting an up cycle now, and I’ve earned it. And I know the things that are happening now will help me through the next downturn, which will be unavoidable and strengthening.

  I see in the paper that the Weston CC team is 2-17, so there might be room for me next year. Kaipo is definitely going, so I figure I’ll apply. I’m sure not going anywhere else.

  I eat my second meal of the day about 4, just a couple of cans of tuna fish in my room, an orange, a cucumber, some leftover rice from the Chinese take-out place, and half a box of cookies. We don’t play until 7, the third game, so I set my alarm for 6 and lie down for a nap.

  We don’t say much, warming up. Everybody knows what’s at stake, everybody knows these guys embarrassed us last time.