5
I couldn’t sleep that night, my mind was racing so much.
I thought about the story Mr.Bauer had told at dinner and imagined it first from his perspective, his having stumbled onto the very last person he’d have ever dreamed of seeing again, let alone capturing, and whom, it was obvious to me now, he had killed.
He must have thought that God Himself had gifted him with such perfect revenge—for serving up this soldier, out of the millions, upon whom to inflict retribution, to balance the scales.
And yet what sort of God arranged fate thus? Was God on the side of Mr.Bauer, I wondered, or was that only Mr.Bauer’s god? Because then I thought of it from the Nazi’s perspective.
Tied up before these American servicemen, one of whom spoke perfect German, whom he recalled he’d once beaten, and who was now raising a rifle at his head.
Was God punishing him? he must have asked himself.
If this was his fate, whom in this great struggle did the Lord favor? And what of the other soldier, the one standing by Mr.Bauer’s side?
Did he have misgivings, or egg Mr.Bauer on?
Did he watch everything as I had, silently, when we put Pilchard on the train? Was it not better, at such a moment, to be Mr.Bauer? To act instead of stand idly by? At least there was some conviction in acting.
Oh, those moments during that year when I stood paralyzed before that of which I could not speak, that which rendered me silent! Oh, my fury that previous morning, at Boyd, staring at the ceiling lights and torquing Kepplemen’s neck as he lay clutched to me in turn.
“You’ve got to move,” Kepplemen would scream at me during practice.
“ You’ve got to move.” Yet there we lay, strangely embraced and still.
Yet here I lay, in the dark, thinking about all these things—about the story, finally, the man at Sheep Meadow had told us.
Was that the meaning of life: that some people tried to kill things while others tried to save them? Was that what Oren understood? Were you always on one side, or did you daily pick sides anew? Did Oren feel like I’d abandoned him somehow? Was that why I felt so guilty? And if that pigeon had managed to soar free, would it soon forget this brush with death? Or would the sky forever be a greater joy?
It was the thing I hadn’t realized I’d hoped for—my relief was so immense—to see Pilchard enter Boyd’s front hall Monday morning, safe and alive.
He walked past the pews, the circles beneath his eyes darker than usual, but he was otherwise unscathed.
He caught me looking at him, looking for him, although neither of us did more than acknowledge the other with a glance.
Tanner, seated to my left, sat watching the front doors, oblivious to our exchange.
Like me, Cliff also gave Pilchard the stare down, but before Pilchard registered his presence, Kepplemen appeared and intercepted him, and after cupping Pilchard’s cheek in his palm and touching his temple to his in greeting, he walked him the rest of the way down the hall and out of our sight, speaking to him with a hand clamped to his neck.
I didn’t see Pilchard again until that afternoon, in the locker room, ahead of practice, while everyone changed, and Kepplemen, who was checking my weight—I was six pounds over and we had a dual meet on Thursday—let me have it.
“How the fuck are you gonna lose this, Griffin?” Before I could answer, he said, “Put on a rubber suit and don’t leave practice till you cut half.” There was an extra dose of wrath in his voice.
It carried over to practice, where he singled me out during drills.
“Don’t you quit,” he shouted at me as we did stand-up escapes, “don’t you dare wimp out.” To conclude practice we ran stairs, twenty-five flights in sets of five, and as further punishment he made me lead the team.
After the third set, I was so gassed I had to drop to the back of the line.
As punishment for this, he ordered I do two more sets on my own.
Later, in the locker room, I sat trying to pull the tape off my rubber suit’s wrists, but my hands were shaking so much I had to use my teeth.
By now the place was emptying out, the last to shower were leaving, and having disrobed, I weighed myself.
I had lost nearly three pounds, but Coach was nowhere to be seen to deliver the report.
I returned to the bench and sat disconsolately, listening to the showers hiss, watching the steam crawl along the ceiling, nursing my disappointment and mourning the dinner I’d have to skip.
Then Pilchard appeared at his locker.
He must’ve just weighed himself because he too was naked—he could not have been more than a hundred pounds in clothes, his ribs were so pronounced he looked like he’d swallowed a claw clip, and his cock, which amazed us all, hung thickly between his quads like a bell clapper from a nautical rope.
