On the Road to Find Out (16 page)

“You've been chicked,” Nikki said with a laugh, “and you will be again.”

“Argh,” said Joan.

I heard Nikki thank Joan, tell Miles she'd see him around, and leave the store. I didn't want to come out of the stockroom. Then Joan called my name.

 

17

When I finally emerged, Miles was standing there, in short shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt that said
Jingle Bell 10K
. He'd obviously been running.

Joan said, “You remember Miles.”

“Um, sure.”

“Alice. Hey.”

Awkward, I thought.

Joan said, “I need to dash over to the bank for a minute. Will you take the helm?” She grabbed a cloth envelope from the safe, stuffed most of the bills from the register into it, and pranced out the door.

I thought,
awkward!
again, and said, “Um, sure,” again and started straightening up the brochures on the rack beside the register.

Miles said, “So what's up?”

What's up? I never know how to answer that. The sky? The national debt?

I said, “Not much.” Big improvement over “Um, sure,” I know.

Miles said, “Cool.”

He came over and stood close beside me. He picked up one of the flyers for a race. It was glossier than the others, which were mostly single-page Xeroxes announcing a 5K, a 10K.

He waved the flyer at me and said, “Can't wait for this.”

I looked at it for the first time. He moved closer so I could read it—and when I did, I could hardly breathe. It was for a half marathon in June in a town about ninety miles away.

“There's money,” Miles said.

“What do you mean?”

“Cash awards for the top ten runners. It usually attracts a fast crowd, sometimes even Kenyans come, so the pace will be blistering. I just want to beat Nikki and Owen.”

“You could win money?” I asked. That would be like being a professional runner.

“Nah,” he said. “I'm not that fast. But the race will be stacked with talent. It's my best chance for a PR.”

“A personal record—‘the best race time at a given distance,'” I said, remembering what Joan had told me, and defining it like an SAT word.

“Yep. Joan is writing me a program so I can peak for this race,” he said, shaking the flyer again.

“Cool,” I said.

He looked down at the paper Joan had given him before she left the store. “Gotta do a long run tomorrow.” He paused. He seemed to be thinking about something. He had rolled the race flyer into a tube. Then he tapped me lightly on the shoulder with it.

“I was wondering,” he said slowly, more slowly than he usually spoke, “after I'm finished with my workout, I told Harry—”

“—your grandmother,” I interrupted, too eager.

“Yeah. I told her that I'd take Potato out for a trot while I warmed down.”

We stood there in awkward silence for a while.

Then he said, “You wanna?”

“Wanna what?”

“Come with?”

I'm sure he must have been able to see my soon-to-expire telltale heart thump-thump-thumping through my shirt. Or heard it drub-drub-drubbing.

I said, “Um, okay.”

“Cool,” he said. “Meet on the boulevard and Ruffner, around noon?”

“Okay,” I said, and immediately worried I wouldn't be able to keep up with him. As if he'd read my mind he said, “It'll be slow. I'll be pretty beat at that point.”

“Okay,” I said.

He turned to leave. “High noon.”

“Okay,” I said, pretending to draw a revolver from a holster on my hip and waving it in his direction.

 

18

I was at home with Walter, telling him how stupid I sounded whenever I was around Miles. I couldn't form a coherent sentence, let alone speak in more than one syllable. I could practically hear Walter saying, “Use your words, Alice.”

Instead, he just crunched on a piece of dry macaroni. He makes the funniest, cutest noise when he eats uncooked noodles. You can't believe chewing could be so loud. And so cute.

Maybe he did need some fattening up. So I made him a special treat: a bowl filled with pasta, peanut butter, and the head of a marshmallow Peep. Walter loves him some Peeps. But only the yellow chicks, since they are the best, as we know.

Walter had one leg stretched out taut and was grabbing it with his hands. He looked like a ballet dancer doing exercises. Or like he was playing the cello. That rat had a lot of smooth moves. Sometimes, when he was feeling perky, he would jump into the air straight up, for no reason except to celebrate the joy of having a physical body. And when he wanted to run, oh man, the guy could move.

