by Chris Lynch
“Hey,” Fabian says.
“Hey,” I say.
“That was quite some afternoon nap you had there.”
I push myself upright so that I am in a sitting position propped up by my pillow and headboard. The window, with its view across rolling lawn to pine trees rising onto foothills in the distance, is to my right. My poky pine desk and chair are straight ahead, against the cinder-block wall beyond the foot of my bed. Fabian, seated at his own poky pine desk, is to my left.
“Yeah,” I say, “I wasn’t figuring on anything like that, but boy, I was dead to the world.”
“Maybe, but you were pretty busy for a dead guy. There was a lot of rockin’ and rollin’ going on in that rack. And I’m not complaining or anything, because I wouldn’t want us to get off to a bad start. But I hope you’re going to tell me that this is just an adjustment period and you’re not normally so loud when you sleep.”
“Oh, cripes, Fabian,” I say, swinging sideways to face him with my feet on the floor. “Are you serious? Was it really bad?”
“Well . . . it was sporadic. Like, in bursts. Then you’d go silent again. Then another burst.”
I lean forward, putting my face in my hands. “As far as I am aware, this is not a regular problem. I guess I was having nightmares or something, which is rare for me, I think. But I don’t have that much to go on, actually. I can tell you I’ve never woken myself up from stuff like that. And nobody else has ever made me aware of it. Though nobody else has ever been close enough to really monitor the situation.”
I raise my eyes up over my fingertips to see how he’s taking my answer, and he has already turned his back to me in order to get busy with something on his laptop.
“Okay, fingers crossed then, and hope for the best,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, “we’ll hope for the best.”
He plinks around on his computer for several more seconds before he comes out with it. “As far as nightmares go, whoever Gigi is, she sounds like a real mind-bender.”
I’m not sure what comes out of me into the room, but inside it sounds like a gasp. Whatever it is, it causes Fabian to swing around in his seat and lean in for a closer look at me.
“Are you all right, Keir?” he says, like he’s some kind of paramedic.
“Yeah,” I say, “I’m fine. I think the air here is probably a little thinner than what I’m used to, that’s all. I’ll just need to do some acclimatizing before I’m completely myself. It won’t take long, I’m sure.”
“Sure,” he says. “I’m sure too. And I’m sorry if I was out of line mentioning this Gigi person. She’s none of my business.”
“No, no, no,” I say, waving the whole thing away as I get up to go to the bathroom. “Not a problem at all. I don’t even know where I got that. I don’t know anyone named Gigi. So, no offense. No problem. But that’s not what you heard, anybody’s name. It was just a sound. That’s a kind of sound anybody could make in a dream.”
I walk the modest length of our room, patting my roommate’s shoulder as I pass him, then pass his bed on my right, both closets on opposite walls, shared dresser on my right, sink on my left, and finally, the tiny bathroom.
“Too bad,” Fabian calls before I shut the door between me and the words. “I was guessing she was pretty. That’s a very pretty name.”
I snap the door shut and latch it.
• • •
Fabian Delmonico turns out to be a very easy guy to get to know. He’s happy to talk about himself, which is no knock on the guy, because he’s just as happy to talk about most anything at all. That works out very much in our favor, because I arrived on the campus of Carnegie College feeling like I didn’t have a great deal of talk in me, least of all talk about me.
As it happens, he’s decided he can fill in a lot of the blanks on his own, and for now I’m willing to let him go for it.
Until he seems to be getting too close to any blanks that I am determined will remain blank.
“So you’re a football player, obviously,” he says as he lays my plate down in front of me. We are in the communal kitchen we share with eight other freshmen on our floor. It’s very late for supper, but my monster nap, on top of the changes—of time zones, of air quality, of population and purpose—has left me in no state to settle into a normal schedule just yet. So I moved slowly through my paces and into new spaces in the hours after waking up. I unpacked and found places for the few clean things. Fabian brought me down to the laundry room and showed me how to deal with the rest and then left me to it. I stayed there, in silence and mostly in peace, through the washing and the drying and the folding. He was in the room when I got back up, when I finally slithered my way to an overdue shower, and when I emerged close to an hour later. He held off on his own meal because, he said, he had prepared something for my first night. Thinking I’d be in no shape after that grueling trip. Thinking we’d eat together. If I thought that was a good idea.
