Chapter 6. Let Down, Hanging Around
Let Down, Hanging Around
We were in Winston-Salem for a new tournament at a newly-built condo resort. Michael was seeded second, his highest seeding ever at an important event. Another Friday night lay ahead . . . he had night practice scheduled; I had errands to run, laundry to attend to. Something had to break. Standing in front of the mirror, alone in our room, I pulled my logo’ed T-shirt (we were all in the Italian camp) off over my head with one hand and stared at myself, the clutter of the room—a strew of towels, rackets, shopping bags—reflected back at me. The phone rang for the third time and for the third time I did not answer it. My bare arms and midriff were still trim and shapely, still free of brands, no legal obligations tattooed there. No chains or jewelry, no chains of love or money.
Throwing on a thick sweater and jeans, applying my mascara quite heavily, I went out, thus armored, to the lobby and called for a cab. I took it to nearby Calvert University—I had thought of going to school there at one time—and walked around campus; past couples ambling arm-in-arm, push-pulling closer then apart with each stride; past rowdy frat boys clutching beer cans, hepped up and looking for action. Everyone ignored me. Fall was in the twilight air, and it was dark and inky under the trees and around the quad buildings though still robin's egg blue far above. The old-fashioned street lamps posted around campus had just come to life, shimmering mysteriously, their glass globes hovering together in triplets, mystical messengers from another time and place sent to reveal their secrets if one only knew how to unlock them. I walked into the library, now lit-up and beckoning with its own amber glow, and wandered through the stacks, running my fingertips pensively over the books, leaning over the mezzanine railing at one point, looking down on the main reference room, on the non-party crowd sprawled over their books. Everyone looked young. My father once told me that my college years would be the happiest of my life, and I was depressed to think that the best was already behind me; it certainly seemed so tonight. I didn’t belong here, either. Dejected and cold, I decided to go to the student union center, get a cup of coffee, then head back.
Turning from the cashier at the student union café, pausing to take a sip of the hot coffee, my eyes rested momentarily on a young man sitting alone studying in a booth by the exit. He was plugged into a cassette player either to ease his melancholia at being reduced to publicly studying on a Friday night, kicked out again by his roommate’s shenanigans, or to shield himself from the noise of the group fooling around on the other side of the room, the only other inhabitants of the place. Eventually he felt my gaze on him. He looked up and I could see he realized I wasn’t a student, but there was no other sign of recognition of my place in the world in his eyes. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t summon up the lines adequately. So I approached him. “Hi, I’m visiting here. Do you mind if I sit down for a minute?”
Surprise ran across his face as if someone had walked by and casually tossed a hundred-dollar bill in his lap. And I liked that, that surprise; I was sick of the aggressively self-assured. He pulled the headphones off his head, took his feet off the seat across from him, and asked me my name.
“Sally,” I lied.
“Hey, Sally. Jeff. Have a seat.”
Jeff was very fair, with light blue-gray eyes, his hair center-parted and hanging behind his ears. The near invisibility of his eyebrows gave him a permanently startled expression, although that could be attributed to the situation in which he now found himself. He was rigged out in typical campus gear: baggy short-sleeve print shirt, jeans, track shoes.
After we got to talking, Jeff eventually gathered up his courage. “There’s nothing going on here—never is,” he complained. “But there’s some sort of Oktoberfest-thing going on out near Bethabara; do you wanna check it out?”
For the first time that night my personal security was threatened. Prior to this point, I could’ve just walked away at any time and no harm done. I looked at him blankly.
“It’s not that far,” he assured me.
“Well, it isn't that; how would we get there?”
This was no problem; he had some sort of motorbike he proudly announced. This was the selling point, obviously, for going out to Beth-a-whatever. His bike to him was his ace up his sleeve.
It was getting late, and I needed to start thinking about heading home. There was no argument one could even make for hitching a ride into the void of a dangerous unknown. But, but . . . if I went back now, the only thing waiting for me was a mountain of laundry to send out; and, later, a sore, silent Michael. I couldn't face it.
“Well, okay . . . Let’s go,” I smiled.
“Awesome!” Jeff pounded his fist on the table and sprung up.
A few minutes later, out on the highway, on Jeff's motorcycle heading up Route 67, we sped away from campus in a fit of defiance; our bodies exposed to the danger and romance of the open road, or the end of the road—my hair streaming out behind me waving our independence like a flag. Latched tightly behind Jeff, with my arms wrapped around his waist, the feel of some other man’s body, the movement of his muscles under my hands as he steered the bike, was strange and exhilarating. Here were two temporary escapees on a dangerous collision course. But far better to risk the ride than suffer a slow suffocation.
