Chapter 4
Chapter Four
T he pickleball crowd was out in full force that night. By the time I got there, the courts were already overflowing with players. In the summer heat, you had to go really early or really late in the day to avoid the peak potency of the sun.
Luckily, Janet got there early and put her paddle in the queue, saving our place in line. I found her sitting on a bench, then plopped down beside her. “You abandoned me.”
“Technically, you abandoned me,” Janet pointed out. “You and Ralph left me there by myself.”
“They took me away in an ambulance,” I said. It was a good excuse.
“Paddles up!” Mable, one of the regulars, waved us over. Each game was played to eleven, two against two. The winning pair stayed on the court to play the next challenger, while the losers were banished back to the benches.
Janet and I lined up on one side. Mabel and her partner, Dick, on the other. “You need a warm-up first?” Mabel called over the net.
“Sure,” I said. “Just a couple of swings to get loose.” I was probably going to need more swings than a couple. After going home and changing, I had tried taking a nap. But between the nightmares about cattle stampedes and drowning in a red sea of paint, it was hard to get any rest.
Turning to Janet, I said, “You were supposed to meet us at the hospital.”
Janet leaned over in a ready position, twirling her paddle in her hand. “I would have met you at the hospital if my car hadn’t gotten stuck in the mud.”
Mabel swatted the ball over the net toward me, and I swatted it back.
“Your car got stuck?” Dick volleyed the ball toward Janet.
“Yes.” Janet tapped it back. “Which is exactly what I told you would happen, but you wouldn’t let me move my car, so everything is your fault.”
I scrambled to my left to slice a backhand toward Mabel. “You could have called at least. Checked in on me.”
Janet had to retreat to chase down a lob. “I did call.” The ball rolled out of bounds, breaking the flow of play.
I had checked my phone at least a dozen times. Janet’s number never showed. I was sure of it.
“You two ready to get your butts whipped?” Mabel tossed the perforated pickleball from one hand to the other, a wicked grin on her face. Mabel was well known throughout Central Florida pickleball circles as a notorious trash talker, despite her advanced age of seventy-two. “I hope you two put your big girl panties on today because Dick and I aren’t messing around.”
“Well, technically, we are messing around,” said Dick. “But you know what she means.” He playfully swatted Mabel’s butt with his paddle. Ironically, I was the one who first introduced Dick and Mabel during a lesson over at the Senior Center. They hit it off right away and had been together ever since.
“You serve first.” Mabel threw the ball over the net to Janet.
Janet got into position. “In fact, I called you about ten times.”
I lined up behind the baseline beside her. “The only calls I had last night were from “Unknown Number.” About ten of them.
Janet bounced the ball on the ground to serve. “That’s because I had to use another phone.”
WHACK.
The ball sailed over the net, and Dick smacked it back at me. Besides the trash talking, Dick and Mabel were also renown for their lethal strokes. Dick was a “banger”, shooting balls hard and fast. Mabel was more of a “dinker”, playing low and slow. Together, they made a formidable opponent.
“Whose phone did you use?” The ball landed right in front of me and I started the forward motion of my swing.
“Jack’s.”
THWACK!
My shot sailed over the net, over Mable, over the fence, and into the retention pond next to the parking lot. “You used Jack’s phone?”
“He let me borrow it. Since mine was stuck in the mud.”
“How did you get both your car and your phone stuck in the mud?”
“How Mary? Well, let’s see. Maybe because my best friend insisted I go to some stupid high school reunion in the middle of nowhere with insufficient parking. So I had to park my car in the middle of a cow field which turned into mud as soon as it rained. And then when I called a tow truck I slipped and my phone went flying. But it was dark so I couldn’t see anything and now my phone’s gone.”
“You two okay?” Mabel looked over in concern.
“We’re fine. Your serve.” I tossed Mabel a new ball and settled into position.
As Mabel served the ball toward me, Janet said, “I’m just glad Jack was there to rescue me.”
The ball bounced, and I swung hard, completely missing.
