Playing Without the Ball

by Rich Wallace

  Brenda brings me my bill. “So you still working across the street?” she asks.

  “Yeah. You gonna come by?”

  “I’m underage.”

  “Oh.”

  “They check?”

  “Usually.” I think for a second. “Come around back sometime. I’m in the kitchen all night on weekends.”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “It’s cool. You just visit with me. No big deal. There’s a good band playing this weekend; one of my friends is the singer.”

  She smiles. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay,” I say, smiling back. “Don’t think too hard.”

  But Friday passes and nothing happens. I play ball in the afternoon on Saturday with Alan and some other guys at the Y. Then I go to work.

  It’s busy as hell. People are home from college for winter break and there’s an NFL game on TV, so every bar stool and a couple of tables are full by the time I get in at 4 o’clock. I churn out a lot of cheeseburgers and mozzarella sticks. Time flies past. Before I know it, it’s 7:30.

  Spit pokes her head in. They won’t go on until at least 9, but she likes to set up early.

  “What’s up, Jay?”

  “Nothing. You?”

  “Big news.”

  “What?”

  “Got busted.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  She starts drumming on the sandwich table. “Stanley was letting me drive his car last night after the gig. I ran a light and got pulled over. I wasn’t drunk, but we had a six-pack on the floor and I tried to hide an open bottle under the seat.”

  “You get DUI?”

  “No, I was way under the limit. Careless driving and some shit about the bottle. Stanley says I’ll just get fined. No big deal.”

  “No?”

  “Nah. I expected the cop to be a dick about it, but he was okay. Just wrote me up and told Stanley to drive me home.”

  I nod. “I guess there’s some advantage to having a lawyer for a boyfriend.”

  She laughs and slaps my arm. “Oh, come on,” she says. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  The band is great tonight. She’s working in some early Beatles and a couple of Supremes songs, done unlike they’ve ever been done before.

  I’m leaning against the kitchen doorway, just kind of pumping my hips to “Please, Please Me,” when there’s a rap at the back door. It’s Brenda.

  “Hi,” she says, kind of nervous-like.

  “Hi. You look great.” She’s got her hair down.

  “I’m scared,” she says, but she’s smiling.

  “Like I said, just stay back here.”

  “Yeah, but I got I.D. One of the other waitresses let me borrow her driver’s license.”

  “Cool. She look like you?”

  “Some.”

  She takes her jacket off and sets it on the counter. “I’ve never done this.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “But I want a beer.”

  I shrug. “Listen, you got nothing to lose. Just go to Bobbi, the woman. She might cut you a break.”

  Brenda starts laughing, then scrunches up her nose. “Could you do it for me?”

  “Forget it. They know I’m not legal.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Just give me a second.” She takes a deep breath. “What was your name?”

  “Jay. But don’t mention me.”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that.” She grips my arm. “Okay, Jay.”

  “Brenda.”

  “What?”

  “Act natural.”

  She comes back about three minutes later with a bottle of Michelob. The place is packed, so we’re shielded from the bar. We lean against the wall near the band, just a few feet from the kitchen.

  The band is loud. I mouth, “wait here,” and go back in the kitchen. I take off the white cook’s shirt and put on my denim shirt. I get a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator and go back out to Brenda.

  She points to Spit. “That your friend?”

  “What?”

  “Your friend!”

  “My what?”

  Now she screams it at me, her mouth actually grazing my ear, and I hear it clearly. I get a heated chill.

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding vigorously.

  “Terrific voice.”

  “Yeah. She’s … got a great voice.” Spit’s doing Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise,” fast and sort of pulsating. Brenda takes my hand and we start dancing.

  When the song ends, I pull her into the kitchen. “You get proofed?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” She looks around and giggles. “I hand her the license, and just as she starts to look at it, the other bartender taps her on the shoulder to tell her something.”

  “That was Shorty.”

  “Yeah. So she sets it on the bar, and I discreetly pick it up and put it in my pocket. When she turns back to me, she’s ready to take my order.”

  “Great.”

  “Yeah.” She raises the bottle up and finishes it. “I better get another one before she forgets who I am.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Get you one?”

  I shake my head. “I’m working.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” She flicks up her eyebrows and walks away.

  By midnight she’s had four bottles of beer and we’re both sweating from a lot of dancing. I’ve been going back and forth to the kitchen when Bobbi brings over orders, but nobody’s eating much this late. Brenda’s leaning into me, and we’re dancing sort of fast but very close. She’s singing to me, softly, and even that close I can barely hear her because of the music, but I can definitely feel her breath on my neck, her lips brushing gently against my ear. It’s like a fever right down the middle of my body.

  I figure I just happen to be in the right place at the right time, but I’ll take it. I’ve been in the wrong place more than enough to balance it out.

  Brenda hits the bathroom, and I go to the bar to ask Shorty if it’s all right to shut down the kitchen. He says fine.

  “I’ll clean up everything in the morning,” I say.

  “You splittin’?”

  “Mind if I stay?”

  He looks up the length of the bar toward the front door, then sweeps his eyes over the floor. “What’s up?”