We drove to the fair, however, without incident or accident. After carefully parking the bike, we wandered around the booths and stands, their trappings extra gaudy in the carnival lights, and it wasn’t too long before Jeff grabbed hold of my hand. Though it was awkward, self-consciously walking hand-in-hand, I didn’t try to withdraw it. He bought us bratwurst and beer, and we sat at one end of the midway on a fallen tree trunk, just on the fringe of the color and noise, the hurdy-gurdy sounds of the carousel intermittently wafting toward us. We chatted about music, but our tastes were dissimilar and it was hard to find common ground. He produced a harmonica from his pants pocket and taught me how to bend notes: holding it with both hands and suddenly sucking in air. We passed the instrument back and forth like long-time intimates. I wondered if he was going to make some kind of move.
“Hey, do you wanna smoke some pot?” he asked softly.
“Ah, well, no, not really. Sorry.” My response seemed to leave him at a loss. Then, sure enough, putting his hand on the back of my leg and moving it slowly up and down my calf, he asked if I wanted to go back to his room, but I was not ready to face the crises of my own making that lay ahead. “Let’s ride the Ferris wheel; just once, no?” I asked, stalling.
“You’re not like any other girl I know!” he half shouted, half laughed, a little bit out of control, and that made me laugh. I was not liking myself at this particular moment, but justified jerking this boy around in order to exorcize the slights and humiliations I myself had to constantly endure. That was my excuse at the time; I could not sequester my anger like Lawrence.
We bought our tickets and climbed into one of the dingy, paint-worn cabs of the Ferris wheel, and it started up shakily. Up and around, up and around. I swiveled in my seat toward Jeff, pressing close against him, looking back past his shoulders up into the night. Rising above the fairgrounds, we could see the lights of Calvert and beyond that in the faraway landscape the tennis center, bathed in white klieg lights, looking for all the world like a penitentiary. When the ride stopped at one point with us hovering near the top, an amusement cliché, it was easy to imagine us once more as escapees, lying low in the hills and breathing hard from our break, looking over the dark valley for signs of the posse. The ride lurched into motion. This time, I turned my back on Jeff, ignoring him, leaning on the ride car’s edge, holding my face up again to the dark sky, breathing in the cool night air, squinting my eyes half-shut so the lights became red and yellow streaks. Up and over yet again. I loved the sweeping motion of it, but I knew there was no way to freeze this moment or keep it alive. All too quickly, I could feel the ride slowing down. Opening my eyes on one sweep along the bottom, I saw Dr. Raynes and Lawrence waiting near the gate. How could they possibly know I was here? They saw us, too, so there was nothing to do but let the momentum wane and get off and confront them.
Lawrence came up to us and took Jeff by the arm. “Leave him alone,” I ordered sharply, “he’s a friend of mine.”
“A friend,” Dr. Raynes sneered. He had strolled over leisurely after Lawrence, hands in his pockets, gazing at the ground. But this casualness was misleading; I’d never seen him so angry, a series of contortions seizing up his face, one after another. A thin, hard, wiry man, a self-made man, not given to forgiveness or expansive thinking, expensively and stylishly suited. Twenty years from now Michael would be exactly the same. Lawrence released Jeff, but suddenly lunged to his right, startling us all by grabbing an innocent-looking gawker standing nearby, sliding him back toward us, the man flailing his arms to keep his balance. Lawrence slapped him about the body to see if his pockets were empty, then, seemingly in one motion, grabbed his camera, opened it, tore out the roll of film, took two strides to the port-o-john, opened the door and threw in the evidence.
Coming back, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, he observed mildly, “You were being tailed.” Snatching the empty camera off the ground, our photojournalist attempted to make a swing with it at Lawrence’s head, but Lawrence caught his arm in mid-arc, and twisting it painfully behind his back looked him menacingly in the eyes, the two men’s faces almost touching, saying quietly and persuasively, “Now you don’t want to start anything here, do you now?” and the jerk had enough sense to skulk away. “Jackass,” was Lawrence’s only observation.
Ignoring him, Dr. Raynes turned on me, shouting, “Have you completely lost your mind?” I had no answer to this. My face grew flushed as I became cognizant of the way both men were staring at me—my hair a rat's nest from the joyride, mascara-smeared raccoon-eyed, smelling of beer. Not exactly debutante material. We were causing a scene, attracting an ever-growing audience engrossed by the spectacle we were making of ourselves, so Dr. Raynes took my arm and we walked quickly to the waiting car before it got out of hand. Jeff was long gone, nowhere to be seen as I looked back over my shoulder in search of him. On the way to the car the doctor said to me, somewhat more calmly, “I want you gone by 6 PM tomorrow.”
We got into the car, Lawrence opening the back door for me and whispering in my ear, “You just blew the whole thing, sugar,” before slamming it shut and getting in the front seat with the driver. Dr. Raynes got in the back with me. Not a word was spoken the entire way back to the hotel.
Image: No chains of love or money. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons