“You’re late,” says the manager, pointing to his rated-for-300-meters dive watch. His tie pin is shaped like a diamond spatula.
“I know,” I say. “Sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t bus tables. Go police your section.”
I put on my apron and hit the floor. At least a dozen tables need setups. The salad bar could use a refill of everything but sprouts. There’s a waterless party of eight and a slick of spilled prawns by the register.
It takes about an hour, but I’m almost caught up when some old guy leans over his steak, “Way to go.”
“Excuse me?”
“A thirty footer? You?”
So, yeah, I didn’t pass the ball.
What I did instead was launch a thirty-two footer. Man, it felt good. High arc, perfect follow through. Spinning so slow I could see the air hole every time around.
Coach screamed, “NO!”
The crowd screamed, “NO!”
Even Makarov shelved the grin, his face blank, astonished. The entire gym inhaled as the ball nubbed back iron and spun around the rim, then let out a collective wuff as it rolled off and fell to the floor.
AT MIDNIGHT I toss trash into the Dumpster and empty rib bones into the grinder and scrape grease off my loafers with a paring knife. Georgie the cook is smoking a cigarette on the loading dock, all tattoos and grill burns, a big silver cross hanging around his neck. Georgie played some high school ball himself. I know that because three times a shift he says, Y’know, I played some high school ball myself.
“You effed up, dude.”
“You think?”
“Dude from thirty feet!” he says, in excited-announcer voice, “Dude decides he’s Allen effin Iverson!”
I pull up a milk crate and we puff together for a while. The lot is slightly melted and smells like dirty ketchup. You can hear crickets and birds and other things trying to live in the tall grass between the median. You can hear truck brakes whining and AM radios and the long satisfying whoosh of cars careening off the exit. It’s the opposite of Comedy Hour. There is no tunnel, no reveal. From darkness into more darkness.
“Don’t sweat it, dude,” Georgie says, and twists his cigarette, saving the short for later.
“Ready to punch out?” I ask.
He nods, points to a line of ants carrying rib fat through a crack in the wall.
“Now that’s teamwork.”
SO WE WIN our next two games, nothing special, ahead by 20 and the scrubs in at halftime. The ship rights itself. Coach starts letting me off with only a hundred push-ups and Washington’s giving me rides again, but something feels different. Like going through the motions. Like going through the motions backward.
Steve stops coming to games, won’t answer his phone.
Dad hasn’t come out of his room for a week.
Even Makarov isn’t smiling anymore. He’s missing easy shots, half-assing sprints, icing fake injuries.
I’m almost not surprised when he doesn’t show for Monday practice.
“That’s weird,” says Poltroni.
“Yeah,” says Xavier.
Then Makarov misses two more. His locker is still there and his no-name sneakers are still there and his jocks are still there, but he isn’t.
You seen Makarov?
Phones ring, doorbells buzz, no one knows shit. Suddenly there’s MISSING! posters and HAVE YOU SEEN ME? leaflets and REWARD! Xeroxes on every light pole in town. All week Coach Grout stands around gumming his whistle, until even he gets it.
Makarov isn’t coming back.
Someone starts a rumor that Fitchburg had him kidnapped and that night their library is vandalized. Someone else claims they spotted Makarov at All-American Dog, and the next day forty people mill around the lot, eating footlongs and waiting for a sign. There’s an article in the school paper that says Makarov had to go home to Republic of Whereverthefuck because of a coup. Or feudal uprising. Turns out he’s from a royal family, enjoys a daily breakfast of borscht and bison vodka. The editor gets canned. The writer gets suspended. The MISSING! posters start to fade, replaced by arrogant cats and unlucky dogs.
It’s all crap anyway.
The only truth is the West Boylston Bolts are nothing without him.
Hey Bolts! Go Screw!
We lose six in a row. Blown out by Temporal Catholic. Crushed by Rockwell Math and Science. Even lost a squeaker to Ulysses S. Grant, 114 – 66. The crowds disappear, the photogs disappear, all the feel-good disappears.
I call up Southern Community about my spot on the team, try to explain the collapse isn’t my fault. Ring Ding says, “Don’t worry, kid, you’re still on my radar.”
