“Hi, Robert,” Andy said.
“Hi, Andy,” Robert said. He had always liked Andy, and he was not displeased to see him. Given the alternatives, he hoped they would be sharing a bed.
“Are you done in there?” Andy said.
“It’s all yours.”
Holding a pair of dripping shoes, Andy entered the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the hair dryer attached to the wall.
FAT MICHAEL was not in the touchers’ room. Carrying a bottle of Advanced Water, a pack of antibacterial wipes, and his Theismann helmet, he had left the room without saying anything to Tommy and Myron. Tommy and Myron, though, could pretty well guess where he had gone.
The room, after the lottery, looked like a site of explosive violence. Pizza sauce streaked the walls, congealed bits of flesh-colored pizza lay strewn on the beds. The keg lay on its side, as if, once depleted of beer, it had perished. Having never seemed alive, it now resembled nothing so much as something dead. Crumpled napkins covered the floor like peach blossoms after the Battle of Shiloh. Tommy began to clean immediately, before Myron had an opportunity to ask or exhort him to clean. Tommy did not mind work, but he disliked being asked or told to work. If Myron had said to Tommy, “Let’s get this place cleaned up,” Tommy would have immediately become sullen and insolent, but if he could begin on his own initiative, he could labor assiduously. Myron, who also did not like to be asked or told to do work, immediately left the room to get a trash can before Tommy could ask him to go find a trash can. He found one in the vending alcove, which clicked and hummed. He had to step over the legs of a man from Prestige Vista Solutions, who sat on the floor, chanting lifelessly into his phone, “But that does not make any sense.” Myron filled the trash can while Tommy scrubbed the walls with a white washcloth that almost instantly turned pink. The activities began as a kind of race, but each man slowed as he realized that the race’s winner would be forced to clean the bathroom, an unpleasant task. The problem with doing your work fast was that you made more work for yourself. Myron finished first, but then left the room with his trash can, staying gone, Tommy thought, for a suspiciously long time. Tommy draped the keg with a towel, then trudged alone into the bathroom.
Later, their space tidy if not dry or fragrant, Tommy and Myron sat in chairs on opposite sides of the room, throwing a football and talking about public education. Myron’s kids’ school’s library’s roof had collapsed under the weight of snow last winter. Tommy’s kid’s teacher’s aide was someone he could not stop thinking about. Because he called her “striking” and “pretty,” because he talked about her “features” and her “figure,” Tommy did not sound creepy to Myron, nor to himself. It was but a partial and genteel confession of his depravity, and it trailed off into silence and obscene ideation. The men did not need to talk because they were throwing and catching a football. Or, if they chose, they could talk about throwing and catching a football. Eventually, of course, one man sat beneath the window and tried to time his throw so that the other man, running from the door, could make a diving catch on the queen bed. They alternated positions. Both men became flushed and sweaty. Neither man cared to remember the year that Vince broke the corner off of a bedside table. Both went about the game with gravity and good-natured intensity. It was important to them to throw and catch the ball well.
“Nice one.”
“My fault, bad throw.”
“The one-handed grab!”
“I suck.”
“That one will no doubt be reviewed.”
“I used to be able to do that.”
“Lead me a little more next time.”
“Crap.”
“Whoa.”
“You okay?”
“Nice one.”
“Got my bell rung.”
“Hold on.”
“Broke the plane!”
“It went in the closet, I think.”
“Fearless over the middle.”
“I have to blow my nose.”
“That’s it.”
“On a roll now.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That was my bad.”
The wall sconce was chipped, but functional. The men quit their game, and prepared for bed. They texted their wives, brushed their teeth. Fat Michael had still not returned. Tommy and Myron got into the same queen-size bed. Myron asked Tommy if he wanted to read, and they both laughed. Myron turned off the light. Tommy, it seemed to Myron, fell asleep immediately. He had never seen someone fall asleep so quickly.
In the faint red glow of the alarm clock, Myron could see the empty bed they had left for Fat Michael. It was customary for the man playing Theismann to sleep alone. It was intended to be a perk, or a compensation, but it had always seemed to Myron to be mildly punitive, a form of exile or symbolic estrangement. Myron, who six or seven years ago had been Theismann, imagined Fat Michael slipping into bed later tonight. He knew what it was like. Now Myron, feeling Tommy’s warmth beside him, remembered so very clearly that time after the birth of his first child. He remembered tucking her in at night, leaving her alone in the dark of her room. It had always seemed odd to him, somehow unfair or backward, that the adults could sleep together at night for warmth and comfort, while the child, fearful and lonely, had to sleep by herself.
IN BED, in the dark, Andy and Robert talked quietly about injuries. Robert’s neighbor had sliced himself wickedly with a hedge trimmer. There had been blood on the roof. Andy knew it didn’t sound like much, but he had ended up in the ER because of a splinter from his back deck. Both men had been laid out with back spasms. Both men found themselves using the railing when they climbed stairs. Neither man could put on socks while standing up. They had both lived in the paradise of a painless body for years without even realizing it. The inglorious body had become, for Robert and Andy, one of life’s most prominent themes. They often woke up sore, scanning their minds for possible causes. Each man in the bed cupped his genitals, not for arousal but for comfort.
“I’m sorry to hear about your marriage,” Robert didn’t say.
“It’s just one of those things,” Andy didn’t respond. Nor did he say anything about the day he and his wife told their two children. That night, one of his final nights in the house, Andy went to check on his nine-year-old son in his room. He planned to sit on the edge of the boy’s bed, to say things to him while he slept. But the boy wasn’t there. Andy searched the house, gripping his phone, preparing to call someone, the police. Finally, he climbed to the third floor to his thirteen-year-old daughter’s bedroom. Andy said none of this to Robert. He opened his daughter’s bedroom door gently, even though he was expressly not allowed in the room, and had not been for a couple of years. A lamp was on inside. Andy smelled the fresh paint. She had painted her walls. The color was ridiculous, but she had done a neat job. The room was heartbreakingly clean and organized. The items on her bookshelves were arranged perfectly. He had had no idea what was up here, but he never would have guessed this. A silk butterfly dangled from the ceiling, spinning slowly in an invisible draft. The girl was in bed, texting. Andy’s son was curled beside her, asleep. His son and daughter didn’t even like each other. All they did was fight. The boy was not allowed in this room. Andy’s daughter did not look up from her phone. Andy nodded to her, and he left the room.
Robert knew that Andy was going through a hard time. He knew he had a kid, maybe two. The question Robert would not ask had a long answer that Andy would not provide. Robert wanted to help. He wanted to give something to Andy. “My mother has Alzheimer’s,” he said quietly.