The opening game of the season was a breeze. After the final buzzer, the other coach approached Mr. Hibma affably. He was encouraged by how good Mr. Hibma’s team was, optimistic that they could beat his rival, the coach at Springstead Middle.
“Hell,” Mr. Hibma said. “We’re going to whip Pasco.”
“I can’t beat him myself,” said the other coach. “I’m writing this year off. I’m starting a lawn service.”
“How does one go about starting a lawn service?”
“You need a big truck and an open trailer. Then you need the mowers and shit. You need a couple guys to work in the sun.”
“And this will enable you to quit teaching?”
“That’s the fantasy. Yesterday I picked up the magnet for the truck door: Sunrise Lawn Management.”
Mr. Hibma stepped over to his team’s cooler and filled two cups with iced tea. He handed one to the other coach. Mr. Hibma knew there were ways out of teaching, but he’d never pursue any of them. That was part of what he had to admit to himself, that he wasn’t the kind of person who started his own business or went to night school. He didn’t hustle.
“Let me ask you something,” Mr. Hibma said. “You don’t seem interested enough in girls’ middle school basketball to have a rival.”
The guy swished some tea around in his mouth. “Has nothing to do with basketball,” he said. “The coach at Springstead is an old friend of my wife’s, and he told her about some of us going to a strip club on teacher planning day.”
“What a dick,” Mr. Hibma said.
The guy nodded, downing the rest of his tea, getting slightly worked up. “He’s the one who invited me. You know? He invited me.”
“We’ll shut them out,” Mr. Hibma assured him. “We won’t let them score a point.”
He held his cup aloft, though it was empty, and the other coach matched the gesture.
Mr. Hibma went to the locker room to address his team. Not much needed to be said. He told them not to get tendonitis patting themselves on the back, that their fitness still wasn’t up to snuff. He explained to them, because something had to be said about Rosa and Sherrie’s disregard for his rules concerning personal appearance, that he was instituting a double-standard: Rosa and Sherrie could look however they chose. Life was full of double standards, he told the girls. They should get used to it.
On the way home, Mr. Hibma stopped at the video store. He wanted a porn movie. He’d been unable, lately, to masturbate, and he’d decided to leave all subtlety by the wayside, to stare at slick bodies as they slapped together, to listen to heavily eye-shadowed women shriek. He’d crank the volume on his TV until the shrieking drowned out the barking of any dogs.
Mr. Hibma proceeded to the back of the video store. He nudged through a pair of saloon doors and into the adult room. He’d never been in it before. There was no one else in the room, so Mr. Hibma took his time, skimming synopsis after synopsis. The saloon doors weren’t tall, so people that walked by could look in and see Mr. Hibma. He didn’t believe he should be ashamed, didn’t believe anyone had the right to judge him, but still, he was a teacher. He was in a strip mall with a toy store and an arts-and-crafts shop in it. It was about a hundred degrees in the adult room. Despite its rattling, the fan built into the wall did nothing. Mr. Hibma could feel the blood in his cheeks. An older man came through the saloon doors, whistling to himself. He didn’t acknowledge Mr. Hibma, simply went to the movie he wanted, plucked it off the shelf, and was gone. A lady with a gaggle of kids tottered by outside. She paused and gave Mr. Hibma a look. He had to get out of there. He picked a movie, one about a women’s football league. He steeled himself and emerged into the main room, breathing the fresh air, walking with his movie pressed against his leg. He turned up an aisle and stopped in his tracks. A girl from his first period — Karen was her name — was behind the register. What was she, fourteen? Maybe her parents owned the place. Mr. Hibma ducked into the war section and stalled for a minute, wondering if he should wait for Karen to go to the restroom or take a break, but he knew he couldn’t get his porn movie. He rested it on the shelf behind a Vietnam documentary and slipped outside.
He drove two miles up the road, to a restaurant with a separate bar that was usually empty. He would salvage the night. He would drink a series of gin drinks and eat something fried and go home and collapse. In the morning, if he still desired straightforward porn, he’d drive to another town. This bar made strong drinks. It had a jukebox full of forgotten music. It smelled like smoke, but nobody was ever there to smoke in it.
When Mr. Hibma pulled into the lot, he saw a fleet of cars adorned with Citrus Middle School parking stickers. He stepped around a bush and peeked in a window. Librarians. They’d bunched the tables together. Assistants. Even volunteers. There were maybe nine of them, sipping determinedly at pink wine. Mr. Hibma knew when he was beat. He leaned against his car, face upturned toward to the sky, racking his brain for something else to do, some other way to salvage the night.
He had to change himself. The world wasn’t going to change to suit him. He tried to see himself as he would be after he murdered Mrs. Conner, but all he saw were faint, unclustered stars. He could see the act, the smothering, Mrs. Conner’s flailing limbs, but he couldn’t be sure what it would mean for him. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t hope for it to come to that. And neither did anyone else. Dale wasn’t going to answer his letter. No one was going to help Mr. Hibma. He was flying uncharted skies.
Shelby had her father’s checkbook out and a book of stamps and a pile of statements and envelopes. She had electric bills, water bills, trash pickup, cable, phone. Half of them were late. Shelby went through and stamped all the envelopes. You didn’t have to lick stamps anymore. She remembered always wanting to lick stamps for her parents when she was little. Now they were stickers. She picked up a pen to date one of the checks and it wouldn’t write. It scratched against the soft surface of the checkbook. Shelby shook the pen and licked the point and still it wouldn’t perform its function. She didn’t have another one handy. It felt like a colossal chore to get up and find another pen. She ran her fingers against the fine grain of the table.
Shelby imagined walking around in the summertime and seeing her breath, the billboards in an unimaginable language she would never try to learn, every meal centered on fresh fish, every cabinet full of vodka. The sun setting at eleven at night. She imagined flying in a jet, and acting like she did it all the time. Shelby would point at menus. She would have the best guide. She would stay in the best part of the city, in an apartment whose balcony probably looked out over the morning bustling of shopkeepers.
Aunt Dale had finally answered Shelby’s e-mail, and in a sincere tone that wasn’t stiff in the least. Shelby and her aunt already had a rapport, as much as was possible over a computer. They weren’t estranged relatives, they were Shelby and Aunt Dale. Shelby wasn’t going to come out and write what she wanted, but it ought to be obvious. She wanted to be invited for a visit. She wanted to go to Iceland for the summer, or for a week, a long weekend — a chance to be far from the shadows of her real life. Breathing foreign air for even an hour, she knew, would help her. She was going to hint and hint. She was going to win Aunt Dale over. Aunt Dale knew what she was doing in the world and she would share that with Shelby. Shelby would return from her trip tough and levelheaded. Shelby had already e-mailed back and forth four or five times with her aunt. Now it wasn’t taking longer than a day to get Aunt Dale’s responses. Aunt Dale had already quit asking Shelby how she was doing, had already dispensed with pleasantries. And for Shelby’s part, she posed question after question about Iceland, about the people and the TV shows and the government. It wouldn’t be long before Shelby would see it all herself.