Hangman's Game (15 page)

I swing my legs over the side of the bed, stand up, and look out the window. The beach grass is flapping in the wind gusts. These are ugly conditions, but whenever I have this anxiety dream, my instant remedy is to go kick.

I have a practice ritual I've developed during my previous stays at the beach house. And fortunately, I have the necessary equipment in the trunk of my car—a bag of balls, and a shovel.

The tide is out and the beach is wide and empty, as it would be before seven on a chilly weekday morning in early June. At this point in the season the weather is still too iffy and the ocean too cold for discerning Philadelphians to have decamped to their summer homes full time.

I find a spot on the beach, drop my bag of balls, and begin digging. The shovel I am using is one I rescued from the garage when my father's home was sold. It is old, with a wooden handle and a head of iron, and its heavy head plunges easily into the sand. Within a few minutes I have dug a hole five yards long, and one yard wide and deep—a little coffin corner. Then I walk fifty paces down the beach, pull the drawstring on the red mesh bag of balls, and roll them onto the sand.

Most kickers would hate practicing in the disruptive gusts that come off the ocean. But to me, the difficulty is the point. To nail a coffin corner kick in unpredictable winds is about as hard a thing as a punter can do.

My plan is to hit thirty-five punts, sinking as many as I can into the hole. I have tried this twice before; once I dropped two balls in the hole, the other time zero. But the success does not matter as much as the effort. My true goal is to make thirty-five solid contacts, and the elements can do with them what they will.

In each punt, I mimic my game routine as best I can. Even though no one is centering the ball to me, I get up on my toes, as if waiting to receive a wayward snap. I then call “Hike!”—out loud—and go into my motion as if a rush is coming. I have no timer clocking me, but at this point I would feel an extra tenth of a second as surely as Picasso would have known if he used too much blue.

My first kick, a low liner, amazingly goes in the hole. I imagine I might hit four into the hole today, maybe more. Maybe today is the day I sink all thirty-five.

But thirty-four kicks later, I have still only sunk one ball. Some of it is the wind—with a couple of kicks, the wind gusted just as I dropped the ball, and I considered it an accomplishment just to get my foot on it. But mostly, the problem is me. None of my kicks are horrible, but I can feel my micro-mistakes before the punts leave my foot. I watch the balls in flight as if am a lottery player, hoping a little luck can erase my errors.

When I punt, I inevitably hear my dad's voice in my head. Punting has so few variables that all my mistakes are ones he has seen and tried to correct.
Your first step is slow. You need to plant harder. Your line isn't straight.
I picture him watching me, bent over, hands on his knees, solid in his stance, emitting critiques with the regularity of homing beacon.

“Can you just shut up for once? I'm ten times the man you ever were.” That's what I snapped at my dad one spring afternoon, when we were training and he was criticizing my punts with what was, in retrospect, nothing more than his normal severity. But that day, for whatever reason, I fired back, and wildly. I should have told him—if I was going to say anything at all—that I was ten times the
athlete,
but the word that came out was
man
. His answer to me, measured and unfazed: “Not today, bucko. Not even close.”

*   *   *

I come back to the house and Freddie is in the kitchen, still wearing his black kimono from last night. He is sitting at the kitchen table, head in his hands, fingers in his long hair, waiting for his coffee to brew. He is not normally up at this hour, even when he goes to bed relatively early, as he did last night. He is one of those people who can sleep for twelve hours at a time, whereas I count half that as a success.

“Did we really need that practice session today?” he asks sourly when he hears me enter. “Every time you kick the ball it sounds like someone is being shot.”

He says the word
shot
and I picture Samuel and Cecil, prone on the pavement.

“Sorry, buddy,” I say dryly. “Just being selfish, as usual.”

“Everybody is these days,” he says. “What the fuck is it with people?” He pushes his iPhone across the table to me. “Look at this.”

It is an e-mail from his dad.

