There is something almost numbing about it.
You are twelve now. In the lobby, halfway through this boring movie about the battle of Thermopylae, buying your second bag of popcorn of the day, you look at the light pouring into this theater from outdoors. It occurs to you, briefly, that there might be something else to do, a way to use that light, and your life, other than the ways that seem preordained. It is not, after all, exciting to watch a lot of gladiators smashing swords and flinging arrows at one another. You wait for the moments of blood, the severed arms. But such rewards seem, suddenly, small. You know you are special. You will stand in the light and people will watch you someday. It is, in this instant, a certainty, the high opinion you have always held of yourself, and for a moment you consider dashing out into the afternoon. Running, just running. No purpose or cause. Running in celebration of yourself.
Habit, though, is strong. You accept the popcorn from someone. You push through the lobby doors and go once more into the dark. Suddenly, he is up there. The familiar face. Who pays attention to the gods of the movies? They do this, and they do that. But this is a man your mother loved one summer, three years ago. A lifetime, really. And once, even longer ago, you watched him in a drive-in, when your parents were young and held hands. Now he is making a speech to men who are about to die, men who are combing their hair. The Spartans are supposed to teach us all a lesson: about fighting against odds, about valor, about the unquenchable thirst for freedom. All of that is vague. You are free, and don’t need to be taught a lesson about it. But here is this man, and it is suddenly uncomfortable to watch him, as if he has put his hand on your shoulder and whispered something in your ear. You take your seat, and try to ignore it.
But afterward, on the sidewalk, you find you cannot quite let go of it. You are waiting for your father to come and pick you up. Other boys are there, too, your friends, but you are apart from them. You father cannot come soon enough, because the afternoon is hot, and because every car that passes contains a man, a tired man, going on a chore, preparing to make a left turn, a man with a list in his head. You are convinced that all of them, your father, too, once felt the very specialness you felt so intently not half an hour ago. It is unbearable to think this, and so you start to run, into that light that seemed so beckoning, that light you thought existed solely so that you could run in it. That feeling has gone away, but you run anyway, away from the thing that Richard Egan whispered in your ear while he said his lines, told his soldiers to be brave, and have valor, though they would die the next day. You are running as though you could outrun your own story.
For Nicola and Sophia
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Laurie Binney, George Gilmore, Wesley Wright and Stephen Cook of the Austin, Texas, Fire Department, the Lyman Street writers—Joann Kobin, Norman Kotker, Mordecai Gerstein, Betsy Hartman, John Stifler, and especially Marisa Labozzetta—Colin Harrison, Valerie Martin, Michael Pettit, Robert Hill Long, Jim Magnuson, Wendy Weil, Deb Futter, and special gratitude to Sloan Harris.
And, as always, Eileen.
ALSO BY ANTHONY GIARDINA
Men with Debts
A Boy’s Pretensions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anthony Giardina is the author of the novels Men with Debts and A Boy’s Pretensions as well as a number of plays that have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons and the Manhattan Theatre Club and regionally at Seattle Rep, Washington’s Arena Stage, and Yale Rep. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, and GQ. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Eileen, and their daughters, Nicola and Sophia.
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