I thought it was a good idea. What kind of a shit would think otherwise? And what kind of an even worse shit would say so if he did? Not this kind, I’m happy to say.
“Obviously? Why is it so obvious that I’m a football player?” I say as I stare down at what he has made for dinner. I see strips of boneless chicken, several big pink shrimps, green and black olives, peas, tomatoes, chunks of garlic and spring onions. Spinach is snaking through it all, surfacing up out of the sticky rice here and then submerging again there. It’s mesmerizing to me. The scent alone is putting me into a trance.
“Oh, no,” he says, sitting across from me with his own plate, “I didn’t mean it like that. Housing filled me in when they contacted me about you. In fact, I was going to pay you a compliment and say I know you’re a football player but you don’t seem like one at all.”
I laugh at that and manage to pull up from my fascination with the food. “That’s a compliment, is it? Well then, for sure I owe you one in return. Man, this is an incredible meal. I can’t believe you went to this trouble for me, and you hadn’t even met me. And I was a football player. I could have turned out to be, you know, a football player. And then, where would you be now?”
“Now? I’d be sleeping. Anyway, it’s risotto. Easiest meal in the world.”
“No, a banana is the easiest meal in the world.”
“Nnn,” he says, wagging his fork at me like a no-no finger while he swallows his food. Then, “Maybe you should eat before you start sounding like a football player.”
I’d say we’ve reached an agreement there. I start happily in on my food, and it makes me feel so good, so quickly, I feel a rush of something stupid and unexpected, something I have to fight down because I am not showing this stupid something to anybody, not even the kind and thoughtful guy who is looking after me, feeding me, and forcing these feelings in the process.
I shovel food. Not in the way I know, not in the way I was taught, not in the way this fine classy cooking deserves. But I shovel, to occupy me, and to smother that spot that won’t quit smoldering in the pit of me. I shovel to get me through the way only food can do.
“Glad you like it,” Fabian says, a little leery of me now, eating like a pig, like a damn football player. But I will show better of myself, at every meal hereafter, just as long as I can be cool through this one.
I nod with great enthusiasm and appreciation, but I do not slow down. At least I don’t try to talk at the same time, which would probably be all the information Fabian would need to put me into his do-not-feed category for good.
But I’m still not close to tapping out his goodwill yet. “I imagine I’d be ravenous for real food at the end of a journey like yours,” he says. “I mean, myself, I wouldn’t be putting another scoop into my mouth before the previous one was swallowed . . . but I would be very hungry, sure.”
I have to say something, at least. I cover my savage mouth with my hairy hand, swallow almost completely, and say, “Sorry, man. I am starving. But I am better than this, I promise.”
He nods, satisfied, and surprisingly relieved. He wants me to be better.
“I liked following your progress,” he says. “Plotting your movement across the country, using your itinerary to guide me. I felt good about you coming—even though I almost had my own room until your late-decision scramble altered the equation.”
I peer up over my last bite and give him my sincerest shrug apology.
“Oh, it’s all right. Kind of a mixed blessing anyway, starting out at college not knowing anybody and then rooming alone. And then we got the itinerary. And I saw it, studied it with a kind of awe, and I felt for you having to travel all that way, through those places, on those buses. I felt really bad for you, actually. But I felt better about meeting you. Because, I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but nobody comes all that way, in that way, if there is any other way.”
I let it hang there, even though I had the offer of a plane ticket hot in my head. Even though I am not sure how I feel about where this is going. But I am not correcting anything, not going into any detail, about where I come from or why or how. I’m not doing that now, or ever.
And then when he finishes his point, I’m glad I don’t contradict him.
“It sometimes seems like everybody I meet has got money. And I expect people I meet at Carnegie not to be worried about paying for things. I hope you’re not insulted when I say I was looking forward to having a roommate who had to take three days of buses to get here.”
I make sure he can see how closely I’m listening to him, that there are many kinds of manners that I actually do possess. I put down my cutlery, wipe my mouth with a precise and efficient left-right swipe of my napkin.
“I’m so not insulted that I’m practically flattered,” I say, and quickly grab up both plates to go wash up before things get all sentimental.
walk on
When I finally come face-to-face with Coach Muswell, he looks just as befuddled as he’d sounded over the phone. He gives me a good hard handshake in greeting just the same.
“Well, I still can’t believe you fell into our lap, but, son, I am pleased as Punch to have you here. I hope you are ready now, ’cause we may not be Division I, and you won’t be playing in front of seventy thousand of your nearest and dearest on a weekly basis—or any other kinda basis, frankly—but this is a serious and high-quality program in its own right.”
“I know that, sir. I did do my homework, and this is the kind of team any real football player would be proud to suit up for.”
“Excellent. Exactly. That it is. So I hope you are prepared to get yourself in ungodly great shape for the task ahead, young man. And that you’re looking forward to a season of kickin’ and stickin’ like the two-way legend you are surely cut out to be.”
We’d talked for like a half hour on the phone. Forty minutes, actually, minimum. There was no way he didn’t hear me on the subject of position. My d-back days were done, except for the odd desperation cameo appearance. My decision, at that, on what constituted a desperation scenario and what didn’t.
“Coach? I’m a placekicker. I thought we were clear on that. I’m here to kick field goals, which I can and will do for you, very well. But at this point I’m all kickin’, no stickin.’ ”
It is dawning on me already that Coach’s expression does not have a wide variety of moves. When he’s puzzled, happy, enthusiastic—all of which he has been over the past few minutes—or a little bit fierce like he is right now, he holds just that crack of a smile, eyebrows arched V-like the way little kids draw birds in flight. He also favors nodding yes all along while pretending to listen, as if to preempt everything with his rightness while waiting for the other guy to catch up.
“Keir, son, look around you.”
Blue ridiculous sky everywhere, mountains, forest, compact campus, and a nice tidy football stadium no bigger than the one I played in the last four years.
“Gorgeous,” I say. “One of the many reasons to be here.”
“True, all true,” Coach says. “And you are gonna love Carnegie and never regret your decision. But top-level NCAA football this ain’t. Them boys have eighty-five scholarships to dole out. We got less than half that. I ain’t green or foolish enough to waste one of them precious notes on somebody who spends eighteen seconds of game-action time on the field per week, now am I?”
I know that it is a question because of the way his voice pops a wheelie at the end there. But by the time he got to telling me the color that he wasn’t, my eyes headed up into the surrounding glistening hills and took me along with them.
“No, sir?” I say, half reconstituting his speech in my head, half guessing.
“No,” he says. “No, that’s right. Now, I am anxious to see you in action, ’cause I got a feeling you are gonna be a big help to this poor little team. You will need time to catch up, of course. I am aware you’ve taken some pretty hard knocks along the line, and that you couldn’t be expected to be quite game ready yet. I have been fully briefed, and if I may say so, you’ve got some mighty serious backers behind you. Talked to both your high school coach and the head man at Norfolk, and both say I’m getting a stud for pennies on the dollar. That is the reason our program is rolling dice on you, and why you were allowed to arrive so long after everybody else. Coaches said you needed time to heal mentally and physically, and you needed just the change of scenery this place has in abundance, and if I cut you that slack, you would be paying me back big-time for the next four years.”
I had no idea this went on. I have no idea now whether I would have allowed it.
“I feel like I owe you a refund already, Coach.”
