B

by Jonathan Baumbach

  After his brilliant game, his basketball career was all mediocrity and dissatisfaction, the magic returning only for the briefest of moments to remind him what he had once done and would likely never do again. His own shadow achievement taunted him. He held himself to a standard that had been achieved through accidental grace so he suffered continued and renewed disappointment.

  The Knicks have two foul shots coming and a two point lead with 43 seconds left to play. Starks is at the line, a good foul shooter with a history of making the clutch basket, a man with metaphoric ice water in his veins. So why does B have this doomed and sinking feeling? Starks makes the first foul shot, the first the more difficult of the two. The applause is thunderous. Half the sellout crowd is on its feet. Starks takes a deep breath before taking the second, cannot be accused of not giving the shot his undivided attention. Nevertheless it rims the basket and comes out, Portland grabbing the rebound and calling time.

  –Good game, huh? B says to his son.

  –Not so much good as close, the son says, but maybe that’s what you mean.

  The Knicks commit themselves to preventing a three-point shot, but Portland has a different tactic in mind. Strickland fakes the perimeter shot then drives to the basket and makes an uncontested lay-up, reducing the lead to one point. As soon as the Knicks inbound the ball, Mason is fouled. This doesn’t seem a wise move in B’s unprofessional estimate since there are still 27 seconds left in the game. Mason misses the first foul shot, makes the second.

  –Nervous time, his son says to him.

  B wants to tell him it will be all right, not to worry, but he can find no words of comfort to offer. He squeezes his son’s arm in commiseration. He himself is full of hope but distrusts it all.

  The crowd, much of it, most of it, gets to its feet and roars in one ear-shattering voice, –Dee-fense. Dee-fense. B wonders why, even among people who share his aims, he feels himself an outsider.

  The same Knick defense, the same Portland play, but this time Strickland is fouled driving to the basket and if the game is to be tied he will have to do it from the foul line. He makes one out of two, and the Knicks rebound again and are fouled again. There are now 11 seconds of nail biting tedium left. B looks up at the electronic scoreboard to confirm that the Knicks are winning 91 to 90.

  The standing crowd hushes as Harper gets ready to take his first foul shot. He misses short and as soon as the ball clunks against the front of the rim, the crowd lets out a collective groan.

  –They don’t want to win, B says in the voice of self-protective disappointment.

  –Well, they do and they don’t, his son says.

  Harper makes the second, extending the lead to two. While Portland takes a timeout to design the shot that will either win the game for them or force a tie, B feels a tightness in his chest. Why does he take this all so personally? The answer is: he just does. It is his childish nature to identify with his team. As Portland gets ready to make the inbounds pass, B is aware, frighteningly so, of how much is at stake for him. More than that, his team doesn’t deserve to win.

  With five seconds left, Strickland goes around a pick and drives toward the basket. Several Knick players converge to cut him off. Rather than force his shot, the Portland guard whips the ball out into the right corner where Majerle waits in readiness behind the three point line. The uncontested shot is launched like a dagger to B’s heart. Watching out of the corner of his eye as if anticipating some kind of unacceptable cinematic violence, he concedes the game. He sees the ball arc toward the basket—where else can it go?—intruding into the sacred space of the net. He withholds his dissatisfaction, takes his defeat like a martyr. The shot, though in perfect trajectory, falls short, hitting nothing but the outstretched hands of several players. Someone, some hand, thrusts the ball up into the basket but it doesn’t matter, the game is already recorded history. The clock has run out, the sound of the buzzer overwhelmed by the screaming of the crowd. It is another disappointment, Pordand’s loss, his team having won despite itself.

  B and his son move in single file through the corridors toward the exit, the crowd impinging on them, pulling them apart. In fact, when he steps out into the frigid night air, B finds himself alone, his son who had been a step or two behind him nowhere to be seen. There are a number of exits and perhaps when they had gotten separated, his son had veered off accidentally in another direction. B steps back inside, parting the crowd, and forces his way fretfully back into the arena where he has already experienced both victory and loss.

  —

  All of the above takes place in B’s mind as he paces back and forth outside the Garden in the soft inconsequential snow. The game has not been played, not yet, is 20 minutes short of opening tip, though B has already concocted a scenario for its outcome. His son, who is late, who he loves better than himself, who he believes he sees in the distance hurrying toward him, has not quite reached him, will not reach him for another instant or so, though he is already imagining the son’s casually presented excuse for his lateness, and in response his own gracious anger-denied acceptance, as the son continues indefinitely, in some waking dream that B is always just about to escape, to make his long-awaited, imperceptible approach.

  V. THE BLIND DATE

  B, lonely and horny in no notable order of priority, takes out an ad in the Personals Section of New York magazine. “Divorced Writer, heavy drinker and sports enthusiast, seeks attractive, intelligent, generous woman between 35 and 49. Sensualist preferred. Object whatever.” Three days after the ad appears, expecting zilch for his troubles, he receives a packet with seventy-seven answers. He is capable of dealing with five or even ten responses, but seventy-seven is an unwieldy mob. He is reminded of the sequence in the Buster Keaton movie, “Seven Chances,” in which, having advertised for a bride, Buster wakes from a nap at the church to discover hordes of furious women determined to marry him.