“One nil!” Mabel called. In pickleball, you only get points when you serve.
“So Jack helped you get your car out of the mud?” I asked.
“Not exactly.” Janet said. “It was stuck pretty good. We called a tow truck on the ride home.”
“Ride home?”
“Yeah, Jack drove me home. Thank goodness he was there.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, Jack Thompson drove Janet home? I didn’t know what to think. Surely, he was just being nice, except Jack Thompson wasn’t nice, Jack Thomson was evil incarnate. Wasn’t he?
We continued playing, blocking and parrying, dinking and banging. During an intense rally, I had to duck to avoid Dick’s forehand giving me a lobotomy. We exchanged another round of serves and another round of points. Mabel smashed a line drive forehand, and I completely whiffed. I was off my game, distracted by what Janet told me about Jack. Turns out, she was just warming up.
“Did you know he never got married?” asked Janet.
I picked myself up off the pavement after tripping over my paddle. “I saw he wasn’t wearing a ring when he was checking me for damages. How do you know he’s never been married?”
“He told me when we stopped for coffee.”
“You stopped for coffee?”
“I bought him a coffee for helping me out.”
Janet lobbed the ball over Mabel’s head. “Although drinking caffeine that late probably wasn’t a good idea because then we were up for hours.”
Mabel chased down Janet’s ball and hit it back. I watched helplessly as the ball bounced right between my legs for another point. “Hours?”
Janet shrugged. “Just a few. Then he drove me home.” Janet returned the next serve, clearly oblivious to my inner torment. Surely she didn’t spend all that extra time with Jack on purpose?
The ball landed deep on my side and bounced high. I smashed it back at Mable as hard as I could. Somehow, Mabel got to the ball in time and sent a blistering shot back. I barely got my paddle positioned in time to protect my crotch.
“You okay over there?” asked Janet. “You seem a little off.”
She was right. Not only was I was off my game, I was out of my mind. After what happened at the reunion the previous night, and then what happened with Gary Wright earlier that day, my mental health was on life support. Janet telling me about spending time with Jack Thompson wasn’t helping.
Not that I was jealous. Of course I wasn’t jealous. There was no way Jack would be interested in someone like Janet, so there was nothing to be jealous about. Janet was too innocent and nice for someone like Jack. It would be like a shark dating one of those cute little Dorie fish from Finding Nemo .
After the next point, we switched sides, and I switched the subject. “Guess who I saw today?” I asked Janet.
Janet dinked to Mabel. “Who?”
“Gary.”
“Gary who?”
Mabel dinked it back.
“Gary Wright.”
The ball deflected off Janet’s paddle higher than she expected and Mabel pounced, blasting it back at her feet. The ball went straight through Janet’s legs for another point.”
“I hired him to paint Aunt Catherine’s house. He told me to tell you hi.” It occurred to me in that moment that we never found a hooking up prospect for Janet during the reunion. Perhaps …
“Well tell him I said hi too.”
“I’ll do that.” Maybe after I figured out what I wanted to do about Jack, I could revisit my original plan to hook up Janet. And this time I had a potential target.
With the two of us distracted, Dick and Mabel were true to their word. They whipped our butts. Nothing like getting your ass kicked by senior citizens to finish your day.
Touché Universe. Touché.
* * *
After pickleball, Janet and I said our goodbyes and then I went home and showered. After changing into my pajamas, the pair with the grumpy cat on the front, sticking the middle finger of its paw up, I realized I was hungry, so I called Ralph.
“Hello?” Ralph sounded tired.
“Hey it’s me.”
“Me who?” Irritated too. Ralph was in one of his moods.
I said, “I thought you were going to stop by and check in on me? Make sure I wasn’t still suffering from cow trauma.”
“Are you still suffering? From cow trauma?”
“A little.” I rearranged the pillow that was jabbing me in the back. “On your way over, can you stop by the Thai place?”
“I never said I was coming over. And if I was, that’s out of the way. Plus, I don’t like Thai food.”
“Make sure you get extra pineapple in the pineapple fried rice. Love you!”
