“This muffin is all right,” Myron said in a low voice. Tommy’s face looked weird because he was doing exercises to strengthen his pelvic floor.
A hotel employee named Nick walked into the dining area wearing Chad’s shoes. The shoes were too small, and very wet, but he liked them. They made him feel like a lucky person, though he knew himself to be an unlucky person. He wrapped a bagel in a napkin, filled a cup with orange juice. He remembered the time when Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s leg on Monday Night Football. He remembered exactly where he was, and what he was doing. He clearly remembered Howard Cosell’s anguished reaction, though he remembered it incorrectly because Cosell’s last season on Monday Night Football had been 1983. He moved toward the men in the jerseys. He had a burden he was eager to set down.
From across the room Charles saw Nick approaching the defensive backs’ breakfast table with an expression of fullness, and he stood quickly, placing his napkin on the table. “Excuse me, guys,” he said. He walked through the dining area, into the lobby. For a moment he stood before the fountain, which was once again dry. Each year in this hotel lobby he was forced to recall that as a child he had stolen quarters from a mall fountain (soaking the cuffs of his sweatshirt) so that he could purchase, in the filthy bathroom of a gas station near his house, an erotic puzzle entitled Boobs Galore. The small puzzle box contained nine cardboard squares that could be arranged, on a floor behind a locked bedroom door, to form a picture of a sad, shirtless woman with enormous breasts. Charles remembered that the woman, when reconstituted, was sitting on what he now knew to be a Windsor chair, and that any adolescent lust he could gin up at the sight of her demoralizingly large breasts was almost immediately dowsed by the way she looked back at Charles. The puzzle piece with her face (top row, middle column) countervailed all of the other eight pieces. That face was more nude by far than her body. The look on her face implicated Charles. It suggested that she was forced to share Charles’s shame and disappointment, and she was resentful. Or perhaps Charles was forced to share her shame and disappointment, and he was resentful. In either case, Charles and this nine-piece shirtless woman in a Windsor chair had been trapped together in a sticky web of shame, disappointment, and resentment. Charles had stolen coins for this experience. In his backyard he had dug a small hole. He had put the puzzle in the hole, and then lit it with a long wooden match. It burned in blues and greens.
The young woman at the front desk was likely not aware of Charles’s memory of the puzzle, though she had grown up with two older brothers. She smiled and nodded at Charles — or at a spot just above his shoulder — as he walked past the desk. “Good morning, sir,” she said. Charles walked outside to verify briefly the wetness and coldness of the rain. He walked back through the automatic doors into the lobby, into the men’s restroom. The restroom was empty and glistening. A stalactiform mass depended from the ceiling, dripping slowly. Charles selected a corner stall beneath a flickering fluorescent light, and he saw at once the work of the diligent vandal. Someone (Carl) had traced his left hand dozens of times. The hands filled the wall. Charles placed his left hand inside the outline of the vandal’s hand. He reached high for another. The effect of the multiplicity of hands was not of many people, but of a single person amplified by trouble. Charles worked with adolescents with eating disorders, and so he knew very well the forms of desperate assertion.
THROUGH THE WINDOWS of the dining area, the hotel parking lot shone darkly in the cold rain. The lights above the lot were on, casting a weak yellow glow in the mist. At the offensive linemen’s table, Gil spoke of the tiny hinges of a dollhouse roof. His Mark May jersey was radiant against the dun breads of breakfast. At a nearby table, the conversation drifted inevitably toward vasectomy and time share. Wesley said they could now cauterize the vas deferens in a scalpel-free procedure. Gary was adamant about an A-frame chalet in the Smokies. Vince heard the men out, nodding, but he said he was just not ready. “Suit yourself,” Gary said, leaving the table for more instant oatmeal.
Later, full, the men pulled their chairs away from their breakfast tables. They had nowhere to be until ten o’clock. They sat, leaned back, crossed their legs at the ankles, at the knees. They drank coffee, picked at pastries. They talked, read complimentary newspapers, played games on phones, took photographs of themselves, stared at the mute television. One man worked a crossword, another put new laces in his cleats, another used the sharp edge of a business card to remove food from his teeth. Another performed a magic trick with a quarter and upside-down cups. George did chair yoga. Like the dog that licks its testicles, they refilled their coffee cups because they could. The coffee was bad, but its poor quality served to strengthen the community. The day was in front of them. The dining area, seen as a whole, appeared to be a site both of great torpor and great vitality, as the sheer variety of indolence manifested as an energetic bustle.
If asked to specify the best part of the weekend, not one of the men would think to name this languorous interlude in the dining area, and yet there was no time better than this. This was the best time, this brief span of Saturday morning. It was not an event, could not be named or considered. Consequently, the men could enjoy it without pressure, anxiety, or self-consciousness. Indeed, without awareness. They could enjoy it without enjoying it. If they were aware of it as a potentially enjoyable event — Post-Breakfast Relaxation, 9:15–10:00, Dining Area — then it would almost certainly cease to be such an enjoyable event. Disappointment was the freight of expectation. Unbeknownst to the men, this was what they came here for, every year. They were enjoying their morning, but they did not realize it. The good moments, it is true, were always this way, interstitial and unacknowledged. They craved occasion, but did not understand it. Halfway through their lives — considerably more than halfway, in several cases — the men knew nothing of their own vast contentment.
A woman entered the dining area with a boy. She paid no attention to the men in their jerseys. She briefly surveyed the continental breakfast. Then she filled two cups with orange juice, and put lids on the cups. She wrapped food in napkins, and began to arrange the food in her large purse. The boy, eight or nine, shuffled away from her, peered into the fruit bowl. He withdrew two apples and an orange. “Don’t touch anything,” his mother said, without looking up from the buffet. The boy turned toward the dining area, and he began to juggle the fruit. The men tapped each other on the shoulders, shifted in their chairs to watch with amusement and anxiety. They knew too well how it would end, the bruised fruit rolling beneath tables, the boy scolded once more. His face glowed with concentration. He had taught himself to juggle in his bedroom, and he was good. He would not drop the fruit. The men began to relax. They began to miss their own children. It was the best kind of missing, without pang or ache. They did not actually want to be with their children. They had fond thoughts, and were grateful for the distance that generated those thoughts. “Let’s go, Brian,” the woman said. “Right now.” She zipped her bulging purse, and walked toward the lobby. As abruptly as he had begun, the boy stopped juggling. He gently caught an apple with a hand that held an apple. He wiped each piece of fruit with a napkin, placed them into the bowl, and then jogged after the woman. “We’re late,” the woman said. Gary, tugging at the neck of his Lawrence Taylor jersey, muttered an unkind word about the woman, and Jeff laughed. The more thoughtful among the men considered the ways in which they, too, may have become inured to the remarkable.