So we go back to squeezing our tools and joking around under the bleachers during practice. Coach stops bothering to hide his flask. “Jump,” he says a couple times, but no one listens. After a while he stops coming out of his office at all. Our last game of the season there’s six people in the stands and five of them are Xavier’s sisters. Coach has to prop himself against a scrub to keep from falling off the bench. We lose by 3 to Hammerchin Academy, the worst team in the state, a bunch of pasty jarheads grunting and shouting and trying really hard. I’m scoring from everywhere and have us in it right until the end. I spin and whirl, in a groove, hit from outside, take it to the rim, for the first time all year the best player on the floor.
It still isn’t enough.
With ten seconds left I’m wide open in the corner. Washington makes a move, dribbles off his foot. The ball spins out of bounds. Game over. All the way to the locker room jarheads prong around us, laughing and hugging.
AFTER THE GAME, Steve’s waiting outside, sunglasses on even though it’s dark. The truck idles with attitude.
“How’s it going?”
“It’s going.”
“You win?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“Guess.”
“You want a ride.”
“With you?”
A WEEK LATER I get an envelope from Southern Community. Ring Ding can barely believe it himself, but two of his recruits blew out their knees and now he’s got an open spot. Half scholarship plus board. It just needs a signature.
Am I still interested?
Underneath the paperwork is a stack of newspaper articles. They’re from regional sports sections over the last decade, each one a variation on the same story. The first is about Aussie Jim Rhodes, surprise hoops phenom, who flew in from the deep Outback to single-handedly resurrect Small Time High. There’s even a headshot of Aussie Jim, smiling.
Except it’s Makarov.
The next is about Beau Candie, surprise hoops phenom, who flew in from Saskatchewan to single-handedly resurrect Somewhere Else High. There’s a picture of Candie dunking.
Except it’s Makarov.
There are more articles and more names. Francois LeMay. Knute Benzinger. Makarov without glasses, Makarov with unruly sideburns, Makarov with a gold grill and his name is Jody “Riff” Raft. Fucker is Peter Pan with hops and a great handle, has been shopping schools for years. Hey, why bother growing up when you can be a teenager forever, milk the glory, and then split as soon as anyone starts asking questions? A coach in Milwaukee is quoted as saying, “Hell, for all I know he’s thirty-five and not even from Iceland. But man, the team sure does miss him.”
Makarov created his own Comedy Hour. Except he was smart enough, even for a little while, to star in it.
At the bottom of the envelope is a Post-it note from Ring Ding with a chocolaty thumbprint in the corner: I knew I recognized your man, so I did a little research. Wasn’t so much his face as his jump shot. I never forget a jumper. Pathetic. Hope they catch him and string him up by the nuts. Anyway, like my stepdad always said: If it’s too good to be true, it’s too true to be good. We’ll see you on campus, kid. And don’t forget to bring some extra jocks. You can’t have enough. My stepdad never said that, but if he had, he would have been right there too.
I open his door.
“You ever heard of knocking?”
His room hasn’t changed since eighth grade. Zeppelin posters and titty girl cutouts and neon beer clocks. There are condom foils scattered under the bed like dried tulips. He’s wearing boxers and a tight black shirt with the sleeves cut off, arms massive.
“Says the dude with a thousand secrets.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Sure you were.”
Steve nudges a stack of magazines with his toe. One of them slides to the floor, open to the centerfold, a gleaming yellow Chevy.
“So are you going to Southern Community or what?”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure until right that second. And then the answer was so obvious it was like it’d been my plan all along.
“Nah, I’m done.”
He looks up.
“With me?”
I want to say yes. Drop it like a depth charge, watch it explode against his starboard motor.
“No, man. With the team. Teams. Basketball. Fuck it.”
Steve pulls a nubby blanket over his shoulders. I sit next to him on the bed. Out in the yard there’s a rusty bicycle wheel, buried halfway up to the spokes.
“I guess you and I are supposed to have a talk now, right?” he says.
“Like some after-school special? All about accepting ourselves and shit?”
“Then you put your arm around me and everything’s okay.”
“Sure it is. A year later we open a business together.”
“You get married, buy a house. I live in the barn out back.”