Frederick, Everything is set with the family jet. Please be at the charter terminal at 9:30 am tomorrow. Arrange for a car service if you need to. Please express my regrets to the Saults that I couldn't be there in person, and thank you again for representing the family. Love, father.

Freddie pouts balefully, his mouth hanging open. His blue eyes are bloodshot.

“Freddie,” I say. “Here's a game that will cheer you up. While you drink your coffee, think of some things you can do today that you would enjoy. Then remember that you have the time and resources to do them all, and go do them.”

Freddie lifts his head. “Good point. Maybe I'll get a massage today.”

“That's the spirit. Regular massage, or the kind that's illegal?”

“Illegal, of course,” Freddie says. “How else am I supposed to relax? And hey, did you see where I left my weed last night?”

“Your robe pocket, I think?”

He slides a hand down into the pocket of his kimono and he smiles.

On my drive home up the expressway, I wonder what I can do to calm myself down. I have to try something.

 

CHAPTER 12

I
STAND IN
front of a yellow brick town house on Seventh Street, just north of the bars and restaurants of South Street. This area will be much louder come nightfall, but in the daylight it is quiet and empty. The nametags on the buzzers of this building have been taped over many times, but the one I am looking for is crisp and white and neatly pressed on. Corina Aleksa, 3R.

I press her button, and I am admitted with a drone. Ms. Aleksa has made it here on time, which is encouraging. When I called the ad from the back of the alternative weekly in the Jefferson lobby, she told me in her Eastern European accent that she could see me in an hour and a half, at one o'clock—not because she was booked until then, but because she needed time to get to her office.

I walk up the narrow, creaking stairs of the town house, which looks like it had been a single-family home before it was cut up into smaller units, two per floor. I knock on 3R and the door is opened by a woman who is stunningly beautiful. She is about twenty-five, and five ten, and slim. Her dirty blond hair hangs well below her shoulders and she wears a dark blue-and-green patterned sundress. She holds out a spindly arm to shake my hand.

“Welcome,” she says with a warm smile. “I am Corina.”

“I'm Nick,” I say. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“It will be my pleasure, I'm sure.” She radiates an inner serenity that I find assuring.

Her office is neatly kept. Her desk, facing the wall, has only a pad and a pen on it. Above the desk is a single shelf dense with books. On the opposite wall is a large black-and-white framed photo of a hummingbird in flight. I see nothing that would offend my sensibilities—no airy aphorisms purporting to explain, in one sentence, the mysteries of the mind.

At Corina's invitation I sit on a wooden square-backed chair, and she shifts the chair at her desk to face me. Then I explain my situation. I attempt to be precise and clinical, but from the first description of the shooting, she reacts as if she is right there on the sidewalk, experiencing the horror with me.

“I read about this, of course,” she says, leaning forward, eyes wide with concern. “I am so sorry. How is your agent doing?”

“Looks like he's going to be all right,” I say. Before I came here, I checked in with Vicki by text, and she said Cecil is healing well, and there are no signs of infection. The drainage tube is now out of the wound.

“Good,” she says, though her brow remains knit.

We stare at each other for a good five seconds. She seems to be studying my face and waiting to see if I might say more.

“So are you ready?” she asks.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Excellent. We begin with questions. Simple ones. Have you ever been hypnotized before?”

“No.” I am expecting her to pick up the pad from her desk, to take notes. She doesn't.

“Not even for entertainment, like in a comedy club?”

“No, never,” I say.

“Would you say you are receptive to instructions?”

“I'll do my best,” I say, though her question touches on my greatest concern about coming here. I think of myself as strong-willed, and I expect I will resist by nature. Even if hypnotism works with some, I am skeptical as to whether it will work on me.

“The more you follow my instructions, the better chance there is that I can help you.” Corina says this encouragingly, without a hint of preemptive scold.

“I understand. I'll certainly try.”

“Excellent. And would you say your childhood was happy or difficult?”

I hesitate. She waits unblinkingly on my answer, as if she was asking a simple question such as my birth date or social security number, and I only needed to reel off the digits. “Why do you need to know that?”

