Chapter 20
To reach the game, and to save the hassle of navigating around DC, we took the Metro, the blue line, parking at the Van Dorn Street station, one of the last stops, and we rode in.
Lots of Washington Wizards jerseys, lots of tired people heading to and from work, lots of folks needing therapy.
Everyone watched Manny from the corner of their eye, wondering if he was an athlete they should know.
The Wizards played the Hornets—no superstars on either team, neither had realistic aspirations of the postseason, so the stadium was only two-thirds full. We sat at half court, ten rows back, and drank beer and ate hamburgers and fries.
I thought about calling Ronnie. Yeah, sorry Ron, the kid was adopted by a dog. But I didn’t know all the parts yet, and Piper slamming the door in my face and Theo barking at us made me think the bigger picture was something worth looking at longer. Besides, bad news should be delivered in person.
Indoor sporting events felt supernatural. Humanity took nature and concentrated it into a sensory explosion—soaring electronic music and bright lights and peak athleticism and delicious food. None of it found in nature, all of it enhanced. I loved it.
Some worshipped. They were attending their church, sitting in ‘pews’ and singing in unison to the same songs, worshiping the same religion, a cause bigger than themselves and tithing their money and getting euphoria in return.
At halftime, Manny said, “I’m thinking about Beck.”
“Not Dybantsa?”
“I offered to marry Beck. She said no,” said Manny.
“I remember.”
“So I told her, I would care for her through the pregnancy.”
The line of women in the seats directly ahead of us overhead him and grew still, poking each other. They’d been cooking up excuses to look back at us for the last quarter.
“You’re doing great at it,” I told him.
He snorted. “Obviously.”
“Sorry.”
"I think,” he said, “if I loved her, I would’ve taken unnecessary extra steps to convince her to marry me. Like you said.”
“She would’ve said yes, if you had.”
“But I didn’t. Which means I don’t love her,” he said.
“I think you do. You love her in excess. But not romantically. Not all of it.”
The women nudged each other. They weren’t in Manny’s league. No one was in Manny’s league. But they could dream.
“I loved sex with her,” said Manny. “Ay dios, that was good.”
“Mmkay.”
“But,” he said. “I still call her Beck. She’s not Noelle, she’s my partner. The level I love her, it’s a partnership. When I love her in access, I’m doing it as her colleague.”
He meant excess, but I let it slide.
“Beck deserves better than that. She deserves better than me.”
“No one deserves you, amigo,” I said.
“Don’t get romantic. I joked about a throuple but it wouldn’t work. Polyamory never works, even when people pretend. Pretending isn’t reality,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. “You pay attention.”
We left with ten minutes still to play. The noise and the lights, ugh, too much supernatural.
The women followed us out and invited us to a nearby bar for drinks.
They were closer to Manny’s league than I thought, and Manny accepted before I could decline, so we ended up at Dirty Habit, a place that looked like where rich villains would party, hiding from John Wick.
No personal questions were asked of us—they overheard Manny didn’t love his baby mama and that was enough.
Dancing and cocktails, and I was thrilled not to be single.
I would hate this hard sweaty work. In a break in the too-loud conversation, I hunted for wedding bands on Amazon.
When talk turned to drinks at one of the women’s apartment, Manny paid the check and we slipped out when they weren’t looking. Out the front door and around the corner in a hurry, walking toward the Metro stop, a clean getaway.
In the clear, we rode the Metro in silence and I felt the restless energy of Manny, like being too close to a power line, and I was reminded how much he’d given up, coming to Roanoke, sleeping on my floor, caring for Noelle.
He intentionally created a life that constricted him, a healthy good life, but he rubbed against the constraints occasionally and the friction hurt.
He was a man who could do anything, go anywhere, be with anyone, could take flight and soar.
But he chose work and simplicity and friendship.
Saying yes to lovely women wanting to buy him cocktails was like the tiger roaring in his cage. Maybe it was enough, maybe it wasn’t.
We detrained at Van Dorn Street, left the lights of the station, and strolled past the parking lot to our car in the alley.
Manny and I felt the disturbance at the same time on the sidewalk. Maybe it was the way our echoes soaked up wrong off the walls, or a shadow falling as it shouldn’t, or the heavier tree branches. Some alarm we couldn’t name.
Then a weird skittering sound and a rustle of leaves.
I pressed back against the brick wall, looking to my left.
Manny stepped into the road, kinda ducking, glancing to his right.