“Right. Then there’s a scene at Thanksgiving. I’m slicing the bird. You give me a look more meaningful than a dozen novels. My wife raises a glass of wine, says, To family. Roll credits.”
He slides those perfect, dangling bangs behind one ear and I wonder how I could not have noticed, all this time.
That my brother has a tiny little scar on his chin.
“Seriously though, dude?”
“What?”
“Did Makarov ever tell you his real name?”
Steve wipes his nose on my shirt, face puffy and oblivious.
“What do you mean?”
Snap!
“Nevermind,” I say, and go get us two of Dad’s beers.
SO WASHINGTON GETS accepted to Purdue and sells me his car for twelve hundred and an ounce of pot. Poltroni gets married and moves to the city to manage his dad’s meat warehouse. Xavier joins the air force and gets stationed in the North Pole or somewhere.
For a while I keep it up with the doggie bags and the bus pans, then after Christmas put in for sous chef. Georgie clears it with Diamond Spatula and eventually takes me on as an apprentice. He says I’ve got perfect hands, big and soft. Also, I work at night, which means I never miss Comedy Hour. Matter of fact, I’m parked there right now. You should hear the rumble of the .351, idling behind the Dumpster. You should see the parade of students, fresh and scrubbed and oblivious as ever, each centered in a gleaming silver frame. You should see the kid who wears an eye patch as he comes pounding through the tunnel, the way he grips the wheel, hunched over, a look on his face that knows even when he’s fifty the pirate jokes will never end.
Snap!
“It’s beautiful,” Steve says.
It’s true. It really is.
I light two cigarettes and we exhale at the same time, twin plumes that fill the car with smoke.
Base Omega Has Twelve Dictates
We get nailed. Right outside the fence. Mainly because Young Nick Drake’s trench coat snags on the razor wire and he refuses to split without it, dangling like that Christmas ornament you leave in the box every year but never throw away.
I’m like, “Dude, time? In terms of it running out?”
And he’s like, “Just go without me.”
So I yank his ankles until the seam rips, which wakes Jeff and Pink Lady, who set off the mayo jar alarms and pretty soon all of Base Omega surrounds us with pointy sticks and accusatory eyes. Are we by any chance heading for the long-rumored New Lagos? Have we buried a secret hoard over the next dune filled with cocktail wieners and cans of savory V8?
“No way,” I say.
“Of course not,” Young Nick Drake says.
BULLSHIT, Dorsal Vent writes in the sand.
Mom sends Bob Her New Boyfriend Who Swears He Didn’t Kill Dad to go and wake Larry Our Leader, who comes out of his yurt wearing nothing but muscles and biker boots, looking very sleepy.
As well as grievously betrayed.
“Set up the wheel,” he says. “It’s spinning time.”
WE HAD A DOG N THOUGHT IT WOULD PROTECT US. WE HAD A GUN N THOUGHT IT WOULD PROTECT US. WE HAD A DAD AND (AT LEAST I) THOUGHT HE WAS GONNA PROTECT US.
—graffiti at base of Mandalay Bay fountain
STOP PRETENDING THIS IS A MOVIE AND YOU’RE TOUGH. YOU’RE NOT TOUGH AND THIS ISN’T A MOVIE.
—graffiti at base of MGM Grand pyramid
KRUA, I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU. LET’S JUMP THE FENCE AND ESCAPE TOGETHER.
—graffiti on a rock just outside the fence
My name’s Krua, which is exactly the sort of dumbass handle your mom saddles you with postcollapse, hoping one day you become a “strong warrior woman” + rule the wasteland or whatever. I am not a woman. I’m twelve. Who rules the sun? Who rules the sand? I’m also not psychic or insanely smart or descended from an ancient royal bloodline. I’m just this way-too-tan girl robbed of shopping for her first bra by the apocalypse. So, no, I will not discover a lost city or learn to commune with friendly buzzards or battle other twelve-year-olds in a special televised battle arena to save my little sister or tribe. If only because, hey, little sister died of infected tooth/bored resignation months ago and our “tribe” is forty (possibly thirty-nine by the end of this sentence) exhausted people in Base Omega.
Which is really just a parking lot with a fence.