When he was hard asleep, he'd close his eyes. Often during his naps he would keep them slightly open. He was always aware of his environment. Not worried, but alert to possibilities.

My pied beauty was both predator and prey. He liked to chase my finger or a piece of yarn and I'd call him a predatory panther. But when he snoozed on his back, his feet stuck up in the air and his hands on his chest, he looked as defenseless and vulnerable as a baby. How easy it would be for someone to come and snarf him up.

While he was generally quick to right himself after a back-sleeping session, seeing him so exposed, so trusting, nearly always made me want to cry. He was prepared to take action if necessary, but he lived as if nothing bad would ever happen to him. He knew I would take care of him, that we two together were something formidable and mighty.

Without each other, we'd each be diminished.

And without Jenni, I felt less than myself. We'd never gone this long without talking. But after she'd left the night of my mom's birthday I got mad that she had got mad at me and decided not to call her. It seemed like she'd decided the same thing. We were in a standoff. It made me sad and cranky.

Settling down to read was impossible. I played Snood but felt
restive
(“unable to keep still”). I checked Web sites for the colleges to see if they might have updates on when decisions would be announced, but no. Probably just as well, since I knew what the answers would be. No, no, no, and no. And then more no's.

Walter picked at the Peep, but didn't seem hungry, and also didn't do what he'd normally do, which was take everything I offered and stash it under the bed. He was probably as tired as I was, so I scooped him up, kissed him on the nose, put him back in his cage, and went downstairs, where my parents and Walter-the-Man were watching a Duke basketball game.

I knew they were watching a game because the screams penetrated through the second floor, through Mom's office, through the guest room and the guest bathroom and the guest TV room; the screams crept up through my parents' bedroom and their bathroom; they reverberated through Mom's shoe temple, and through their sitting room, where Dad sometimes huddled with his laptop and watched CNN as if it was porn, and finally they made their way up to me, to my room.

So annoying.

I went downstairs to find a rerun of a scene I'd seen a zillion times before: Mom clenching a magazine, her glasses perched low on her nose as she watched the TV, Dad white-knuckled and mostly silent, and Walter-the-Man shrieking his freaking head off.

Three minutes and forty-seven seconds remained in the first half. The camera alternated between showing the court and zooming in on the genius college students who painted themselves blue and camped out for tickets to the games.

Walter-the-Man: “Three minutes. That's a lot of time. Come on, Duke, you can do it. C'mon, Duke.”

Mom: “That little point guard is really holding his own.”

Walter-the-Man: [Colorful questioning of the ref's manhood.]

Walter-the-Man: “Yes, oh yes! YES.” [Arms raised in the air like an Olympic gymnast sticking a landing.]

Mom: “Nicely done.”

Walter-the-Man: “NOOOO! How could you miss a layup like that?
Oy vey
Maria!”

Dad: “
Oy vey
Maria?”

Walter-the-Man: “Nice play, boys, nice play—oh no, not a three. NOT A THREE! Why do they keep trying for all these threes? You know what I always say.” [Looks around, first at my dad, who doesn't acknowledge him, and then at my mom, magazine still hanging off her hand, and finally at me, like I care.] “Live by the three, die by the three.”

Walter-the-Man: “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARE YOU GODDAMN FREAKING KIDDING ME? Is there a lid on that bucket? Does anyone here see a lid on that bucket?” [Looks around to see if anyone sees a lid on that bucket.]

Mom: “This is a better game than I expected. Carolina's been so weak this season.”

Walter-the-Man: “Guard your man, you scrawny doofus.” [Head in his hands.]

Walter-the-Man: “YES! YES! DE-NIED! DEEEEE-NIED!” [Furious hand-clapping.]

Walter-the-Man: [Cheering along with the blue-painted students on TV.] “
Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell!
[Clap clap.]
Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell!
[Clap clap.]

The buzzer sounded and Mom went back to
Real Simple
. Dad took out his iPad and started on a new crossword. Walter-the-Man shook his empty beer bottle at me.

