Bad Call

by Stephen Wallenfels

In class. WTF?

  He says, “I told you there would be friends.”

  “You should have told me they were all guys.”

  “But these are tennis players. They’re basically like Smurfs.”

  NADIA

  On it.

  Ellie senses him moving closer. Into her personal space. She tries to focus on Nadia’s text, how to purchase the ticket without her parents knowing, but can’t make the information resolve into a meaningful thought.

  He says, “What are you doing?”

  “Buying a flight home.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have a better idea.”

  NADIA

  12:50. American. $460

  She looks at him. Hopes he sees the smoldering wreckage of this weekend in her eyes.

  Ceo says, “It’s a two-hour drive to the park entrance. Ride with us that far. When we get there I’ll ask you a question about Smurfs. If you say you like them, then we keep going. If you say you don’t like Smurfs, or that they’re stupid, or the wrong color or whatever, then I’ll drop my friends off at the trailhead, and you and I can do our own thing.”

  “Define own thing.”

  “Whatever you want it to be.”

  “What if I don’t feel comfortable with you?”

  “Won’t happen.”

  “Sorry. That object is already in motion.”

  “Then I’ll drive you home. Or back to the airport. Whatever you want.”

  NADIA

  Book it?

  Ellie shows him the text. “My friend is ready to buy the ticket.”

  Ceo says, “Tell her to save her money. Please.”

  She turns from him, looks at the SUV. The big guy doesn’t move. But the passenger sitting next to him smiles and waves. Ellie recognizes him from the website. That must be Q. But she can’t get over the feeling that she’s seen him before, at a different time in a different context.

  Ceo says, “C’mon. It’ll be a great weekend. Mountains, fresh air. Smurfs.”

  The SUV guns its engine.

  She says, “We’ll do our own thing?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Just to be clear, I hate Smurfs. They’re creepier than clowns.”

  Ceo smiles while she sends the text.

  ELLIE

  False alarm. All good.

  His father says, I have one more present for you. Slips an envelope from under his sweater and hands it to Colin. The flap is torn and resealed with Scotch tape. Colin stares at his father’s writing in black Sharpie on the front.

  For a Sole Emergency

  They had already given him $825 in twenties, tens, fives, and ones. It’s the cash his mother saved by not smoking for two years, which she was squirreling away for a new leather sofa, maybe even a sectional. But she would never tell him that—not even on her deathbed with angels swirling around.

  He asks, Should I open it now or later?

  Now is good, his father says.

  Colin wonders if he has the time to do this. The security line is pretty short. Two minutes at most. The Burlington airport hums around them with early-morning travelers on cell phones rolling their luggage across polished tile floors. He inches forward and adds his bit to the muted din.

  Chop-chop, his father says.

  Colin carefully peels back the tape and opens the envelope. There’s a gift card for fifty dollars to Foot Locker inside.

  It’s for a new pair of tennis sneakers when those wear out.

  Thanks, Colin says, this is perfect. He doesn’t say that his Nikes wore out two months ago and the fifty dollars would buy one shoe, not a pair. He knows what his father is giving up with this gift. Probably means no studs for the tires this winter.

  His father says to save it for a big match.

  Colin says they’re all big.

  His father guarantees that some are bigger than others.

  The TSA agent nods at Colin.

  Colin’s father gives him a long hug. Stands back and watches while he hands the TSA agent his ID and ticket, one-way to LAX via Detroit, arriving at 2:48 p.m.

  Colin puts his racquet bag and laptop onto the scanning belt.

  His father is still there, arms folded across his chest, cheater glasses hooked into the neck of his fishing sweater. Chances are he will lose those glasses between now and when he eventually finds his car. But he will never lose that sweater.

  Colin passes through the security gate and gathers his bag and laptop, puts on his shoes.

  Turns to wave to his father.

  He’s gone.

  We’re parked curbside in the handicapped zone, twenty feet from the baggage claim door, engine idling like a junkie in detox. Watching the flow of luggage-dragging travelers as they exit, hoping Ceo is among them soon. A silver-haired woman smoking a cigarette and leaning on a cane is giving us icy death glares. She starts wobbling toward a blue-uniformed guy in an orange vest who so far has been willing to ignore us.

