"What are you talking about?"
"The spastic kid who shot in the wrong basket? The rest of the season he's a target. We have a chance at a cheap shot, we take it. We see an opportunity to get in his head, we go for it."
My mouth may have dropped open, I'm not sure. I looked toward Win to make sure I heard right. Win no longer looked so crestfallen. He rubbed his hands together.
I turned back to Coach Bobby. "Are you serious?"
"Like a heart attack."
I replayed my promise to Ali, looking for a loophole. After my career-ending basketball injury I needed to prove to the world that I was just fine, thank you very much. So I attended law school--at Harvard. Myron Bolitar, the complete package--scholar-athlete, overeducated-though-debonair attorney. I had a law degree. And that meant I could find loopholes.
What had I actually promised to do here? I thought about Ali's exact words: "Don't go to the bar tonight. Promise me."
Well, this wasn't a bar, was it? It was a wooded area behind a high school. Sure, I might be defying the intent of the law, but not the letter. And the letter was key here.
"Let's do this," I said.
The six of us started toward the woods. Win practically skipped. About twenty yards into the trees, there was an opening. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and beer cans. High school. It never changes.
Coach Bobby took his place in the center of the opening. He lifted his right arm and beckoned for me to join him. I did.
"Gentlemen," Win said, "a moment of your time before they commence."
All eyes turned to him. Win stood with Assistant Coach Pat and the two bruisers near a large maple tree.
"I would feel remiss," Win continued, "if I failed to offer up this important advisory."
"What the hell are you babbling about?" Coach Bobby said.
"I'm not speaking to you. This advisory is for your three chums." Win's gaze traveled over their faces. "You may be tempted to step in and help Coach Bobby at some point. That will be a huge mistake. The first one of you who takes even one step in their direction will be hospitalized. Note I did not say stopped, hurt, or even harmed. Hospitalized."
They all just looked at him.
"That's the end of my advisory." He turned back toward Coach Bobby and me. "We now return you to our regularly scheduled brawl."
Coach Bobby looked at me. "This guy for real?"
But I was in the zone right now and it wasn't a good one. Rage was consuming me. That's a mistake when you fight. You need to slow things down, keep your pulse from racing, keep your adrenaline rush from paralyzing you.
Bobby looked at me and for the first time I saw doubt in his eyes. But now I remembered how he laughed, how he pointed to the wrong basket, what he'd said:
"Hey, kid, do that again!"
I took a deep breath.
Coach Bobby put up his fists like a boxer. I did likewise, though my stance was far less rigid. I kept my knees flexed, bounced a bit. Bobby was a very big guy and local-neighborhood tough and used to intimidating opponents. But he was out of his league.
A few quick facts about fighting. One, the cardinal rule: You never really know how it is going to go. Anyone can land a lucky blow. Overconfidence is always a mistake. But the truth was, Coach Bobby had virtually no chance. I don't say this to sound immodest or repetitive. Despite what the parents in those rickety stands want to believe with their private coaches and overly aggressive third-grade travel league schedules, athletes are mostly created in the womb. Yes, you need the hunger and the training and the practice, but the difference, the big difference, is natural ability.
Nature over nurture every time.
I had been gifted with ridiculously quick reflexes and hand-eye coordination. That's not bragging. It's like your hair color or your height or your hearing. It just is. And I'm not even talking here about the years of training I did to improve my body and to learn how to fight. But that's there too.
Coach Bobby did the predictable thing. He stepped in and threw a wild roundhouse. A roundhouse isn't an effective punch against a seasoned fighter. You learn quickly that when it counts, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You are better off throwing blows with that knowledge.
I slid a little to the right. Not a lot. Just enough so that I could deflect the blow with my left hand and stay close enough to counter. I stepped inside Bobby's exposed defense. Time had slowed down now. I could hit one of several soft targets.
I chose the throat.
I bent my right arm and smashed my forearm into the Adam's apple.
Coach Bobby made a squawking noise. The fight was over right there. I knew that. Or at least I should have. I should have stepped back and let him gasp to the ground.