I shook my head at him.

Me: “Walter-the-Man, did you go to Duke?”

Walter-the-Man: “No, Alice, I did not.”

Me: “Do you have any actual connection to Duke?”

Walter-the-Man: [Slowly.] “No. I do not.”

Me: “So both of my parents have graduate degrees from Duke. I can sort of understand why they would spend their time watching this team. But you are crazy for Duke and have no connection to the school. Don't you think that's strange? Most people around here root for U. Or Kentucky. Why Duke?”

Mom: “Alice.”

Me: “Well, isn't it a little weird to be so fanatical about a team you have no real link to?”

There's a car commercial and another car commercial, and then these two commentators start talking about the game.

Me: “Did you ever play college basketball?”

Dad: [Warning look.]

Walter-the-Man: “No, Alice, I didn't.”

Me: “High school?”

Mom: [Sharply.] “Alice.”

I knew I should shut up and go back to my room. When I got in a pissy mood like this, I knew I should avoid humans. But the whole thing made no sense to me. Walter-the-Man planned his life around Duke basketball games. Most of them he watched at our house, whether or not my parents were home. He came in, got himself a beer from the fridge, and settled on the couch for two hours of screaming at the television.

Me: “I mean, really. Don't you have more important things to do?”

Walter-the-Man: [Looks down at his empty beer bottle. He picks at the edge of the label. He crosses one leg over the other, uncrosses it, and looks right at me. He leans forward.]

Walter-the-Man: “Hmmm. Let me think. Do I have more important things to do? Like what? Like make tons of money defending multinational corporations that do indefensible things? Right. I already do that. I spend most of my waking hours doing that.

“The fact is, Alice, I love being a fan. I am, in fact, the very definition of a fan, ‘a fanatic,' especially when it comes to Duke basketball. When I see these kids play, when I watch a team come together and become something bigger than each individual man, when I see a beautiful play, a buzzer-beating shot—where everything goes right, everything is in sync, when the impossible happens—it makes me believe. Not in God or anything spiritual—I stopped believing in God when I quit being an altar boy, but in possibility. It makes me feel part of something special. I met your father in a bar because we were both watching Duke play and we discovered we worked for the same firm, and we both said it was something we'd do only for a while because it was soul-sucking, life-deadening work. But here we both still are. Your father has your mother and you, which is a good thing when you're not being a pain in the ass. [He winks. Like a skeevy old man. He actually winks.]

“Me? Watching this team each season makes me come alive in a way that, you may find this hard to believe, corporate law does not. It helps me forget—though your mother is nice enough to remind me—that I'm fifty years old and still dating. It makes me forget my receding hairline and my increasing waist size. I have no family, no kids, I don't even have a dog or a plant, but what I do have is a couple of handfuls of young men whose physical talents impress the bejesus out of me and whose stories I get to know because they inspire and delight me.

“I could never jump that high, or run that fast, or handle a ball with such grace. When I follow this team I become invested in something outside myself. I care. And this is what I know: not caring is the end of a meaningful life. To be cynical about everything is a sad way to live. I don't want to doubt; I want to believe. I want to feel passionate about something. I love it when Duke wins. I want them to go all the way to the big dance, the Final Four. I want them to win another national championship like you would not believe.

“But even when they lose, while I'm not happy, I'm kind of happy I'm not happy. You know what I mean? I mean, it feels good to feel something. And it's something I can share with other people.

“I can walk into any bar and have a conversation with the guy—or the woman—on the next stool, where all of the things that make us different fall away and we can talk for hours about this game, or last season, or players long since retired, and it doesn't matter if I'm a sad sack of a lawyer and he's a housepainter who married his high school sweetheart and never went to college, or if she voted for people I think are evil, because that stuff never comes up.

“We are citizens of the nation of basketball and for a few minutes, or an hour, or the length of the game, for that brief amount of time, I feel less alone in the world.”

[He gets up and walks to the kitchen for another beer.]