  “Looks like we’re about to get busted,” I say.

  “Shit,” Grahame says. “What the hell is taking so long?” He pulls out his phone. “I’m going to text him, find out what the fu—” and stops midsentence. A striking woman in a curve-hugging blue dress, midthirties, walks out the door towing a huge suitcase. “So there’s our problem. He was hitting on that.” A shuttle bus pulls up. The driver comes out, stows her bag, and they leave. Meanwhile Cane Lady has almost reached the guy in the vest.

  Grahame says, “I vote we just leave his ass. We can hike to Cannabis Cove on our own.”

  A family of three exits, then twenty seconds later another female, alone. This one is high school age or maybe early college. Unlike the woman in the blue dress, she’s wearing a loose long-sleeve shirt and comfortable shorts with big pockets. In Ceo’s world, that would be one strike because where women’s clothing is concerned, he elevates form over function. She’s not the right height for him either, meaning she’s tall. Ceo is a half inch short of six feet (although he can still dunk a basketball). He doesn’t like his date to be taller than him if she’s wearing heels, and he likes heels, the higher the better. She’s probably pushing five eleven, so if she was his prom date, she’d have to wear flip-flops or go barefoot. Strike two. Her hair is black, which is good, but it doesn’t quite reach her shoulders. Although Ceo has been known to go for girls with short hair, it isn’t his preference. He says there’s something about long hair down a naked back that really “cranks his dial.” Call it strike two and a half because Ceo would say hair grows. I shake my head, realizing how sad it is that I evaluate every female I see relative to their score on Ceo’s scale of attraction. But the biggest reason I’m noticing her at this moment isn’t because she doesn’t have a suitcase, or bag, or even a purse. She’s wearing hiking boots. Who wears those on a plane?

  Grahame says, “Look at doze legs, eh, mon. She’s an athlete for sure. I’d geev her da tennis lessons for free, don’t cha know.”

  She scans the traffic, then focuses directly on the Cherokee. For a second our eyes lock, and I get the distinct feeling that she was specifically looking for us. She taps out a text.

  Ceo exits the door carrying a backpack, walks right up to her, and starts talking. She points to us. They go back and forth a couple times. Then Ceo moves closer. It’s an intimate distance now. They have another conversation. She sticks her phone in his face. Then she looks at us again. Grahame just sits there, but his eyes narrow. I figure why not and raise my hand and wave while Grahame mutters, Unfuckingreal, and guns the engine. She sends another text. Ceo smiles. They start walking toward the car.

  Grahame says, “Is he freaking serious?”

  “Surprise,” I say.

  Cane Lady is talking to Vest Guy. He motions for us to move. Now.

  Grahame gives the horn two quick blasts.

  Ceo jogs to the back of the SUV, pops the lid, slings her pack on top of ours. He climbs in behind Grahame. She takes the seat beh
ind me. Doors close.

  Ceo says, “Guys, meet Ellie. Ellie, meet the guys.”

  All I can think about are those long legs all jammed up behind me. I scoot my seat so far forward my knees bump up against the dash.

  Ceo laughs and says, “Q, she’s tall. But she’s not a freaking giraffe.”

  Cane Lady flips us the bird while Grahame pulls away from the curb asking, “Where to now, chief?”

  Ceo yells, “To Yosemite and beyond!”

  Ceo does most of the talking, telling us the story of how he and Ellie came to be. He said they met at acting camp, a fact that Ellie promptly disputed. She said it was a theater arts and technology workshop, not a camp. There were no tents, no bonfires, no mosquitoes or outhouses or dividing up into tribes and learning how to make soup from discarded snakeskins. She said one of her instructors had two Oscar nominations for cinematography. And Ceo learned how to channel his character’s inner voice from Kevin Spacey’s acting coach.

  Ceo banged his head against the window and said, “Okay, okay, you win! It wasn’t a camp.”

