Page 96 of Scoring the Player
“I’ll call you,” he replies, taking it.
There’s something in his voice that worsens the feeling in my stomach.
CHAPTER 22
ARNAZ
“Rigor Mortis”
Begins: fervent, buoyant, ached with pining.
Ends: bloated, rigid, ravaged with dying.
Iflip up the collar of my coat as the icy rain licks my cheeks and pelts the brim of my fitted cap. Turning down a side street, I avoid the upcoming Main Street tourist trap. It’s the third city since Brooklyn. I’m sure it has a name, but the number is what comes to me.
Three down, four more to go.
Last stop: San Francisco.
A sports bar spilling out with shivering smokers has me crossing the street. Keeping on until I hit the riverbank, I take a sharp left and descend a staircase. I blow on my hands as the wind lashes my back, propelling me along. Except for a woman in a plastic poncho and her dog, I don’t see another soul for a quarter of a mile. Two zigzag turns and the crossing of a footbridge, my head raises and scans the area—unless you search for it, you’d never find it.
Slowly blinking into sight is the incandescent caduceus, settled in the inky, gauzy facade of a weathered stone building.
When I’m back home, I’ll wonder if I imagined it, and that wonder will scratch at me until I return.
Sometimes I stare out of my bedroom window at the small birds perched on the cable lines. Every day, they reappear in the same spot, almost at the same time, and I’m further convinced I’m trapped in a simulation, and the wooly static of my brain runs on an entirely different operating system.
Almost everything in my life since my first breath has felt like it’s running on a program, and I’m the glitch.
Not this bar, dark and out of sight.
A man aged enough to be my grandfather flicks a glance up when I enter. Our eyes exchange a quiet acknowledgment. Except for a couple in the corner, the place is as empty as I remember it.
“Toddy,” I request as I reach for my wallet, peel off cash, and slide it over. Ignoring it, he gets to work on the drink.
The wooden floors and low-slung furniture creak from bearing decades of the troubled seeking a reprieve from the ills out there.
Or the ills within.
Ever since Brooklyn, I’ve been losing time.
Memory lapses.
Memory traveling.
Once or twice, you show your antenna’s broken, people give you the benefit, but a third time?
The locker room falls silent when you enter, averted glances, breaths retracting from the stench of the two-legged disappointment.
I settle into the corner booth, facing the wall, and warm my hands over the tealight candle.
Always the same playlist: Nina, Coltrane, Ray.
Ms. Simone is right. It did rain today.All week, if we’re being metaphorical.
Starting with game one after Brooklyn.
“Watch your mouth. I’ve been busting your ass for years,” I reminded the cocky, trash-talking power forward after spectacularly embarrassing him.