“Ha!” he hollers. “That’s a good one. But of course you owe me no such thing.” He could not be more enthusiastic if he had the haloed C of the Carnegie Fighting Saints tattooed on his forehead. Then he leans close. “But you do owe me something. I know, Mr. Sarafian, that you are smarter than ninety percent of the boys on this team, and all of the coaches. I also know you have the killer instinct that I have never once been able to teach to somebody who did not arrive here with it already. And as you stand here before me today, I’m not sure if I was sold a bill of goods or not, but I do know there isn’t a damn thing wrong with you physically. You are a born free safety. Therefore, you need to get into game shape, and you need to learn the playbook. And then you need to be ahead of everybody on the depth chart by opening day, no matter how much earlier they reported. Are ya with me, son?”
If I thought there were any possible answers other than the obvious one, I would have to think about it.
“I am with you, Coach.”
“Outstanding. Now, get to work. This poor little team has a big need, and you are the filler.”
This poor little team has a coaching staff of ten. And the filler may have been wildly oversold to them.
“Where do I begin, Coach?”
“You just head down that way to the office and see Mr. Santos. He coaches up the backs for us, and he’ll get you started off right.” He shakes my hand even firmer as I try to leave. “I got a feeling this is gonna be remembered as a momentous occasion, Keir Sarafian. I truly do. Can’t wait to look back on it someday and say, uh-huh, that was it.”
“What about the kicking game, special teams coaching?”
“Well, we’ll get to that. Don’t be in such a hurry to be branching out. You need to concentrate, and right away. You’re already behind most of the rest of the guys, who have no business being ahead of you. Some of them showed up over a week ago, and all of them have been on our scientifically developed off-season strength and conditioning program all summer. I trust you received your copy, though I’m not sure how much of it you were able to get through in that short a time.”
“I got a start, Coach. I’m getting caught up quick.” I read it over during the trip. The fitness equipment provided by Greyhound fell a little short of requirements, however.
“That’s good. I’m sure you’ll get yourself fighting fit in no time. Which is
good because that’s just about how much time you have. Anyway, we got a couple of walk-ons, came to us when we had no idea you were comin’. Not bad, either. Couple of them ol’ soccer boys, but we can reform them if they prove to be worth the effort. But you won’t sweat it, talent like you. My only worry would be if you didn’t have any competition in camp to push you, give you a challenge, and force you to be your best.”
“Yeah, Coach,” I say, finally prying myself out of his grip and heading for the stadium offices and changing rooms, “Funny, that was my only worry too. My only one.”
Is that what I achieved? By being so clever and boldly decisive with my eleventh-hour shiftings? I wasn’t going to be asked to play much defense at Norfolk, if any at all. They didn’t need me there with the recruits they were bringing in. That was one element that made my original plan such a brilliant plan. You didn’t have to have much in the way of imaginative powers really, to picture the life I was going to have there. A very sweet life, indeed. With everything and everyone that mattered right there with me, or no more than three hours away, it was going to be too perfect. Too perfect. I did some good thinking, planning that life.
And then I did other things.
I’m not a crybaby. I have been many things but never a crybaby, and this is no place to start. No spilled milk puddling around me, because I got myself here. Me and nobody else had that responsibility. If anybody wanted proof, all they’d need was to take a look at that great big crying crybaby father of mine as I walked out of his house that day, headed for wherever in hell this is. If anybody ever saw that scene, that day, then they would know whose idea it was.
I wish I didn’t have to have seen it.
Too close. Too close. You take it all with you, like it or not, when you only sort of move on. The great stuff trails along in your slipstream, but so does the rest. I needed to be substantially more than three hours away. I needed to not bring my bags and baggage to the same school as my sisters, which was already going to be a difficult place for them with my unhappily high profile throwing long dark shadows all over the place. I needed more distance from Ray, for his sake as well as mine. And I needed to have nothing to do with Norfolk. Nothing.