From his locker he tossed me a towel and said, “Here,” forlornly.
Before I could decline the gift, he retrieved another, wrapping it around his waist and entering the showers.
“Thanks,” I called to him.
Then I shouldered the towel and followed.
I was of a mind to say something to him; I felt so guilty for what had happened over the weekend I wanted to apologize.
There were nine showerheads evenly spaced on three of the room’s four walls, and Pilchard stood under the jet directly across from the entrance with his back to me, his palms pressed to the tiles, as far as possible from Kepplemen, who was showering too.
He stood in the near corner, to my right, but outside the spray, so entirely lathered with suds that he looked like a statue dusted in snow.
The dark room was densely fogged.
The water parted Pilchard’s hair and sluiced down his back and tiny buttocks.
And then he looked over his shoulder at me.
He appeared almost surprised to see me there.
He blinked, his lashes wet, and then glanced at Coach and back at me again—I could not read his expression.
For a moment I thought he wanted to tell me something.
Kepplemen stepped beneath the head, the water peeling suds from his body that splatted against the floor tiles.
His eyes were closed; they’d been closed, I thought, since I’d entered.
He kept them closed when he said, “We’ll check your weight in the morning.” And though I was versed in his subtext, though I knew this meant I was dismissed, I said to Pilchard, “You ready to split?” To which he, taking my hint, said, “Sure.” We dressed quickly after drying ourselves.
On the bus later, just before he got off to catch the crosstown east, I told him I’d wash the towel he’d lent me and bring it back tomorrow.
He said not to worry about it and rang the bell.
He exited, and I felt relief that neither Cliff nor Tanner was here to see any of this, which did not eclipse my satisfaction that Pilchard and I were now officially square.
The next morning Dad appeared in our room to wake us.
He turned on our television and, with something like excitement, said, “John Lennon was murdered last night!” In his hand he held a spatula covered with scrambled eggs.
He gestured with it toward the screen.
“Tragic,” he said.
Then he sucked some eggs off the blade.
“Shot right outside his apartment,” he noted while he chewed.
“At the Dakota.” Even through my fogginess, I could tell that he wanted to be the first to deliver this news, that by hearing it from him he believed he was somehow attached to the event.
That it touched him with just a bit of its dark glamour.
It was, I was coming to realize, one of his character flaws: aping pathos, he flipped it to bathos.
Not that I’d have been so articulate about it back then.
Thursday’s match was against Saint Paul’s School, in Garden City.
It was, by reputation, a shitty program with a bunch of fishes, but because I was so depleted after making weight—I’d sucked my final three pounds in a single day—I could neither bring myself to warm up with any intensity nor summon the ferocity necessary to win.
With an additional week of preparation, I might have matched my opponent’s velocity, but I was instead subject to his hummingbird speed.
His fireman’s carry I saw coming but could not stop.
His Half Nelson series was executed with a relentlessness I could not counter.
A lesson.
This was a lesson, I thought, after he did a stand-up escape, turned, and shot a double leg, and took me down.
And then the most shameful resignation came over me as he rammed his head into my ribs to secure a cradle.
I could’ve kicked open his grip and freed myself.
I could have prolonged the contest rather than allow myself to be muscled over.
But instead I bucked on my back with just enough power to appear as if I were actually fighting.
Until finally the ref smacked the foam rubber and it was over—which was all I wanted.
In short, I tanked.
I walked off the mat to the shoulder pats of my teammates, with the exception of Kepplemen, whose disgust with me manifested in total disregard and was as hot as mine was for him.
There was a confrontation coming.
I was certain of it from the end of the match until the ride back to Boyd— Fuck you, I thought, and fuck this season —but it did not materialize.
I hopped off the bus before my stop and got two slices at Pizza Joint.
I dusted these with garlic, Parmesan, and red pepper flakes and allowed myself to taste everything.
I drank a large Coke to wash it down, and I was sugar-flooded, carbo-loaded.
I didn’t give a shit if I lost, and if I wanted to pig out now, what of it?
So that to see Naomi parked there before Juilliard was like dessert.
The dome light of the Mercedes illuminated its interior.