But that mocking voice was still in my head. . . .
"Hey, kid, do that again. . . . The rest of the season he's a target. . . . We have a chance at a cheap shot, we take it. . . . Chicken!"
I should have let him fall. I should have asked him if he'd had enough and ended it that way. But the anger was out now. I couldn't harness it. I bent my left arm and began to spin full force counterclockwise. I planned on landing an elbow blow directly to the big man's face.
It would be, I realized as I spun, a devastating blow. The kind of blow that caves in the bones of a face. The kind of blow that leads to surgery and months of pain meds.
At the last second, I came just enough to my senses. I didn't stop, but I pulled back a little. Instead of landing square, my elbow careened across Bobby's nose. Blood spurted. There was a sound like someone had stepped on dried twigs.
Bobby fell hard to the ground.
"Bobby!"
It was Assistant Coach Pat. I turned toward him, put up my palms, and shouted, "Don't!"
But it was too late. Pat took a step forward, his fist cocked.
Win's body barely moved. Just his leg. He snapped a kick at Coach Pat's left knee. The joint bent sidewise, in a way it was never supposed to. Pat screamed and dropped to the dirt as though he'd been shot.
Win smiled and arched his eyebrow toward the other two men. "Next?"
Neither man did so much as breathe.
My rage dissipated all at once. Coach Bobby was on his knees now, cradling his nose as if it were a wounded animal. I looked down at him. It amazed me how much a beaten man looks like a little boy.
"Let me help you," I said.
Blood poured from his nose through his fingers. "Get away from me!"
"You need to put pressure on that. Stop the bleeding."
"I said, stay away!"
I was about to say something in my defense, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Win. He shook his head as if to say, No use. He was right.
We left the woods without another word.
When I got home an hour later, there were two voice mails. Both were short and very much to the point. The first was hardly a surprise. Bad news travels fast in small towns.
Ali said, "I can't believe you broke your promise."
That was it.
I sighed. Violence doesn't solve anything. Win would make a face when I said that, but the truth was, whenever I resorted to violence, which used to be fairly frequently, it never just ended there. Violence ripples and reverberates. It echoes and really never seems to go silent.
The second message on the voice mail came from Terese:
"Please come."
Any attempt at hiding the desperation was gone.
Two minutes later my cell vibrated. The caller ID told me it was Win.
"We have a small situation," he said.
"What's that?"
"Assistant Coach Pat, he of the need for orthopedic surgery?"
"What about him?"
"He is a police officer in Kasselton. A captain, in fact, though I won't ask to wear his varsity jacket to the prom."
"Oh," I said.
"Apparently they are thinking of making arrests."
"They started it," I said.
/> "Oh yes," Win said, "and I'm certain that everyone in town will take our word over a local police captain's and three lifelong residents."
He had a point.
"But I was thinking," he went on, "that we might enjoy a few weeks in Thailand whilst my attorney works this out."
"Not a bad idea."
"I know of a new gentlemen's club in Bangkok off Patpong Street. We could begin our journey there."
"I don't think so," I said.
"Such a prude. But either way, you should probably make yourself scarce too."
"That's my plan."
We hung up. I called Air France. "Any room left on tonight's flight to Paris?"
"Your name, sir?"
"Myron Bolitar."
"You're already booked and ticketed. Would you like a window or an aisle seat?"
4
I used my frequent flier miles to get an upgrade. I don't need the free booze or better meal, but the legroom meant a great deal to me. When I'm in coach I always get the middle seat between two ginormous bruisers with space issues, and in front of me, without fail, is a tiny old lady whose feet don't even touch the ground but she has to put her seat back as far as humanly possible, getting a nearly sexual thrill as she hears it crunch against my knees, tilting back far enough so that I can spend the entire flight looking for dandruff flakes in her scalp.