  B files the 77 responses away under “Blind Date,” two weeks passing before he is up to sorting through the perfumed lies. What he does in the cause of efficiency, some platonic ideal of, is to break down the responses into three basic categories—Hopeless, Possible, Bull’s-eye. On a cursory reading of the letters, he finds himself with nine Hopeless and 68 Possibles, a problematic grouping. Among the Possibles, he wants to believe, there will be a Bull’s-eye in the rough. It is not so much that B knows what he wants as that he is confident that what he wants will make itself known when the right woman presents herself. Another week passes before he calls the first five of the more engaging Possibles—he has broken them down into More Possible and Less—arranging to meet for drinks with two of the More Possible women he has interviewed on the phone. Without thinking the logistics through, he schedules the appointments forty-five minutes apart. What the hell is he doing? he wonders briefly. The doing itself, the compulsive process, has taken over.

  The time comes to meet the first of his two appointments— MP1, as he thinks of her—and B finds himself excessively eager, so eager that compensatory inertia overtakes him and he is unable to leave home for the longest time. So he arrives at the Brass Bar, the place of assignation, a favorite watering hole of his, significantly late. This is not, he knows, God knows, the way to make a favorable impression. Anyway, he is disappointed on sight, assuming (red dress, reddish hair) that she is who she is, the one (the first) he has made blind arrangements to meet. If so, she isn’t what he has in mind, her letter (unless he has confused it with another) suggesting a different assortment of attributes.

  How to explain this immediate nonnegotiable disappointment. It is not that the woman is not attractive (he has anticipated his respondents overrating their attractiveness), but that she is too conventionally pretty, not the kind of person who would need to answer a Personals ad to find a man. He is not prepared to deal with a near-beauty. In panic, he leaves the restaurant and walks around the block, looking for a place to have a drink. When he returns to the Brass Bar, prepared to explain himself—he means t
o be up front about his evasive behavior—she is gone. It is almost time for the second of his two appointments and he sits down in the booth that the redheaded woman, who may or may not be MP1, has vacated. B takes off his jacket, straightens his tie (while opening the top button of his shirt), brushes his hand through his hair. Waiting for nothing, he advises himself against excessive expectation.

  His second appointment is not coming, he decides with a barely perceptible sigh of relief, looking the other way when a small dark woman occupies the bench across from him. There’s something grim about her, though she offers him, or seems to, a minimal smile. He says, –Hi, and holds out his hand. She is writing something on a napkin in a small cramped hand, which she pushes across the table to him. –Hi to you, the message says. It is signed, Gloria M.

  B accepts the terms of her communication (assuming what?), asks her in writing on the back of the same napkin if she would like a glass of wine.

  She studies his text, a quizzical look on her face, then nods. The waiter appears just as B is about to signal to him, and he orders two glasses of wine, one white, one red, covering both bases, glancing at his silent date out of the corner of his eye. She is almost pretty, her face a bit pinched. He is trying to remember what she said about herself in her letter. It’s not likely that she’s “Beautiful, widowed concert flutist, mother of five,” or “Single, Jewish, perky Tarot reader and channeler with a passionate love of life.” Perhaps “Divorced poet, broodingly sexual, with five year-old daughter,” or “Active and involved academic, 42, well-endowed with looks, brains and wry humor.” None of his correspondents had advertised herself as mute or with a predilection to silence.

  When the wine comes, he offers her her choice of red or white, putting both glasses in front of her. What she does is take a drink of the white, then refill the glass with the red, stirring the mix with a finger. –What’s the point of that? B asks, to which she seems almost to smile.

  Before he can claim the remains of the red, Gloria M has poured some of the mix into that glass, creating two glasses of hybrid. She slides both glasses in his direction and mouths the words, –You choose.

  When he takes the glass that has not touched her lips, she turns her face away in apparent disappointment. He quickly recognizes his mistake, so he takes a sip of the near-red and moves to exchange glasses with her. She slaps his hand away before he can complete the transaction. Another humbling surprise.

  B considers leaving, but something inexplicable holds him to the spot. Fascination perhaps or the inexplicable stirrings of his ungoverned self. He sulks. Gloria writes something on her napkin and then, rereading what she has written, blacks it out.

  –What have you decided not to tell me? B asks her.

  Her expression mocks him or seems to. Her mouth forms the word, “What?” She pushes the blacked-out message across the table to him. The longer he stares at the effaced message, which runs three full lines and a part of a fourth, the more he senses the gist of the hidden text. He sees or imagines he sees the words “loneliness” and “desire.” He reaches over and takes her hand, which she filigrees into his. He imagines the table between them lifting into the air, torn from its moorings by the wistful aspirations of desire.

  When their hands come apart, she scratches a message on his palm with a finger. At this moment, the woman, who had been at the table earlier, the near beautiful redhead, reenters the restaurant.

  B catches her image in the bar mirror and instinctively ducks his head as if he felt the need to hide from her. When he looks up, she is standing at the table staring at him. –Don’t I know you? she says to him.

