Page 13 of The Fundamentals

“I’m by myself and I was just checking things out,” I said lamely. “You know.”

“Sure,” he said. “You’re getting rained on, though.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Matteo, Matteo Sutton, he’s out here waiting on some girl who looks to be standing him up. I can leave him to it so we can go inside.” He hesitated. “If you want to go with me. Do you?”

I found myself nodding and he nodded back, smiling. He turned and the crowd parted again, so I followed back over to his friend. They had a brief conversation and Sutton took off down the sidewalk. Bowie checked for me and then cleared another path to the door of the bar, where an employee magically appeared to usher him over to a table of more Woodsmen players. Music blasted and the dance floor was full of swaying bodies.

That woke me up to what I was doing. “Oh, no,” I said out loud. “No, I actually can’t come with you.”

“What?” he yelled back. “What did you say? You hear a moo?”

“No, nothing about cows! I can’t be out with Woodsmen players,” I hollered. “It’s in my contract. We’re not supposed to. The dinner at my house was ok, probably, since it was only eating, but I can’t do this. You should stay with your friends. Sorry.” I waved and backed out, but from the look on his face, he either hadn’t heard or still thought I was talking about animals. I pointed toward the street and then at myself, shaking my head.

Bowie shook his, too, but he followed me out of the Pineapple Lounge and onto the rainy sidewalk. After he and Matteo Sutton had vacated their position, most of the crowd had dispersed. “What are you trying to say?” he asked. “I heard Woodsmen, sinner, fleeting, ends, and sorry. Sounds serious to me.”

“I was saying that I can’t go out with a Woodsmen player. Not that we’re going out.” I looked right and left. “I mean, I’ll get in trouble if we’re seen together. Not together, just…”

“I get it. Yeah, I know that rule. They tell us to leave the cheerleaders alone, too, but you and I aren’t doing the things they’re trying to prevent. I don’t think we need to worry.” He looked up at the sky and thunder rumbled. That had sounded serious, too. “We’re going to get soaked if we stay out here.” Lightning flashed, punctuating his words. “I live just around the corner. We can go there.” He started to walk but hesitated with his foot up in the air and looked at me. “We’re just hanging out. That’s all, right?”

It was nothing. You could eat with someone, swim with him, memorize his tattoos, go to his apartment, and it all meant nothing. It definitely wasn’t going to result in what the team leadership was trying to prevent between cheerleaders and players: distraction, discord, and difficulties.

I still looked both ways down the sidewalk and made sure that my hood was pulled up and hiding my face before I walked in the direction that Bowie had started in. He smiled at me in the rain as I went past him and in half of another step, he’d caught up to me. “I live close,” he said, and we hurried through the weather to the old water department building that had been converted into living space. It wasn’t exactly just around the corner, but it wasn’t far.

Bowie shook himself off when we walked into the lobby, kind of like a giant dog. I more carefully removed my raincoat but then looked unhappily at what I had worn underneath it: just leggings and an old sweatshirt that had been my sister’s before she got tired of it and I took over. It said “DIVA” in large, pink letters across my chest. Not my best look but again, it didn’t matter.

“This is a nice place,” I said, as we went to the elevator.

“It’s not bad. I grew up out in the sticks so I thought I’d want to try living in a big city. Of course, I’ve gotten a lot of crap for calling this town a big city.” He laughed as we ascended the floors.

“It’s not that small,” I commiserated. “It’s the biggest city I’ve ever been to.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your support.” He was smiling at me but he nodded, like he meant that statement. “My college was out in the middle of nowhere, too.”

“But it attracted a lot of good football players.”

“It sure did. We won the national championship my junior year and we almost repeated.” He unlocked the door to apartment three-A and I followed him inside. It was so neat that it looked a little like no one actually lived here, except that there was furniture. It was a stark contrast to my own home, which was full of rugs, vases, picture frames, candles, pillows, and…stuff. Everything was old, but it was also comfortable and cozy in our cottage even if it was pretty shabby. Most of those possessions, the pillows and vases and everything else, were a little cracked, torn, or nicked. They were either taped or glued together, sewn with very inexpert stitches, nailed a bunch of times, or balanced in a way that you had to be careful how you sat, opened, slept, or in any way dealt with them. I’d done my best.

But in Bowie’s apartment, everything was new and neutral. Besides a pile of papers and mail on the dining room table, there was nothing very personal in the place. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t like it, because I did. “I like it,” I said, because it seemed to be a good time to make a positive comment. “It looks very neat and clean.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, and took my wet coat to hang on a hook. “I wanted it that way. I grew up in a little house with a lot of people and a lot of animals, too. Besides my parents and my brothers, we had relatives that made their home with us, and my dad has a thing about buying useless crap at garage sales, and my brothers live like pigs. There was always somebody someplace, or something to trip on, or a dog getting into something that he wasn’t supposed to. I told myself that when I could have my own place, it would be neat and clean, just like you said.”

“You got that.” It was quiet, too. There was a large picture window that looked out onto the street and although we weren’t that high off the ground, you couldn’t hear much from the people or cars up here.

“I got it, and you know what? I don’t know if I like it,” he told me. “It feels really empty all the time, really still. It doesn’t feel like anyone lives here at all.” He looked around. “Maybe I need four or five animals wandering around, cats and dogs and a bird or two. That would wake things up.” He kicked off his shoes into the hallway and I put mine next to his. They were about half the length.

“Come on in,” Bowie invited. He walked over to a tannish couch and sat down and I hesitated briefly then joined him there. “What were you doing tonight?”

“I drove my dad to work and I have some time to kill before he’s done.” I checked my phone. “A few more hours.”

“Where does he work?”

I explained about him doing security at Woodsmen Stadium for some events and games, but that was only sporadic. “He needs a schedule,” I said. “Structure. We looked for a while and it was hard to find something because…because he had the security experience at the stadium, they hired him at North Orchard Golf and Country Club. He’s been doing afternoon shifts and it’s going ok.”

He nodded. “And you drive him?”

“Not every day. Now it’s harder because I have practice in the afternoons, too, so I just call him a lot to try to get him moving and make sure he leaves on time. Yesterday, I got in trouble with Coach Rylah for using my phone during practice. She told me that phones were completely duxelles, but one of the other girls is studying to be a chef and she told me that word means cooked-up mushrooms. Anyway, I’m never sure what to do about my dad.” I looked over, realizing that I was saying a whole lot, which was not something I usually did. I must have been more worried about this than I’d realized. “What were you doing tonight?” I asked.

He told me about his friend Matteo and how he’d gotten ghosted, a first for him. “He’s usually a pretty popular guy with the ladies.”

“Aren’t all the Woodsmen, with everybody? Everyone around here worships the team and now all the summer people are here, too.” He was nodding as I spoke. “Do you get tired of it?”

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