I didn't have Terese's phone number, but I remembered the Hotel d'Aubusson. I called and left a message that I was on my way. I got onto the plane and jammed the iPod buds into my ear. I quickly slipped into that airplane half-sleep, thinking about Ali, the first time I had dated a woman with children, a widow no less, the way she turned away after she said, "We're not forever, Myron. . . ."
Was she right?
I tried to imagine life without her.
Did I love Ali Wilder? Yes.
I had loved three women in my life. The first was Emily Downing, my college sweetheart from Duke. She had ended up dumping me for my college rival from North Carolina. My second love, the closest thing I've had to a soul mate, was Jessica Culver, a writer. Jessica had also crushed my heart like it was a Styrofoam cup--or maybe in the end I had crushed hers. It was hard to know anymore. I had loved her with everything I had, but it had not been enough. She was married now. To a guy named Stone. Stone. I kid you not.
The third, well, Ali Wilder. I had been the first man she dated after her husband died in the North Tower on 9/11. Our love was strong, but it was also calmer and more mature and maybe love wasn't supposed to be like that. I knew the ending would sting but it wouldn't be devastating. I wondered if that too came with maturity, or if after years of getting the heart crushed, you naturally start being protective.
Or maybe Ali was right. We weren't forever. Simple as that.
There is an old Yiddish phrase I find apropos--but not by choice: "Man plans, God laughs." I am a prime example. My life was pretty much laid out for me. I was a basketball star my entire childhood, destined to be an NBA player for the Boston Celtics. But in my very first preseason game, Big Burt Wesson slammed into me and ruined my knee. I tried gamely to come back, but there is a big difference between gamely and effectively. My career was over before I hit the parquet floor.
I was also destined to be a family man like the man I most admired in the world: Al Bolitar, my father. He had married his sweetheart, my mom, Ellen, and they moved to the suburb of Livingston, New Jersey, and raised a family and worked hard and threw barbecues in the backyard. That was supposed to be my life--supportive spouse, two-point-six children, afternoons sitting in those rickety stands watching my own offspring, a dog maybe, a rusted hoop in the driveway, visits to the Home Depot and Modell's Sporting Goods on Saturdays. You get the idea.
But here I am, north of forty now, and still unmarried with no family.
"Would you care for a beverage?" the flight attendant asked me.
I'm not much of a drinker but I asked for a scotch and soda. Win's drink. I needed something to numb me a little, help me sleep. I closed my eyes again. Back to blocking. Blocking was good.
So where did Terese Collins, the woman I was flying across an ocean to see, fit in?
I never thought of Terese in terms of love. Not like that anyway. I thought about her supple skin and the smell of cocoa butter. I thought about the grief coming off her in waves. I thought about the way we made love on that island, two shipwrecks. When Win finally came via yacht to bring me home, I was stronger from our time together. She was not. We said our good-byes, but that hadn't been the end of us. Terese helped me when I needed it most, eight years ago, and then she vanished back into her hurt.
Now she was back.
For eight years, Terese Collins had been gone not only from me but from public view. In the nineties, she had been a popular TV personality, CNN's top anchorwoman, and then, poof, gone.
The plane landed and taxied to the gate. I grabbed my bag--no need to check luggage when it was for only a couple of nights-- and wondered what awaited me. I was the third off the plane, and with my long stride I quickly took the number one spot as we headed for the customs and immigration line. I had hoped to breeze through but three other flights had just landed and there was a logjam.
The line snaked through roped-off areas Disney World-style. It moved fast. The agents were mostly just waving people through, giving each passport little more than a cursory glance. When it was my turn, the female immigration officer looked at my passport, then at my face, then back at the passport, then back at me. Her eyes lingered. I smiled at her, keeping the Bolitar Charm setting on Low. I didn't want the poor woman disrobing right there at customs.
The agent turned away as if I'd said something rude. She nodded at a male agent. When she turned back to me, I figured I should up my game. Widen the smile. Turn the charm setting from Low to Stun.
"Step to the side, please," she said with a frown.
I was still grinning like an idiot. "Why?"
"My colleague will take care of your case."
"I'm a case?" I said.
"Please step to the side."
