Stephen Florida

by Habash, Gabe

  I tug up the shoulder straps of my singlet. I tug them up over my head so they X across my neck, and then I pull. I pull until my head turns red in the bad light of the room and my sweat shines, and, as though a slide is inserted over my eyes, I don’t know how long it takes me to realize that I’m making noise, forcing all the blood out of my head until I’m just a white pusticle on top. I’m inside something deep, scooping through the lowest guts of the whale.

  I jog back to the gym, just in time to see Linus. He lets the kid dance a bit before engaging him and switching him around. Hargraves is hopping up and down. I try to focus on Linus without looking at the bleachers, but I can’t. Planes land all the time. I keep looking for her, and then I see Mary Beth, and she screams, and I know to look back at Linus because he’s won in the first period. And I start clapping but Linus is already running right toward me, he’s already ready for his next match, he’s doing this huffing, panting thing to psyche himself down or sideways or whichever, and he’s banging his headgear against mine, yelling, “I’m better than him! I’m better than him!” The crowd claps. Hargraves is staring at Linus like he’s in love, like he’s never seen anything like Linus before. It takes him a full half minute of hammering heads with me before he comes back to the world, and for the first time, I realize Linus is not only very good at this, he’s unbeatable, he’s never going to lose. And then, like a coin turned over, he’s back to a normal animus and smiling, saying, “What’s this singlet trick here? You gonna teach me it?” He unties my head from the knot.

  The loudspeaker says, “One hundred thirty-three. Florida, Oregsburg, Carver, Konstantin.”

  “You don’t look so great,” he says.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Stable as a table?”

  “Stable as a table,” I say, and he slams his head against mine.

  I walk to the middle of the mat. Mary Beth is watching me. I try to get one last glance at the bleachers, but I have to search too quickly, and any of these faces could be her.

  December 7 will be history. I keep making history like it’s my job to manufacture it. The traffic on the nearby roads, the color of the tickets ripped at the entrance, the total money collected. How many people were actually here in person to see what happens between me and Joseph Carver? No one will ever know. I love this time of year. So much has become clear to me recently! Most eye-opening of all is that wrestling is not the only thing in life preordained. Everything is preordained—what happens outside the mat circle is as preordained as what happens inside. This modern destiny is not determined by God, but what can you do? That’s the joke, nothing is determining everything, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Laugh at the joke of it, at how hard it is to understand, at how hard you try to understand it anyway, and maybe for a moment you do, it’s right there, you have it, and then your mind slips and the thing crawls back under the furniture. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The tickets were always blue and the money was put in an envelope inside a desk while outside the roads were empty. All this is true: I was born slippery: they told me to pull up the curtains on the class play: Silas burned his wife down: I never once saw my dad without a beard on: all this was always so. Just like how I was always going to end up in this circle with Joseph Carver on December 7, with nearly one hundred people paying one dollar each to watch. Mary Beth was always going to be in Drawing, Linus was always going to be in my path, Masha was always going to be cleaning the student union, my Aunt Lorraine was always going to be on the other end of the ringing phone on the second floor of McCloskey on Thanksgiving, and so on and so on. I love this time of year. But only you have the privilege of seeing how your preordained life finally plays out. Oh, that’s how that was always going to happen, you think, the moment after the letter from the Oregsburg Admissions Department lands on your lab desk, the moment the Frogman begins undoing the lock on your door. The sarcastic thing is that you’re still surprised when it happens. You’re slapped in the face over and over like a hysterical maid, no less surprised the last time than the first time, that is the sarcastic joke after all, you could not help it, you could not ever not be surprised.

  Let the record show that Joseph Carver gets my left leg, he is fast, two points for him, and he rolls around on top of me until we leave the circle and have to reset in the center, where I quickly get the escape point back. Let the record show that spit comes out of my mouth when Joseph Carver mashes his palm to my visage, that Joseph Carver makes a deep sideways scratch on my head, let this silly record show that a jury of faces watches this gross public act, watch as I make bricks out of mud. Pay attention. I can’t lose. I can’t lose. What are you doing for others? They force me to express myself. Relentless cleverness! Unflappable confidence! You know how when you live in a room for a long time and you make the room smell like you? That’s what I’m doing with the world. I’m alive! I am showing them. No one is a fraud who entirely commits to the mission. My body was preordained to weigh 133 pounds. There are too many people in the world to care about more than a few. I worked harder than everyone I ever met until I met Mary Beth. What is Mary Beth’s last name? “If we got married I’d be Mary Beth Florida.” Listen to these work sounds, look at what I’m making. I can’t turn my gift off, I become smarter, I am a smart young man and I bring good into the world. What are you doing for others? I give birth to Swiss Army knives. I’m making loud noises and scaring wombs back into place. What happens if you take Stephen Florida out of this place? Everything starts to fall apart and then comes crashing down. I lead life to a bright warm corner with a blanket and a rocking chair, where it can look out the window at the bluebirds until life pulls the curtain down. I can’t stop, I can’t lose. Let the record. Have I contradicted myself? The Frogman is behind a woman in the fourth row. What are you doing for others? Hello Joseph Carver hello. How much time is left is it too late? Steven over here Steven look I made it! Steven listen that sound came from you when Joseph Carver went for your left leg like you knew he would one thousand times before and it came from your knee. The pain is telling you something Steven your mouth is telling you something it is telling you to say good-bye to the next five months help good-bye to everything say good-bye say your last words good-bye

  A TIME BEGINS I’D RATHER SKIP OVER. Let’s get it over with.