  Her question seems to pin him to the wall. —I’m sometimes mistaken for a famous trial lawyer, B says.

  –I know what you mean, she says, but that’s not who I was thinking of.

  –If we had met, B says, it isn’t likely I would have forgotten you. He turns his attention to Gloria, who is twirling her empty wine glass, offers her the consolation of a shrug.

  The redheaded woman, whom he imagines to be the “perky Tarot reader,” persists. –Aren’t you ‘divorced writer and sports enthusiast,’ blah blah blah, she says.

  He reluctantly admits to being that very person, though can’t imagine how she knows.

  Gloria takes B’s napkin and writes furiously on it, then she gets up, hands the napkin to the other woman, and leaves the booth. She has, he notices for the first time, a barely perceptible limp.

  After the redheaded woman reads Gloria’s note, she says –No thank you, to no one in particular and turns to go.

  In a moment, both women have left the restaurant. He has, as he sees it, in one try failed twice. Inertia and a sense of responsibility toward the bill keeps B from immediately rushing after the women, Gloria M in particular, his imagination on short leash. Collecting himself, slipping on his suede jacket, he notices a dark brown leather pouch on Gloria’s side of the booth.

  She’ll discover its absence, he tells himself, so he sits down again, orders a double Scotch with a Rolling Rock on the side, and awaits her anticipated return, rehearsing to himself some of the things he wants to say to her. –You’re the one I was looking for when I took the ad, he imagines himself saying. Even in the sanctity of the imagination, B’s amorous claim loses conviction the moment it is given voice.

  When an hour passes without her reappearance, he looks in the purse for identification, the name Cassandra Lutz written on a license and two credit cards. There is no address anywhere. There is also a hairbrush, a paperback of The Scarlet Letter and a wallet containing three dollars. B stuffs the soft leather pouch in his jacket pocket, pays the bill and exits the Brass Bar.

  In a fever of desolation, he wanders, head down, in the direction of his small apartment on First Street and Avenue A. It begins to rain in a desultory way and he puts up the collar of his coat. He is about to duck into a ratso bar to dry off—he could do with another drink—when someone grabs his arm. It is the redheaded woman (the appointment he didn’t keep), her face wet, rain coursing down her cheeks. –I’ve been trying to catch up to you, she says. You have my purse, I believe. She retrieves it from his pocket, going through the contents with an accountant’s eye in a way that suggests distrust.

  Now that she is standing next to him, B notices that she has a nasty scar on her face on the side she tends to keep turned away. The flaw in her beauty makes her seem less resistible and he invites her to have a drink with him.

  –I don’t drink, she says. I used to, but I don’t now, okay? Besides you don’t want to go into that place—believe me, you don’t.

  He can see nothing wrong with the place besides it being rundown and ugly.

  They stand under the eaves of the ratso bar, the rain encroaching on the protruding tips of their shoes, while they sort out logistics. The woman has something unpleasant to tell him and B has agreed to hear her out. The question is where can they go to have this one-sided conversation. The longer they hang out in the rain, his feet beginning to soak, the more B craves a drink. It is Gloria M he perceives himself to want, the lost, unforgiving, and mysteriously silent Gloria.

  When the mild rain slows to a heavy mist, the scarred red-headed woman suggests they walk around the block.

  –Just who do you think you are? she says sotto voce.

  –What? It is always the same question.

  –Your thoughtless behavior, as you must know, has generated mucho anger in certain circles, she says, taking his arm. –I just wanted to warn you, that’s all. Nothing at all may come of it, but it’s always well to be prepared. A word to the wise, that kind of thing.

  Her insinuation troubles B, irritates him no end. What thoughtless behavior? What does she think he’s done?

  –That you don’t have a clue is in some ways a worse offense than the other, she says in answer to his consternation. That’s the nature so to speak of the beast. Innocence is not an excuse any more. Let me add that I’m not one of those who has gotten her hackles up. I pro
bably would have done exactly the same thing in your place. You never know, do you?

  B, feeling anything but thankful, thanks her for her concern, says he has to go, inventing various urgencies to justify an immediate departure.

  She holds onto his arm as they slosh along in the downpour and he remembers that one of his correspondents was a sucker for “long romantic walks in the rain.”

  –Do you want to come to my place? he asks.

  –There’s no quit in you, is there? she says, handing him a business card: Cassandra L—Astrologist, Channeler, Reader of Signs. –If you need me, I’m at this number for you.

  When he gets home, B finds the door to his apartment ajar and Cassandra’s warning comes back to him with a rush. He remembers double locking the door when he left, or thinks he remembers. Someone has gotten into his apartment and may still be there, waiting for him with harmful intent. What should B do? He rings the bell of his neighbor’s apartment and hears the dog bark, a plaintive call. He has heard the animal’s sorrowful cry any number of times, but he has never actually seen it.

  B hits the streets, looking for a cop or a weapon, someone or something to accompany him in his confrontation with the unknown. Ten minutes later, B returns alone (a rock in each pocket) and enters his place with clattering stealth, heart in an uproar.