  But here’s the thing about all that. I’d already heard too many stories from Ceo about this alleged “acting camp.” Starting off with how much he didn’t want to go but his agent said you do this or you’ll never make the jump from stage to screen. So he grudgingly attended an intensive two-week workshop in Santa Cruz ($10,500, according to the website), then happily played the SoCal junior tournament circuit with Grahame for the rest of the summer. Meanwhile I was back in Vermont working seven to four at the fish hatchery. Ceo would text me a couple times a day, usually something desperate from his private ocean-view room on the Santa Cruz campus. He’d plead with me to rescue him from this unbearable torture. Then he’d share a studio head shot of a girl he just did a scene with who also happened to be a model who invariably wanted to “practice technique” with him later. I distinctly remember thinking at the time that if he’s being tortured, then what do you call three months of squeezing roe out of the ass end of a rainbow trout?

  What I don’t remember during that time is anything about a girlfriend or potential girlfriend material. He never mentioned anyone that he had any interest in seeing beyond his “internment.” As far as I know, he didn’t stay in touch with any of the participants. So when Ellie climbed into the seat behind me and said she’s going to open the window because it smells like man-feet in here, I was thinking what Grahame was probably thinking: this is some random girl Ceo met last week while standing in line at a taco truck, or buying shoes at the mall, or just performing the simple act of breathing with his shirt off. She will join the endless procession of heavenly bodies that pass through his gravitational field.

  When he told us where he met her, I detected a disturbance in the field. When he said she’s a genius with a camera, she can memorize an entire scene in five minutes and not miss a single line of dialogue, can add any five numbers in her head, and oh by the way, soccer fans (meaning me), Sports Illustrated ranks her among the top ten high school goalkeepers in the whole freaking country, Grahame and I shared a look of total bewilderment. We’d gone from a disturbance in the field to a massive disruption. Unlike his previous heavenly bodies, Ellie wasn’t wearing any makeup. She wasn’t the shortest person in this car. And she clearly stated when Grahame inanely asked her if she’s a model, “No, I’m not, nor do I ever aspire to be one.”

  Consequently my head is spinning with this one inescapable conclusion: Ellie is the first girl, in the history of planet Ceo, where it might be argued that he put function ahead of form. But as I ponder the entire Ellie package, it would be a very close call.

  During Ceo’s mostly true retelling of the events at Santa Cruz, we watched with growing concern as a thin wisp of black on the horizon refused to go away. Now, with rolling hills and farmland yielding to the pine-crusted shoulders of almost-mountains, the wisp has transformed into a wind-bent smudge, staining an otherwise blue sky the color of LA smog. We can’t find anything on the web about a fire in Yosemite, so maybe it’s not an issue. This is California in the fall, Ceo says, yawning. There’s always a fire somewhere to put out. Then he asks Ellie if she’d like to know some interesting facts about the other occupants in the car.

  He tells her Grahame is from Las Vegas, where his father runs security for three casinos, that he transferred into CGA a year ago and went undefeated in the league at number one singles, then proceeded to win state without dropping a set. Another interesting fact is Grahame’s brother plays outside linebacker for the Patriots and has two Super Bowl rings. And in two weeks Grahame is taking the ASVAB because he wants to be an Army Ranger. It strikes me while Ceo talks that he sounds like a game-show host introducing today’s contestants.

  Ellie asks Grahame, Why the Rangers and not the SEALs? Grahame says he sinks like a sack of stones and would never pass the water test. Ceo asks Ellie to please, please don’t ever tell Grahame that you like Bob Marley or any of this steel-drum Caribbean shit we’ve been listening to for the past million miles. She asks, Why, what’s wrong with it? He says, Because Grahame starts talking like a drunken Jamaican pimp from Fargo, and you won’t be able to understand a freaking word out of his mouth. Ellie says she likes reggae, especially before it went rap, and listens to Beenie Man when she’s going through pregame drills. Grahame lights up for the first time since we left the airport. He says, Ooh ooh, me tinks you be too good a woo-mon ta be datin’ da model-mon, don’t cha know. Ellie says, Ya be speakin’ da truth, meester Ranger mon. Ceo groans, says, Oh shit, there’s no stopping him now. Then he leans forward between the seats, saying, And now for my good friend from—

  “Don’t tell me,” she says. “Let me guess.”