  Linus and Mary Beth are looking at me, and before I can ask what’s happened a doctor walks into the room.

  “Hello, son, I’m Dr. Moon.” He leans on the bedrail, tie dangling, a bald old white man with a face that’s a pouch of sweat. “I like your hair, it’s almost shorter than mine!”

  “What hospital is this?”

  “St. Brigid’s.”

  I throw off the sheet, see that I’m wearing one of those butt-apparent smocks.

  “Listen to me, son. When’s the last time you had some food?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Water?”

  “Thursday.”

  The doctor nods at the tubes running their mouths into me. “Those are fluids. You came in severely dehydrated. In fact, you passed out from it. Furthermore. The only reason you’re not in a great deal more pain is because the nurse came in and put some morphine into the IV.”

  “Is it still Saturday? What time is it?”

  “Look at me, son. You’ve torn your medial meniscus. That’s your knee, the left one, but I bet I didn’t need to tell you that. What it looks like in your knee right now is the ligament, that’s bone to bone, is like a piece of torn clothing. Like this. If you look under the sheet, you’ll see swelling, a soft and quasi-mushy encasing around the joint making it quite large. It’s called an effusion. The good news is that there are far worse injuries for an athlete like yourself to sustain. The other good news is you have two options.” The doctor’s gold watch catches the overhead light. Does anyone with a gold watch have any morality? “The first option
is a complete heal, a total repair, suture your ligament back into place, and you’re looking at six to eight months’ recovery.” Mary Beth and Linus are watching me and I wish they weren’t. “The second option is a much shorter timeline. We go in there and snip away the dead tissue to allow it to repair, it’s not a complete repair, you’ll never have a perfect knee again, but you’re looking at four to six weeks.”

  “Do the snip.”

  “The snip?”

  “The second one, the shorter one.”

  “Right. I see from your paperwork that you’re on Oregsburg College’s plan, but—”

  “Call Rudy Unger. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write it down. He has all my money.”

  “I have to ask this, Stephen. You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, son, good enough for me. We’re going to run your paperwork and get this all in order. We’re going to keep you here overnight and do the procedure first thing in the morning. You’ll be able to go home tomorrow afternoon. The nurses will give you more instructions, but you’ll have crutches for two weeks. After a few days, you can start physical activity, light weight training, stationary bike. I would recommend swimming as part of the rehab.”

  “Where is there to swim?”

  He stands up straight and points out the window. “If you go northwest on 52, like you’re going to Anamoose, on the way you’ll find a swimming club. Used to be a member myself, no time anymore, though. See this pudge? I didn’t have it when I was younger, but it happens to the best of us. I’ll give them a call, tell them you’ll be stopping by. I’ll tell them it’s part of the rehab. They’ll let you in.”

  At some point, Moon leaves, and I’m left answering delicate inquiries from the only two people I care about, inquiries I answer politely even though I’m so embarrassed I could throw up, and between their asking there are long spaces of no talking, spaces where you can hear medical beeping and Christmas music from the hall. What can I possibly tell them? I have no questions, no opinions, nothing to say. I want them to go but I don’t want them to leave. 4–1. With my top teeth, I scrape my tongue and spit in the bedpan. I have a loss, the familiar feeling of carrying a loss is back this year.

  How could I have been so fucking stupid? I never asked her any questions, I didn’t know where in Australia she was, I never asked what her job was, I never asked for details about my parents. So fucking stupid. I try to forget it like a ring of old keys, like the rest of it. It’s not important anymore who it was. I give up.

  Later, Hargraves shows up. He puts his hand on my shoulder like I’m a legless Purple Heart. “Tough break, kid, tough break.” He’s an astoundingly old man, how did I never see it before? He’s one of those people who holds on to his job for too long, so that after he finally decides to retire, his body will give out, the distraction finally gone, and it will remember it’s time to decline, basically the same principle as how when one old person dies, their spouse dies soon after—you lose the last support and hit the freefall. “I myself have had thirteen operations. Shit, two hip replacements. My knees still bother me most days. Keep your head on right. That’s important.” He tells me what I already know, which is that he believes in me at 133 and as long as I can prove myself by season’s end, he’ll enter me into the regional tournament. He takes a calendar pinned to the wall and flips to February, puts his finger down. “Our last regular season dual, right here, February 5, Garnes College. That’s your shot. I’m not gonna put you out there injured, but if you get ready for February 5, you beat Kryger in practice that week to stake 133 again, you go against the 133 for Garnes and show me you’re back, I’ll make sure you’re at the regionals, and you’ll get a damn good-ass shot.” He shakes my hand. “Rest up, Florida. You get your meanness back and get fixed up with Fink. He’ll get you cleared and ready. He knows other people’s bodies better than they do. You’ll be goddamn pillaging again in no time flat.”

