by Rich Wallace
I peel off my T-shirt and shut my eyes, still breathing hard. “Now what?” I say.
“Celebrate, man. They got a party set up at the church.”
“Oh.” I nod. I guess that’ll be okay for an hour. “Hey.”
“What?”
“You sure you want to go to Yale?”
He laughs, hesitates a second. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I can play intramural. And there’s a summer league here. I’ll get enough basketball.”
“There’s never enough basketball,” I say.
He stands and starts getting undressed. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “I’m psyched. That was awesome tonight, man. Just awesome.”
Riding Seaward
I hang at the church for a while. They’ve got soda and cake hang at the church for a while. They’ve got soda and cake and stuff. They invited everybody from the league to come by, and most people did.
I’m standing with Alan when Kaipo and Beth come in holding hands. Alan whacks him on the arm. “No Catholics allowed,” he says.
“I’m an honorary Methodist now,” Brian says, holding up Beth’s hand as evidence.
“You wish,” Alan says. “This is the church of champions.”
Brian laughs. “Yeah. You kicked our butts.”
They joke around some more. I mostly listen. I’ll never be at home in this place, but I like walking through the light now and then.
When I decide to leave, I shake hands with Alan and some other guys. I want to get out. I hope I can find Spit, because I owe her a lot and I want to be with her.
I walk up to North Main Street into the wind and turn up a side street toward her house. I fully expect to find her; I don’t know why. And as I turn onto her block, I see her approaching from the opposite direction.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
“Where you been?”
“Mike’s. From the band. Just jamming.”
“We won,” I tell her.
“Cool. I figured you would.”
“How come?” I ask.
“’Cause you deserved to.”
“Yeah? That’s not how it usually works.”
“Yeah, it does. You get what you earn, one way or another. That time I saw you play I couldn’t believe how good you were. It was pure.”
I shuffle my feet around, reach up and touch her face during the pause. “You wanna hear something stupidly poetic I’ve been thinking about?” I ask. “I mean, you might be able to turn it into a song or something.”
She sticks her bare hands into her pockets. “Yeah. Shoot.”
I blush and laugh. “I feel like I’ve been circling around this thing, this heat source, getting close to it three or four times and then blasting far away from it, almost out of orbit. But now I’m feeling the heat again. Feeling like I might even touch down.”
She just gives me that goofy smile of hers. She gives me a gentle push in the chest.
“Pretty stupid, huh?” I say.
“I don’t know,” she says. “When you get too close to the heat, you get burned, but I’d rather get toasted than frozen.”
“Yeah. How’s the sessions going?”
“Good. We’ll be ready.” The Prufrock’s thing is a week away. I know she’s been nervous as hell.
We’re both kind of glowing. We’re back where we were before, before we got our bodies tangled up and were just allowing our minds to engage.
“I still want to get on stage with you,” I say. “I wanna get up there and do it.”
“Anytime, babe,” she says. “Anytime you’re ready.”
“I’ll be ready soon,” I say. “I think the time is coming.”
“Just say the word,” she says. “You don’t have to rush it.” She brushes my hair from my forehead, then shakes back her own hair and smiles. “You’ll come with us to Prufrock’s? Help us set up and all? I think I’ll be better if you’re there.”
“Yeah. I’m there. Think we can sneak Julie in, too?”
“I don’t see why not. Can she sing some backup?”
“I don’t know.”
We start walking back down Main Street. I feel like I’m floating, like I’ve won an Olympic medal or something. I mean, we won the league, I’m in good with Julie, and Spit and I have reached a better level of friendship. We walk past Turkey Hill and the banks, and hang out in front of the pizza place. I see Alan and Robin and Beth and some others in there, but we don’t go in. We stay on the sidewalk and listen to the sound of human voices. People laughing.
Spit starts singing. I listen carefully.
I listen so I’ll learn all the words.
Published by
Dell Laurel-Leaf
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Copyright © 2000 by Rich Wallace
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eISBN: 978-0-307-47776-7
v3.0