Beneath it, contained within it, Naomi seemed to float, suspended above the street.
She was reading the Daily News, the paper covering the steering wheel.
I hadn’t seen her since the tournament at Friends Academy, since that night I’d showered at her house.
When I knocked on her window, her face revealed more than pleasant surprise, and it filled me with anticipation.
The moment I took my seat, she pulled me into her arms.
Coffee, perfume, her bangles’ clink, how her hair, in its light caress, seemed almost prehensile.
“It’s been forever,” Naomi said as she smushed me to her.
She started the car.
“Tell me everything, tell me how you’ve been, how was your day?”
This was the first time I recall ever wanting to kiss her.
She drove and, when she found a parking space and cut the engine, the evening’s privacy settled on us.
There shined through the windshield that sea-cave light of far-off streetlamps, projected onto the long garage’s bare brick wall that lined one side of our secret place.
That lake of blackness to our right rimmed by the West Side Highway also enclosed us.
I had so much to tell her, but she wanted to kiss me too, and when we did it seemed that we might somehow burrow into each other, the force with which she pressed herself to me was so great and which I returned in kind.
“Do you want to go in back?” she whispered, and although I didn’t know exactly what she meant, didn’t completely understand what it implied, I knew it meant more and I said yes.
Naomi nodded at this, assenting, at once resigned and joyful, and I felt older somehow.
She was about to open her door but then giggled and turned to kiss me again.
And then a police car’s lights flashed red, white, and blue, its siren sounding a single note.
The interior was suddenly floodlit, and I froze.
Over the PA, the officer said, “Step out of the car, please,” and Naomi, at first frozen herself, exited but left the door open.
The squad car’s passenger window rolled down; its spotlight blinded me.
“You’re parked illegally,” the officer said to Naomi, and having raised my hand to cover my eyes and turn away, I noticed the hydrant outside my window.
Naomi’s back was to me.
After she said something to the officer, he replied, “Can I see your license, please?”
The other officer came around to my side.
He too shined a light in my face, then tapped the window with the butt of his baton.
“Step out of the car, please,” he said.
When I did, he asked, “Where do you live, young man?”
And in a moment, which I now look back on as fateful, I said, with something like surprise because the answer was so obvious, “In Great Neck.” And then: “Did my mom do something wrong?”
The cop holding her license glanced at his partner and nodded.
After the officers left, we found another parking spot farther up the street.
But the mood had altered.
For a long time, Naomi sat with her hands on the steering wheel, her arms stuck straight out, as if she were bracing for a crash.
“I should go,” she said, and started the car, but she instead resumed this pose and did not drive.
Lips puckered, she slowly exhaled.
“My heart’s still not beating normal,” she said.
She had the heat going and she sunk into her seat.
“Let me just calm down in a bit.” I picked up the newspaper and pressed it flat across my lap.
It was that famous picture of Lennon, the one that would become iconic, of the rock star in profile, about to enter his limousine and stopping to sign his new album for Mark David Chapman, who stood, head down, staring through his tinted lenses, his eyes visible because of the angle.
He looked vaguely familiar.
He appeared as if he was about to say something to Lennon—words of appreciation? Admiration?
What utterance, I wondered, could be more fraudulent than any of these, if later that night you were going to shoot that person in the back, playing at destiny when you were really nothing but a coward.
“Makes you think about the future,” Naomi said.
“Makes you think about the signs you don’t see.
Makes you think about love.”
The car was stuffy.
I’d cracked my window, and from the river a great horn sounded, it must’ve been a mighty ship, like a tanker.
Dad, who’d been in the navy, once told me that such a long blast alerted the crew that a journey was now under way, or it was what he called a “blind bend” signal—an alert to other vessels that might not see your approach.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I saw that man on the front page,” Naomi said, indicating Chapman, “and I thought about those times I watched The Nuclear Family with Danny and Jackie.
And all those billboards I saw for The Talon Effect.
And then seeing that movie with Sam and seeing you on screen.
And how before I met you, there you were, you were right there.
You know how Elliott says we have our backs to the future? I had no idea you were going to come into my life.
And now,” she concluded, with something like resignation, “I don’t know what to do about it.”