  I reach over and pull the curtain aside but there is no one in the other bed. I swear I heard something. My brain is tugging me in one false direction after another.

  Sometimes I think about what my life would be like without wrestling, without the constant nagging presence of it, which on certain days can feel like a giant house with a very low ceiling and no doors. But who am I kidding, the question always ends up turning itself around on me: How has my life turned out with it?

  Linus and Mary Beth stay, visiting hours wrapping up, but they don’t know what’s going on. They can’t see it from the outside. They can’t see that I’m not even in the bed anymore, I’ve already pulled the mask down.

  Linus announces he’s going to the vending machine, a flimsy excuse to let me alone with Mary Beth because vending machines are taboo to the wrestler, and as soon as he leaves she sits on the bed. She holds my hand and instinctually does that gesture where you push someone’s hair to the side, someone who’s lower than you in the world, but I have no hair so her fingers just skim my hairline. She lifts the sheet. My joint has become enlarged and monstrous. She doesn’t make any sign that she’s upset. I find that the sicker I feel inside the prettier she looks. She puts her head on my shoulder and tells me she can hide in the bathroom when they come by to end visiting hours, and then stay the night with me. She says we can ride the bus back. But because all I want is to be left alone I tell her that I’ll see her in Drawing on Tuesday as always, the comfort of our new pattern, and as she holds my head and kisses my cheek, it’s almost enough to change my stupid mind, which is bright enough to realize how lucky I got with her. Linus comes back, then she’s gone. It’s amazing how fast she’s gone.

  In his lap, Linus has a new Stephen King book called Rage. There’s a page dog-eared near the end.

  “What’s that one about?”

  “A crazy person.”

  “Crazy how?”

  “You want me to ruin it?”

  “I don’t read books.”

  “This high schooler named Charlie attacks his teacher with a wrench, then after getting expelled he gets a gun from his locker and shoots another teacher before holding a class full of kids hostage. The kids all start to sympathize with him.”

  “Why does he kill people?”

  “I told you, he’s a crazy person.”

  “Yeah, but he has to give a reason.”

  “He says he doesn’t know.”

  “How’s your fasciitis?” I’m on a morphine loop but my love for him is not contaminated, or it can continue to exist despite the contamination, it froths up in my throat like an elemental part of my physiognomy, and I know that whatever happens I’m never going to forget him.

  It is my understanding that most people of moderate or greater intelligence possess a mix of believing they can do something better than anyone else and also fear that they are core frauds and are terrified of being found out. Let’s call these two states, which often alternate, unflappable confidence and crippling fear. The average person will possess an animus that alternates between the two opposite states largely evenly, fifty-fifty. But I’m of the opinion that the top of our species, the ones who do not necessarily do something great but are capable of something great, possess a balance heavily weighted toward unflappable confidence, to the point that those most likely to do something great barely notice the crippling fear. It’s like a whisper on the other side of the room. That whisper is human hesitation, that whisper is the consideration of consequences, and it’s poisonous. In one of my first few days with Linus, when it was already clear that he was someone special to me, I asked him. He was reading a book. “Do you ever feel fear? Like really great fear?” I saw his eyes run to the end of the sentence, and he put his thumb down on the page to keep from losing his place. He looked up at me. “You mean about wrestling? No.” And that is why, every time he beats somebody, I’m not surprised.

  The nurse sticks her head in the room and says visiting hours are up.

  Linus says to me, “Do you want me to pick you up tomo
rrow?”

  “No.” In five minutes, when he’s gone, I’ll want to have apologized for being like this, for pushing him off the dock, but I can’t get myself to say it now. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the dorm.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, it’s late, thank you for coming, good-night.”

  “Want me to leave the book in case you can’t sleep?”

  I shake my head, he says good-night, and probably when he’s at the elevator I feel the fucking apology want to come out of my mouth.

  Hospitals at night are very quiet.

  A different nurse from the previous nurse comes in with a syringe and asks if I want more morphine and I say yes please.

  I wait until she leaves me and then I lift my useless body up to use the bathroom. I put no weight on the left leg, and the medical cords flobble as I hop my way over there. They told me to call the nurse if I had to go but I didn’t do that, no stranger’s going to assist my bathrooms.

  The attending nurse is a tall black woman who looks like she never has time for makeup. She brings in the food tray and I stop her before she departs.

  “Can I ask you a question, miss?”

  “I have a million—”

  “Please?”

  “I have like two minutes.”

  “I got a few phone calls from my aunt, someone saying they’re my aunt. They said they wanted to come visit me, I haven’t seen them since I was a kid.” I pat the Salisbury steak dry of gravy and eat part of it. Midway through I come across some funny resilient gristle, so I bite that for a while for fun. “I don’t have any family. My parents are dead. What should I do?”