  “I kind of got a date.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah. She doesn’t know how old I am.”

  He squints a little and studies my face. As long as he doesn’t get busted he couldn’t care less. “Just lay low,” he says.

  “Cool. I will.”

  “If I see you with a drink, you’re gone, buddy.”

  “I won’t. I don’t.”

  He nods slowly. “You bangin’ that singer?”

  “Who? Spit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No way. No.”

  “Whatever. Have the place cleaned by noon.”

  “It’ll be spotless.”

  Laundry

  The sunlight hits my window, and I open my eyes after four hours’ sleep. Brenda is scrunched against the wall, facedown, in one of my T-shirts and her blue cotton panties. I’m in just my underwear and it’s hot as hell in here.

  I get up quietly and adjust the thermostat, which is turned up to eighty. I pick up the empty condom packages (two) that I got from the machine in the men’s room last night. Brenda opens one eye, then the other, and yawns.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey.”

  “How you doin’?”

  “Good.” I kneel on the mattress and she pokes my thigh. “Some night,” she says.

  “I’d say.”

  She swings her legs around and sits next to me. She grins. “Do I know you?”

  I laugh. “Pretty well by now.”

  She squeezes my arm. “Thanks for getting me in there last night,” she says. “That was fun.”
>
  “Yeah, it was.”

  “I mean … all of it.”

  “Yeah. You sleep okay?”

  She shrugs. “Some.”

  “Me too.”

  She stands up slowly. “Can I use your toothbrush?” she asks.

  “I think that’d be all right.”

  She looks at me over her shoulder on her way to the bathroom. Then she stops, turns to me, grins, rolls her eyes, and shakes her head.

  I spend an hour cleaning the bar, then gather my clothing in a pillowcase and walk three blocks to the laundromat. I’m down to my last pair of socks.

  The third washer I look in doesn’t seem to have much hair in it, so I wipe it out and dump in some detergent. I always wash whatever’s dirty together—white stuff and everything else. Who cares if my underwear turns gray?

  Sturbridge water is notoriously foul. No one drinks it—bottled-water companies must love this town—and on really bad days the wash comes out only semi-clean. Today it seems all right.

  I could sit here and wait for the washer to finish, but I didn’t bring anything to read. There’s a row of chairs along the wall across from the dryers. A fat guy about fifty is smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper; a bleached-blond woman in her twenties, also smoking, has a young girl on her lap and is reading Make Way for Ducklings to her; and a guy a couple of years older than me, with fuzzy red hair sticking out from under a Bulls cap, is just staring out at the street.

  I’ll walk up to the deli for a sandwich. And I need to get quarters for the dryer.

  We blow out the Presbyterians in the 6 o’clock game, then walk to the church for a meeting. I don’t say much on the way over. In fact, this is all I say:

  —“Whoa. Watch it.” (When Beth stumbles slightly, stepping off a curb.)

  —“Yeah, (laugh) I suck.” (When Alan busts my chops about throwing away three consecutive passes in the second quarter.)

  —“Maybe …. Probably.” (When Josh asks me if I think he should try out for the high school team next year. He’d have no chance.)

  The meeting is not a big deal. People play pool or Ping-Pong for a while, and others sit around and talk. I opt for pool. Then Alan runs a short meeting about paying dues, church attendance, the need for kids to help out with set construction for the elementary-grade Christmas pageant, and some deal about caroling at the senior citizens’ center. He also gives an update on the basketball team.

  “The Saturday after New Year’s is our spaghetti dinner to raise money for the spring retreat,” he says. “I think everybody signed up for at least one chore.”

  He looks at me. “Jay,” he says.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not on the list. Can you be here?”

  “I would,” I say, and I mean it. “But I work every Saturday night. I have to.”

  “Oh. Well, you could help set up tables and chairs in the afternoon. You up for that?”

  “Sure.” Sounds painless to me.

  “About three o’clock.”

  The youth minister says a few things about the infiltration of drugs into the community, even among kids a lot younger than we are. He asks Alan and one of the girls if they’d be willing to speak at a meeting of the local clergy association—he calls it the Ministerium—about drug use among high school kids. They agree to do it. Then we say a prayer and adjourn.

  I play another game of eight ball with Peter and the two freshmen from the team. Alan, Robin, and Beth are among a group talking at a table with the minister guy. Eventually, they get up and start putting on their coats. Alan waves me over.

  “Want to hang out awhile?” he says.

  “Sure.” The group standing near the door to leave is juniors and seniors: Anthony, Beth, Robin, two other girls.

  We cross over to the park in front of the courthouse. There’s one of those big wooden climb-on playground things for children, made from beams and steel and old tires. We sit in a tight bunch. The air is cold but still, and you can see your breath.

  “So, Alan,” says Tracy, who I think is vice president of the youth group. “You got any research material?”

  “What, you mean that infiltration stuff?” He smirks and reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulls out two joints. He lights one and hands it to Tracy, then lights the other and gives it to Anthony.

  I put up my hand when the first one reaches me. “I can’t,” I say. “Asthma.”

