Ride Around Shining

by Chris Leslie-Hynan

  But with the pros, you feel different—and you hear everything about the pros. Their grades have always been fixed, they name their children after themselves and then squander their inheritance. They go to clubs in every city after the games and take special rooms. You hear how they come home to their girlfriends and get into fights, drag somebody down a flight of stairs. But Calyph wasn’t a bit like that. He had such an attitude of moral uprightness it gave me a pain. If he ever hit a woman in rage, it must’ve been because the pitch of their argument had risen so high that to make a hole in the wall behind her would’ve been just a cheap show and a diversion.

  I drove up to the gates and put in the passcode, which remained unchanged with the new order. As the gate-halves pulled apart, the mist that clung to them ran off into rivulets. Approaching the house, the Mazda moved from the blacktop onto the gravel, and where I once heard that timeless hushing it now sounded like someone was viciously shaking a coffee can full of rocks beneath the car.

  I put the car in the garage and took the Jaguar out and waited by the passenger door. It was just seven-thirty. I wondered where we would go today.

  Looking up at the house, I saw motion from an upper window, as if a curtain had been brushed aside. In another moment I heard the noise of a motor behind me. It was a cab, not one of the suburban companies but a regular city cab. It came around the circle, crunching the stone, and pulled up on the far side of me. I looked for a passenger, but there was only a peaceful-looking Middle Eastern man behind the glass, staring straight ahead with a bored smile.

  I stepped toward him and he rolled down the window a little, the smell of leather and the city leaking out.

  “Who’re you here for?”

  He consulted the cab’s ancient electronics. “Ramses,” he said in a distinct voice.

  “He’s not here,” I said.

  “Okay, man, but they buzz me in.”

  “He’s not here,” I said again.

  He smiled at me, shrugging helplessly, and then I heard the front door open.

  “That’s for me,” a woman’s voice lisped.

  She stood on the top step, frowning beneath a pair of overlarge sunglasses. I had the idea she didn’t want to give up the high ground. She wore a simple black tee and a pair of green sweatpants, as though she might just now be embarking on a run, but for a pair of canvas slippers. Her “broken” finger was all healed, and a large rectangular bandage now protruded from beneath her sleeve.

  “Ramses,” the cabbie said serenely.

  At the sound of what might still have been her future name, Odette skipped quickly down the steps. I remember looking down, marking the progress of her tiny plump toes half-protruding from the slipped-on shoes.

  “I don’t propose to speak with you,” she said.

  I glanced up and she was blushing as she went by. I turned to the cab, meaning to direct something demeaning about her to the driver, but could think of nothing sufficiently cruel. The glass had gone up again.

  “Congratulations on your engagement,” I murmured.

  “My what?” she cried angrily, yanking open the door of the cab.

  I let her go and walked toward the house. All my limbs felt heavy. My head was light as an empty rind.

  There was a single light on up the stairs, but the first floor was all dim. In the early sun it seemed almost cloudy inside—I got the feeling of wandering through slightly misty rooms. I wanted to go right up and confront him, to denounce him impressively, but I wasn’t sure how to start. I wasn’t the confrontational sort; I was afraid I’d be no good. I could see myself inarticulately aping the tense atmosphere of a bad film, a figure of no consequence, being turned lightly aside.

  Instead I wandered through the rooms. I went to the cold hearth and looked in at the ashes. I picked up the poker and carried it around with me—it was soothing to hold something iron. In the hallway I looked at his Ninth Ward picture of the men on the stoop of the ruined house. It seemed a sort of pose now, to have that, to claim that special rage. Not all black guys got to be from New Orleans. I hadn’t heard about his going down and helping. None of his were among the abandoned. I spat upon the picture and watched my thin spittle run down the gloss.

  I wandered on to the living room and the suit of armor. I’d spent some idle time wondering about the period of the suit—it wasn’t the heavy plate of classic knight armor, but it wasn’t some light Bantu stuff, either. The torso was black, with a sort of supple Samurai look, the arms and legs of silver scale. A disc shield sat at its base, next to a freestanding spear with an intricate, curved tip. I touched the spear with the poker and then threw the poker aside. It fell to the carpet soundlessly.

  The spear was an awkward thing, standing up to my shoulder. It seemed too heavy to throw but too light to do much else with. Using it like a walking stick, I paced across the room and came once more to the base of the stairs. I stood there a long moment, trying to gather myself, my mind empty, clutching at last the emptiness itself, and then I lifted the spear and jabbed hard with the butt at the wooden ball at the banister’s end. It popped off cleanly and clattered down the hall. I looked up at the stairs, at all the white carpet between him and me, and felt my legs swollen with the heavy feeling of a coming cramp.

  The bedroom door was open and he was lying on the bed. His back was to me, the twisted sheets wrapped tight around him from neck to toe. He was still. I walked to the foot of the bed, but I had a fear of going all the way, of seeing his face, in case he wasn’t asleep but only tensed, waiting for me, his staring eyes gleaming out at nothing. I prodded him softly on the foot with the butt of the spear.

  He writhed a little and moaned a distant complaint from within his sleep. I saw the muscle of his shoulder and the curiously skimpy hair of his armpit. He propped a new pillow over his eyes and curled in on himself like a protesting child.

  I prodded him a second time and got no response. I swung the spear around.

  I didn’t poke him, it was just a tap, but he sat right up at last. In one motion both pillows were behind him and he was sitting up in bed as if prepared to take a coffee. His chest was hairless like a boy’s.

  He blinked at me. He seemed to be considering a serious but distant problem. “We got a beef here?” he asked finally.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He nodded, eyeing the spear-tip slowly, as if to let me know he was taking it in, and though he trusted me fully and bore no suspicions of my having anything but the best intentions, it was being accounted for as a weapon.

  “Get up,” I said. “You’re late for your appointment.”

  “What’s the time?”

  “Get up.”

  “You wanna toss me them clothes then?” I saw some folded stuff on a chair in the corner.

  “You can dress yourself,” I said.

  He shrugged, and then I saw his arms flex and he hauled himself out of bed all at once, in a rush, making a strong gesture of it. He was all naked. I didn’t want to see that, not at all. He was small and shrunken, but the way he stood, his hips directed toward me, it was like he figured I was motivated by some fetish. I saw myself as a petty torturer, making men show themselves to me, and felt the spear go loose in my hand.

  “The sheet,” I said, too loudly. He took his time dragging it loose. At last he wrapped himself and limped to the clothes. He picked them up in one hand, holding the sheet to his stomach, and then he paused.

  “I’m not sure how we do this,” he said. “Unless you wanna see some more.” He cracked a punishing, too-comfortable smile.

  “I’ll turn around,” I heard myself say.

  He looked at me silently; the idea seemed to have thrown him. Although the spear was just something I happened to have, a kind of benign suggestion, I thought he must’ve still had some idea of disarming me. I stood in the corner of the room with my face to the wall and dared him to. I figured it was against his code, if my back was turned—and soon he was dressed. I turned back and he was wearing a T-shirt an
d track pants.

  “Not like that,” I said. “You want something nice for today, sir.”

  “It’s just a checkup on the . . .” But he left himself unfinished.

  “You never know where we might go,” I said brightly. “A well-dressed man is prepared for anything.”

  Reluctantly he stripped down to his boxers. Once again I turned my face away, and although my nerves were near paralysis in confusion and dread, I whistled a happy tune. At last we stood in front of his closet, the master and valet, and chose him an outfit for the day.

  His closet was a good one, and deep. I was surprised at its neatness and arrangement. Everything hung in rows from dark to light, and the swath of blacks separated solid and striped. Only the shoes were haphazard, covering the floor unpaired and upended, like a harbor full of boating accidents. His suits were mostly all business: they agreed with the team’s faceless aesthetic, but seemed to be held together by a classical sensibility. There were shoehorns and a collection of pocket handkerchiefs. There was a suit the color of honey butter that I imagined being worn poolside at a British country estate, while women in austere swimsuits came lightly across the lawn, nonplussing the butler by carrying their own towels. He saw me looking and reached for it.

  “Not that,” I said. “Where’s your draft suit?”

  I started leafing through the back row, looking for some kind of loud embarrassment. I figured his racks would hold at least a couple suits like the ones you see on draft night, the garish payday eyesores the more flamboyant lottery picks wear, in turquoise or cherry red, celebratory and regrettable as so many neon cocktails.

  “This here,” he said. He pulled out a light-gray suit so conservative it looked like some ticker tape might slip out of the pocket. I imagined Antonia’s father nodding in approval and offering Calyph his first Rolex as a reward for not embarrassing his future family on television.

  “Very nice,” I said. “But let’s find something the ladies might like a bit more. You never know when a nice juicy, loose one might go by.”

  At the very end of the row was a white suit with pinstripes of faint silver. I pulled on one of its sleeves approvingly.

  “That don’t fit me no more,” he said, his jaw clenching around the words.

  I said I thought we could give it a try.

  The suit didn’t seem so tight on him, but he struggled with it, and I wondered if he wasn’t playing up his injury a little as he pulled on the snow-bright pants. “Where’s your white hat?” I asked as I watched him buckle laboriously.

  At last he stood before the mirror in the crisp suit of the pimp. His face was haggard with the morning, and a little seed of sleep still notched his eye. I came up and brushed one of his lapels to give him some confidence. “Very nice,” I said, handing him his cane. “A real lady’s man.”

  His suffering eyes watched me in the mirror. “Where to now?”

  “I want to show you my room,” I said. He’d still never seen it, and I wondered if he knew what a cell it was, how degrading.

  “Sure,” he said, in a tired, beaten voice. “But hey. We don’t need that thing. We can just go like we are.”

  “What thing?” I asked brightly, letting the spear dip a little in my hand.

  “That weapon you holding on me,” he said. “If that’s what you’re doing.”

  I jerked the spear up defensively. I didn’t want to acknowledge it was a real iron thing held against him. It was only a sort of emblem, of his sins against his faith and his code. While I held it, I’d have the power. It was simple. Holding it, I could show him what he’d done very clearly and simply, like I couldn’t in words.

  “It’s not like that at all,” I said.

  “No?” His voice seemed to grow a little stronger, now that the spear had been spoken of.

  “I’m just holding it,” I said.

  “It’s pointed at me,” he said, in a stronger voice still, tinged with mock confusion.

  I almost told him that it wasn’t, that it wasn’t pointing at him or wasn’t a spear at all, but I could hear how it would sound, the absurdity, and how it would feel to plead for him to obey me without mentioning the instrument of his subservience.

  “It’s meant for throwing,” he said. “You ever throw a spear?”

  “In a play.”

  “A real one?”

  “I made it real.”

  “Yeah? Well you want to heave this one? Let it fly off the balcony maybe?”

  “Maybe later,” I said. My voice was shaking a little.

  “You don’t gotta hold that on me, Jess,” he said, looking me in the eyes now, with his infuriating face, that summoned dignity easily even in disgrace. “I get what you think I done. I get why you mad. You don’t need a spear to show me. Let’s just give it a toss and then, what the fuck, we’ll talk about it. Okay?”

  I tried to stay wary, but his voice lulled me. I could feel my command and my invention falling away, and it seemed now that he was giving me an out. This toss was almost the only way I could think of now to get the spear away from me, to edge back into some kind of regular life. We turned to the sliding door beyond the half-shut curtain.

  “After you,” I said, and he drew open the door easily and limped out ahead of me onto the balcony. The sound of birds came at me through the morning wet, their cries like the far-off turn of a winch.

  As I stepped to the door, I saw it all unfolding. I saw him standing aside, arms spread wide, convincing me of his passivity and benevolence. I saw him telling me how to throw the spear, coaxing it onto my shoulder. I saw myself standing in the doorway, backing up partway into the room to get a full stride—even measuring out the steps on a practice heave. I felt the spear in my hand, flopping heavily at its ends, and knew how pitiful this great warrior heave would be. But I saw myself imprisoned by this fate, and by his coaxing, unavoidably. I saw myself already striding forward, pivoting into the heave with my sad, stringy arms. I saw the spear release and dive, and heard it clang down pathetically on the patio below.

  Before the sound had died away he’d be on me. I could hear his curses and feel myself go under. I could taste his black fists on me. He could probably lift and hurl me off the balcony easily enough—I’d sail as far as the spear. And all the while he’d be talking. I imagined him telling me how it was with Odette, to infuriate me, or defending himself with righteousness and great skill, so even as I was being beaten I would begin to regret my hasty judgment, to feel that his code remained unbroken, his noble faith unsquandered. As the blood filled my mouth I would come to see how right he was to take Odette in, to prove to himself how much he loved his own wife. Of course it’d been that way, I’d decide; it made sense now. I’d hear it all, and wish yet again to switch places with him, and I’d think of how even this, the thrashing of a small man who’d stepped beyond himself, would just be a savage little blip in his life, and then I would think of my own shriveled, duplicitous existence scrolling automatically forward without reward or meaning.

  So, even though it was a small and pathetic thing, next to this culmination, I just locked him out there. He heard the sound of the door in its runner and turned and tried to get himself in the gap, but his knee failed him and he fell heavily against the pane. His hands flashed out and scrabbled against the glass, but I shut the door and clicked the lock in place.

  I knelt to where he was, and we looked at one another through the glass.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said.

  His face broke open a little then, into helplessness and pleading, and there wasn’t any nobility anymore, just youth and fatigue and the premonition of his lasting discomfort. For an instant I felt I’d won, that I’d found myself an out in a last flash of intuition, but I knew it wouldn’t last, that in another second all I would find to wish for was that it’d been someone else who’d imprisoned him, so I could be the blameless one, to come and rescue him, and get his thanks.

  9

  Driving back to town, I was sure
helicopters would descend at any moment and beat the air above me into sound. I waited for the megaphone blast, the distorted voice from the heavens and its orders. I thought about how I’d always had an affinity for Canada and hoped to spend more time there. I thought of big empty Nunavut, of whether there were outlaw communities on Hudson Bay, of the beauty of Vancouver and what a shame it was they had to draft Steve Francis and Big Country Reeves and fail until they turned into Memphis. But I’d like it there, as I liked all places where the cold discouraged people from achieving anything for large parts of the year. Goat wouldn’t be some towering figure in my life. Driving for him in Toronto would be like driving for some young fop who’d once had a hit song on the radio. I’d buy him car wax and mustache wax, and adopt all his lesser vices for my own, for the sake of companionship, and in hopes of someday despising his greater ones less.

  After that, there could even be Europe. I saw the crumbling stone of some old seat of culture, the violet hour in a Belgian village, and the lights of cafés glistening on the water in Greece. For a moment it seemed like a tour that could go on almost endlessly, as inexhaustible as Goat’s gradual decline through worse and worse leagues and my own capacity for reinvention. And then I reached the city I lived in, and realized I didn’t know which exit to take, to get to where I ought to decide to be going.

  I’d taken the Mazda, to show I wasn’t going rogue or anything. I blew north along the east bank, postponing my decision, thinking I might lose myself awhile on Hayden Island, or in the anonymous Couve. But coming up to Broadway, I saw the signs for event parking and pulled onto the ramp.