While I was waiting for Ralph to deliver dinner, I dug out my old yearbook from the closet, flipping through the senior class pictures. I found the “T’s”. Specifically, “Thompson”. More specifically, “Thompson, Jack”.
His perfect smile, perfect skin, perfect face stared up at me from the page. Every high school has one. Captain of the football team. Prom king. Voted best looking, most athletic, and most likely to succeed. All the girls want him. All the guys want to be him. That guy at our school was Jack.
So … I have a confession to make. Back in high school, I was kind of a stalker. Truth be told, I was obsessed. My teenage hormones worked overtime 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I did everything I could to get close to him. Was he out of my league? Of course he was. Did it matter? No. I even tried out for cheerleading. Can you imagine? Me being cheerful? I only did it to get close to Jack.
As I flipped through the yearbook, a picture of prom caught my eye. There was Jack. With Ashley Griffin. The crowned king standing arm in arm with his witch, I mean, queen. Every high school has one of her too. Captain of the cheerleading squad. Boobs like a swimsuit model. The girl voted most likely to marry some rich, wrinkled old guy and then smother him in his sleep.
Ashley must have known what I was up to back then. As squad leader, she put me on top of the cheer pyramid during practice. And then her cronies, Heather and Britney, “accidentally” dropped me. I was on crutches for the rest of the season.
My brain held hostage by bygone memories, I never heard Ralph come in to my apartment. He saw the yearbook open in my lap. “That can’t be good. Please tell me you’re not still obsessing about Jack.”
“Me? Obsessing? Don’t be ridiculous.” I needed an alibi fast. On the yearbook page opposite the prom pictures, there was a group photo of the chess club after they won some sort of prize. Gary Wright was in the picture, so I said, “I was looking up Gary Wright.”
Ralph cocked an eyebrow. “The dungeon master?”
“Dungeon master?” Now my eyebrow raised. After twenty years, thankfully, most of high school, other than Jack Thompson, was a blur. I had almost forgotten that Janet had made us join the Dungeons and Dragons club senior year.
I slid over on the couch and Ralph settled in beside me. We flipped through the pages until we found a group photo under the heading, “Dungeons and Dragons Club.” There I was, in some sort of green tunic and aluminum foil armor, holding a wooden axe in one hand and my crutches in the other. I also had a horned helmet on my head like an acne-faced viking.
“Remember?” Ralph pointed at the picture. “Janet was Periwinkle Bumblefoot, the kindhearted halfling. I was Gwain Goodfellow, the lovable bard. And you were …” Ralph rubbed his chin and looked sideways contemplatively. “Who were you again?”
For the record, Ralph was being an asshole. He knew exactly who I was. He just wanted to hear me say it.
“Gronk,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Gronk,” I said again. “A half-orc barbarian.”
“Oh, yes.” Ralph’s glee turned to euphoria. “With the pink magic shield.”
“It wasn’t pink, it was purple,” I growled.
Ralph continued thumbing through the yearbook. “Hard to believe Gary’s a painter now. I always figured he’d end up a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon or something.”
“Yeah, well, he may have been one of the smart kids back in high school, but he’s a real screwup now. The next time I see him, I’m going to fire him.” If anyone deserved to be fired, it was Gary Wright. Dumping paint all over me. Trampling my sod. Running up my electric bill. Not to mention, painting my greige wall red! I had already been through five painters. What was one more?
I closed the yearbook and buried it in the back of my closet. The past was the past, and that’s the way I intended to keep it. No more thinking about Jack. And certainly no more thinking about Gary.
For the rest of the night, Ralph and I ate pineapple fried rice and watched scary movies. After Ralph went home, I admit I pulled out my yearbook again. I flipped to the back, where friends and acquaintances scrawled farewell messages. I found Jack’s message. On the very last day of school, he had come over to me and asked if he could sign it. For some reason, I said yes. I stared at it for what seemed like hours. Despite all my best efforts, Jack Thompson still haunted my head.
I’m sorry
Jack