It’s like The Last of the Dehydrated Peas, Since There Sure Ain’t No Mohicans Left.
Base Omega features lots of arguments about tarps. Plus sunburn, expiring of ignoble diarrhea, and only minor cannibalism. Also, a big surge in rapish assault, always from behind (bad breath) followed by nervous pacing and a canine’s shifty regret. Sometimes an apology, sometimes not. Sometimes a revenge puncturing, sometimes not. Lucky Omegans live in old cars. Unlucky ones live in the shade of old cars. Almost no one wears fingerless leather gloves or empty bandoliers anymore. They barely remember why they’re so tired (ambient radiation) or why their family is gone (not enough rat sushi/only one chopstick) or why they can’t seem to rub two thoughts together (crankcase water=high benzene content).
Either way, Mom and Bob Her New Boyfriend Who Swears He Didn’t Kill Dad say we’re lucky to have found such a terrific home.
Lucky is relative. Most relatives are dead.
And no, I’m not hot. Random pervs and furtive yankers can stop reading right here because at no point will I take off my glasses, slip into a perfectly preserved wedding dress, and become Jennifer Lawrence.
Dudes, I haven’t brushed my teeth in years.
IN FEBRUARY I was promoted to Keeper of the Dictates. The dictates are written on skin that could conceivably be pig. In case you didn’t know, dictates are inviolable rules. In case you didn’t know, inviolable means sacrosanct. In case you didn’t know, sacrosanct comes from the Latin sac, which there’s a real shortage of dangling between Omega legs.
We have Tribal Caucus every Friday in the Grieving Yurt. It’s totally boring, except when I’m called on to recite dictates in support of motions. Motions are sometimes about More Food or Don’t Just Leave Poop or Who Remembers Knitting? But most often they’re about how Larry Wants That Thing You’ve Just Hidden. Like an earring. Or glasses with a single lens. Or a TAG Heuer inscribed “To my little hole-in-one” p
ermanently frozen at 5:16. Complainers tend to get a spin of the wheel, so usually they just hand over the swag. Besides, Larry’s greed is vital. Without someone to unreasoningly hate and foment never-executed plots against, would Base Omega even bother to man the lookout posts anymore? Would we deign to boil sop water, bait lizard snares, or spend predawn hours searching the burning desert for the last few scraps left to burn?
Yeah, probably not.
The Twelve Dictates
(As told to Larry by God. Or in this case,
to Larry by Larry after huffing too much Freon.)
1. No worshiping graven images. No worship at all.
At first there was the whole bible thing, your various Korans and Upanishads. Liturgy. Verses. Knees on rocks beseeching, hands raised toward the sky. But results were minimal, so they got chucked. The subsequent Mother Earth/Gaia routine was a total nonstarter. Old gods and oracles were a big meh. Then things devolved a bit. Sacrifices. Robes and chants. Entrails and augurs and meaning to be found in random spatters of blood. “Not much meaning, too much mess” was the feeling in the end. Turns out there’s just no way to roast the family Doberman with a delicate sand marinade and still embrace the almighty. Small questions need small answers. The big lesson of apocalypse is that what we really used to worship was the idea that no matter how bad things got, some uniform would eventually drive up in a jeep and save us.
Politicians? Marines? The crucified son?
No one’s coming.
2. All decisions will be made by Larry. Got a beef, chief? You’re welcome to caucus a more equitable third-party solution on the other side of the fence.
Young Nick Drake says this is a foolish policy. He says partisan dickering is what started deep dystopia to begin with. Also, Ayn Rand. He says there are no solutions, but there is a better life out there.
I don’t believe him.
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true,” he says, his sad, gentle eyes sadder and gentler than usual.
Jeff and Pink Lady, who sit in a ’71 Torino all day, say I’m being a fool. Jeff makes theoretical origami swans while Pink Lady rakes his chest hair with a fork. They think Young Nick Drake is full of it. “We don’t need no consensus, we just need someone to be right for once,” they say. I’d like to study the question, but the selection in the Camry Lending Library is limited. And heavy on Augusten Burroughs. Even so, I’m pretty sure there was zero time for an airing of diverse perspectives the night a horde of kidney-gnawers stormed the fence with ear necklaces and femur torches.
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