  Alan gives me a look. “Get out.”

  “Well, okay. Not asthma. But smoke kills my throat. So I’ll pass.”

  I’ve managed to avoid smoking, drinking, and otherwise ingesting every substance Spit has offered me without feeling embarrassed. Ironic that I should get put in this spot by the church group. Nobody seems to care, though. They just reach past me as they pass around the joints.

  The conversation centers around parents and music and who’s in trouble in school. The subject of basketball does not come up.

  I say about as much as I did before, but I don’t feel all that uncomfortable. Brenda told me this morning after she brushed her teeth that she’d decided to go back to her parents in Doylestown. There’s nothing for her here. She said she came by last night out of curiosity—she’d never drank in a bar before. Plus she figured she had nothing to lose with me.

  I guess I could feel used. I don’t. I feel grateful. It felt great—not just physically—to be with someone like that. Kind of like a big meal with gravy and mashed potatoes when you haven’t eaten all day.

  Beth nudges me and holds a joint toward me. I put my hand between my face and her hand and smile. She sticks her tongue out at me, then leans over to Anthony and gives the joint to him. “Wuss,” she whispers as she turns back to me, but she’s all smiles.

  “Junkie,” I whisper back.

  She punches my arm. I nudge her with my elbow. “There’s a first time for everything,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  Noel

  I guess I need to get used to being alone on the big days. Christmas Eve I stay up late, sitting by my window watching cars go by. I try to ignore the passing of midnight, but suddenly I have to face the fact that it’s Christmas Day and there’s no one here to wish me a merry one.

  It’s cold and it’s raining, and the cars going by have their wipers on. There are lots of colored lights downtown, and Santas and reindeer decorations. I didn’t get a tree for my room or anything.

  I wish I was tired, but I’m not. I lie on my mattress and look at the ceiling.

  It’s stopped raining by the time I wake up. We play tomorrow night, but that’s a long way off. The Y is closed, the supermarket is closed. Everybody’s with their families; even Spit’s staying home with her mom today.

  So I’ve got about thirty-six hours to kill before the game. I decide to go for a walk.

  It’s 8:30 in the morning. I walk along Church Street, with its rutted sidewalk and big puddles. And it dawns on me that I don’t have to be alone the entire day.

  I cross the street and check the message board outside the Methodist Church. “Christmas Service, 10 A.M.: A Child Is Born.” Good deal.

  I head up to Main Street on a hunch that the Turkey Hill store will be open. It is. I get a carton of orange juice and some Twinkies and sit on a bench to have breakfast. It’s good to be out. I’m hoping Beth will show up at church. Or Alan or Robin or anybody.

  I go back and change clothes and kill another hour. Then I walk up to the church. There are more people than last time. In fact, it’s full. I squeeze into a pew near the back and catch Alan’s eye. He waves.

  There’s a lot more music this time, mostly Christmas music, of course, like “O Holy Night” and “The First Noel.” I spend a lot of the time scanning the backs of people’s heads, looking for anyone I know. I see Beth and Robin up near the front with their families.

  I’ve heard this story before, how Christ was born in a manger and came here as the son of God to set us straight and redeem us. And it’s
a nice story, but I’ve always wondered how anyone could buy it so wholeheartedly, to accept without question that there’s this being up there who loves us and forgives us, and waits for us to join him in Heaven.

  There’s an old couple on my right, the woman in a flowery blue dress—she seems to be just about blind—and the guy in a brown corduroy jacket over gray flannel pants. And you know they believe with all their hearts.

  Next to me is a quiet guy about thirty, who keeps his eyes closed most of the service, like he’s concentrating on every word, nodding slowly with his lips pursed tight.

  And the minister says something about following Jesus’ light by lighting the way for others. And I swallow hard and look around. The lady next to me gives me a warm smile and I smile back. We all stand for another song—“O Come, All Ye Faithful”—and I get a bit of a surge, like stepping to the free-throw line or something.

  I don’t quite believe the story. I don’t see the connection from God to Jesus to me and back again. But I’m glad these people do. “Joyful and triumphant” fits the mood in here today, and it fills me, too. I’m glad I came here. And a part of me wishes I could believe. Part of me thinks I might come back sometime.

  I hang around outside the church for a while after the service, talking to Alan and some others. When they start to disperse, I walk back to Shorty’s.

  I’m feeling all right, so I’ll get this over with. I go into the bar—Christmas is the only day of the year that Shorty doesn’t open for at least a few hours—and sit at the pay phone. I take a deep breath and punch in the numbers.

  “Mom.”

  “Jay,” she says brightly.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “Oh, Merry Christmas to you, sweetheart.”

  “Having a good day?” I ask, not really wanting to know.

  “Yes. Wonderful. How about you? You’re not alone, are you?”

  “Some,” I answer. “But not entirely. I hung out with some friends for a while. Went to church.”

  “Church?”

  “Yeah. I go once in a while. Some of my friends do. You know.” I’ve let her think over the years that I have a bunch of friends, that I’m relatively popular. Why should she be concerned that I’m a loner? She’s barely been part of my life.