I was holding up the line and the passengers behind me were not pleased about it. I stepped to the side. The other uniformed agent said, "Please follow me."
I didn't like this, but what choice did I have? I wondered, why me? Maybe there was a French law against being this charming because--snap--there should be.
The agent led me into a small windowless room. The walls were beige and bare. There were two hooks behind the door with hangers on them. The seats were molded plastic. There was a table in the corner. The officer took my bag and put it on the table. He started rummaging through it.
"Empty your pockets, please. Put everything in this bowl. Remove your shoes."
I did. Wallet, BlackBerry, loose change, shoes.
"I need to search you."
He was pretty thorough. I was going to make a joke about him enjoying it or maybe say a boat ride on the Bateau Mouche would be nice before he felt me up, but I wondered about the French sense of humor. Wasn't Jerry Lewis an icon here? Maybe a sight gag would be more appropriate.
"Please sit."
I did. He left, taking the bowl with my belongings with him. For thirty minutes I sat there alone--cooling my heels, as they say. I didn't like this.
Two men stepped into the room. The first was younger, late twenties maybe, good-looking with sandy hair and that three-day growth pretty boys use to look more rugged. He wore jeans and boots and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the start of the elbow. He leaned his back against a wall, folded his arms across his chest, and chewed a toothpick.
The second man was midfifties with oversize wire-rimmed glasses and tired gray hair that was dangerously close to a comb-over. He was drying his hands on a paper towel as he entered. His windbreaker looked like something Members Only sold in 1986.
So much for Frenchmen and their haute couture.
The older man did the talking. "What is the purpose of yo
ur visit to France?"
I looked at him, then at the toothpick chewer, then back to him. "And you are?"
"I'm Captain Berleand. This is Officer Lefebvre."
I nodded at Lefebvre. He chewed the toothpick some more.
"Purpose of your visit?" Berleand asked again. "Business or pleasure?"
"Pleasure."
"Where will you be staying?"
"In Paris."
"Where in Paris?"
"At the Hotel d'Aubusson."
He didn't write it down. Neither of them had pen or paper.
"Will you be by yourself?" Berleand asked.
"No."
Berleand was still wiping his hands on the paper towel. He stopped, used one finger to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. When I still hadn't said anything else, he shrugged a "Well?" at me.
"I'm meeting a friend."
"The friend's name?"
"Is that necessary?" I asked.
"No, Mr. Bolitar, I'm nosy and am asking for no apparent reason."
The French are into sarcasm.
"The name?"
"Terese Collins," I said.
"What is your occupation?"
"I'm an agent."
Berleand looked confused. Lefebvre, it seemed, didn't speak English.
"I represent actors, athletes, writers, entertainers," I explained.
Berleand nodded, satisfied. The door opened. The first officer handed Berleand the bowl with my belongings. He put it on the table next to my bag. Then he started wiping his hands again.
"You and Ms. Collins didn't travel together, did you?"
"No, she is already in Paris."
"I see. How long do you plan on staying in France?"
"I'm not sure. Two, three nights."
Berleand looked at Lefebvre. Lefebvre nodded, peeled himself off the wall, headed for the door. Berleand followed.
"Sorry for any inconvenience," Berleand said. "I hope you have a pleasant stay."
5
TERESE Collins was waiting for me in the lobby.
She hugged me but not too hard. Her body leaned against mine for support, but again not that much, not a total collapse or anything. We were both reserved in our first greeting in eight years. Still, as we held each other, I closed my eyes and thought I could smell the cocoa butter.
My mind flashed to the Caribbean island, but mostly it flashed--let's be honest here--to the thing that truly defined us: the soul-piercing sex. That desperate clawing and shredding that makes you understand, in a totally non-sadomasochistic way, how pain--emotional pain--and pleasure not only intermingle but amplify each other. Neither of us had an interest in words or feelings or false comforts or hand-holding or even, well, reserved hugs--as if all that stuff were too tender, as if a gentle caress might pop this fragile bubble that temporarily protected us both.