“It helps prepare me for complications. Please answer honestly. The more honest you are, the better chance we have of succeeding.”

“The answer is yes,” I say. “I had a happy childhood.” It is the only response I can give. I was clothed, well-fed, popular, the varsity quarterback. Just about all the boys in my high school would have gladly traded places with me, some desperately so.

But the moment my “yes” comes out of my mouth, I see myself sitting on the back porch of our house in the middle of the night, shivering. I was fourteen years old, and my dad had locked me out because I had been over at a girl's house and missed my ten o'clock curfew by fifteen minutes. I was wearing just a T-shirt and jeans, and this was in October in Upstate New York. The temperature had been about sixty in the early evening, but had dropped into the forties by the time I came home. I tried all the doors and windows, but my dad had locked everything down—even the garden shed, I learned when I sought shelter there. I could have gone to a neighbor, but I was too embarrassed. So I stuck it out all night, shivering. At one point I futilely tried to warm myself by stuffing my shirt with fallen leaves, but after a couple minutes the itch became unbearable.

That night was a quarter moon, now that I think of it. Maybe a little fuller than quarter, more like thirty percent. I certainly had plenty of time to stare at it, sitting back on that lounge chair, never falling asleep, even for a moment. At six o'clock, I heard the lock click on the back door. I opened it and no one was there. I ran upstairs to take a warm shower. When I came downstairs the morning breakfast routine was in full flow. I ate my steel-cut oatmeal and the matter was never spoken of.

“I did have some rough spots, actually,” I tell Corina.

“Oh?” she says.

“But overall my childhood was fine. Better than most.”

“Good. Now tell me, which from among these is your favorite color?”

She spreads on her desk three pads of square fluorescent Post-it notes—yellow, orange, and pink.

“Orange,” I say, just to pick one, though none has any particular appeal.

“Orange it is,” she says. She pulls a note off the pad and presses it firmly, at sitting-eye level, on the white wall.

“Adjust your chair, please, so you are looking directly at the Post-it.”

I shift around so my eyes are on the orange square.

“Thank you. Now begin counting backward, out loud, from forty. Do it slowly, take a deep breath in between forty and thirty-nine. And a slightly deeper breath between thirty-nine and thirty-eight. And so on.”

I begin as she instructed, with her gently reminding me to slow my breath between each count. After I clear thirty she says, “Let your eyelids drop,” and we continue. After twenty she says, “Let yourself sleep.”

I do not feel like I am sleeping per se, in that I am still aware I am in the room and I can hear her voice perfectly well. If a fire breaks out, I am ready to run. I can feel that I am still lined up with the orange Post-it, even though my eyes are closed. Corina says, “Raise your right arm to shoulder height,” and I can feel my arm going up, though I do not exactly feel like I am raising it. Then she asks me to raise my left arm up, and to cross both arms, and I do. I am relaxed, even happy, because I feel like this is working. I feel like I might get what I came for.

“Nick?” Corina says, her voice a notch louder than it had been.

“Yes?” I ask. I feel foggy, half-asleep, but just barely coherent enough to answer.

“We're done.”

“Done?” I say, my eyes batting open and feeling stung by the light, though it was no brighter than before.

“Yes, we're finished.”

I am confused.

“Did we get it?” I murmur. “Did we get the license plate?”

“No, I'm sorry, we did not,” she says. “You told me about the bumper sticker with the quarter moon, but not the plate. We could try again another day if you would like, but I think that would be a waste of your money.”

I look at the clock. It reads 1:38, which is at least twenty minutes later than I expected. “What happened, exactly?” I ask. My eyelids are heavy and my nose is congested. “The last thing I remember is crossing my arms.”

“You went all the way under,” she says. “Most people don't go as far as you did. You are an excellent subject.”

An excellent subject. When I had expected to be a tough case.

“I have tissues if you want them,” she says, pointing to a floral box on her desk. I am initially confused by the offer, but then I sniffle and drag fingers across my moist cheek and realize that I have been crying.