  “Okay,” Ceo says. “Tell us what you know about the mysterious Q.”

  “Colin is from Vermont. He plays soccer and likes movies. And he’s a John Cusack fan.”

  Silence under the music. She waits. Grahame is nodding. Maybe because he’s impressed. Maybe it’s just the music. He’s the hardest of the three to figure out. Ceo’s smiling, his eyes on Colin.

  Colin says, “How did you know I’m from Vermont?”

  Ellie says, “Why do you think?”

  “My syrupy accent?”

  “Nope. It was on the school website. You were eight and two last year, plus one forfeit on the last match of the season. What happened there? Did you get hurt?”

  Ceo looks at her, shakes his head.

  After a long beat Colin says, “How did you know I like movies?”

  She makes a mental note that he skipped the forfeit question. “Someone in this car is reading Good Will Hunting. You have to like movies to read screenplays. I know it isn’t Ceo because he doesn’t read. Not even my texts.”

  Ceo shoots her a puzzled where did that come from look. He smiles, hoping for one in return. She leaves him hanging.

  Grahame says, “How do you know I’m not reading that screenplay?”

  “There’s a bookmark in the pivotal scene where Sean tells Professor Lambeau that Will counted down the seconds in his head. The bookmark is from the Flying Pig Bookstore with an address in Shelburne, Vermont. Unless you’re from Vermont, which I doubt because you’re driving and this car has Nevada plates, that makes Colin the screenplay-reading movie fan from Vermont.”

  “Why is that scene pivotal?” Colin asks.

  “It’s why Sean accepts the challenge,” she says. “Without that scene, you don’t have a movie.” Ellie waits for the next question. Hopes it’s the one she wants to hear.

  Colin says, “How did you know I’m a Cusack fan?”

  There it is. She smiles at the back of his seat, wishes she could see his face.

  Ellie says, “To hang on to sanity too tight is insane.”

  She hears a laugh, then, “You saw my note on the back page.”

  “Pushing Tin, 1999, with Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett.”

  “That was a great line in a not-so-great movie.”

  “Defin
itely not in his top ten,” she says, not telling him she posted that exact quote on her Facebook page two weeks ago. Then she asks, “How about this one: I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. I’m my own entourage.”

  Colin says, “You’re going to have to dig deeper than that. America’s Sweethearts with Billy Crystal and Julia Roberts.”

  Ceo says, “I think that guy is overrated. Too many words. He needs to just shut up and act.”

  Colin says, “Like Jason Statham?”

  “Exactly. Let his fists do the talking.”

  They pass a Welcome to Oakhurst sign, and Grahame slows down to match the flow of traffic. Ellie asks him to make a quick stop at the next convenience store, which she’s relieved to see a minute later. As they’re pulling into the lot, Ceo says to Ellie, “You didn’t tell us how you knew Q played soccer.”

  “That’s a simple one. You told me.”

  “I did?”

  “You said he played midfield but had to stop because of tennis.”

  “I said all that?”

  She nods.

  “When?”

  Showing him a smile this time, she says, “At the beach.”

  It’s Poker Saturday, and as usual Colin is the first to fold.

  Sometimes he delays the inevitable by dipping into his emergency ATM, which is the envelope his father gave him at the Burlington airport. This is where he keeps whatever is left over from stringing the occasional racquet. He keeps the envelope in The Collected Poems of Robert Frost next to his bed, marking the “Road Not Taken” page to remind him why he’s here and not back in Vermont. His father told him he should always have a fifty for emergencies without really defining the term. His friends at the table tell him this is an emergency no doubt because he doesn’t want to be the snack and beverage bitch yet again, right? Colin briefly considers their logic, and finds it full of flaws. September was an expensive month, with two textbooks that weren’t included in his “scholarship,” plus his uniform deposit, which Coach couldn’t get waived this year due to cutbacks in athletics, so there’s an unexpected $150 hit to his monthly budget. But all that is, as his father would say, matters of substantial inconsequence, compared to the post-challenge-match financial crater he’s staring at now. He resigns himself to filling the snack bowl and fetching Mountain Dews, which, per their agreement, he must also open because that is the price you pay for folding first.