I looked up.
Animals fell on us. Heavy human animals, from the trees.
Some animals in full furry costume—a red fox with a giant cartoonish head, some kind of green bear with oversized eyes like Japanimation, a purple dog, and others.
Some cartoon heads were the huge kind the workers wore at Disney World, pretending to be Mickey Mouse.
A heavy man wore a gorilla mask with a collar and dark hairy shorts and gloves but was naked other than that.
A woman with a unicorn mask and a pink tail was dressed in sneakers and a bikini.
Others I couldn’t see, down the street, in shadows.
They’d waited in the trees and on the rooftops and lurked around the corner in ambush.
I guessed a dozen animals but it was happening fast, some holding bats.
The green bear landed on the Subaru ahead of us but his fuzzy slippers slid off the hood and he landed on his hip with a muffled yelp. He grabbed Manny around the ankles and Manny reached for the pistol under his shirt but the big guy in a gorilla mask snagged Manny’s arm, holding him tight.
Down the street we heard a crash and glass breaking. They were attacking my car.
The unicorn girl shouted something I couldn’t hear and she swung a bat at me with both hands. I was off-guard and surprised and the bat landed against my shoulder when I didn’t react fast enough and the nerves in my arm shook and went numb.
The animals howled their own mammal-specific noises. Barking and growling and high-pitched hyena-like laughter.
Manny kicked loose of the green bear’s grip but the fox leapt onto his shoulders from behind and they collapsed in a furry heap.
The unicorn swung her bat again but I caught the barrel, slapping against the flat of my palms and I held tight.
I couldn’t see her face but her whole body tried to tug it free.
Something hit the back of my head and I fell, still holding the girl’s wooden bat, and I discerned a blue dragon beyond, also holding a bat, like they’d raided the baseball section at a sporting goods store.
Car alarms squealed. Someone in a leopard leotard jammed a knife into my tires and the compressed air whooshed out.
On my back, I yanked hard on the baseball bat and the unicorn lost her balance and tripped.
She fell onto my chest in time for the dragon to accidentally clunk her in the head with his bat.
I ripped the bat out of the unicorn’s hands and rammed the grip’s knob into the dragon’s groin, and the man inside grunted and staggered.
I spotted Manny rise from the furry pile holding the red fox in a fireman’s carry.
He flung the fox across the alley, where he/it crashed into a little Chevy Volt, and another car alarm began chirping.
Manny could reach his gun but chose not to—he went after the big gorilla with his hands.
The gorilla had fifty pounds on Manny, thick with muscle, an unfair fight but Manny was his own kind of animal.
Manny kicked the gorilla’s knee and rocked his head back with a good uppercut but the mask absorbed much of the blow.
He gathered behind a left-hand hook to the gorilla’s kidney, a loud smack, which drove the guy to one knee, but the green bear jumped on Manny’s head from behind.
I rolled away from the unicorn and stood in time to throw my arms up to deflect another swing of the dragon’s bat. He cracked my forearm, which hurt. The unicorn clawed at my pant leg, and if she hadn’t been a woman I would’ve stomped on her mask.
A loud aroooooooo bounced off the walls, a signal, like a wolf howling, and someone shouted, “Let’s go!”
The dragon took a final swing at me but I swung back. The wooden bats met in the middle, like lightsabers, and the awful impact rang the bones in my hands. The dragon wore gloves but he screamed and dropped the bat and he fled down the alley cradling both hands.
Manny, surrounded by injured retreating animals like a Safari hunter, drew his Glock, raised the gun into the air, and fired twice. Two loud pistol cracks and the animals ran quicker. Manny kicked the gorilla in the head as the guy tried to rise and he collapsed, unconscious.
I stepped on the unicorn to keep her from getting up. She whimpered and tried to wriggle free but I was angry and not in the mood, so I pressed harder.
Over the car alarms, I heard approaching sirens. My lungs were hot and I sucked in air and spat out fur. My hands, arms, and head were ringing.
All but two of the attackers escaped us, Manny and I not interested in giving chase. We each held a culprit in custody, one gorilla, one unicorn.
Down the alley, parked under a streetlamp, my trusty Honda settled on deflated tires. All four windows had been shattered, the windshield crunched inward, and the doors dented so bad I didn’t know if they’d open, plus a bucket of blue paint had been poured onto the hood and down the exposed dash.
“This,” I panted, “is the dumbest thing that’s ever happened.”