“But I didn’t say anything,” Allan said. He sounded a little disappointed. He wanted some credit and couldn’t find a way to take any.
They played a few more points. And then Allan said something stupid about Africa, how, if he went there, he would be really big, he could teach them a thing or two about getting goods to market. He combined the comment with a reckless overhead smash that through some complicated geometry sent the egg-sized ball arrowing for Donny’s face. He ducked and the ball hit the glass. Allan bent double laughing.
Donny, scowling, collected the ball from the ground and brought back his racket as if to serve before Allan was ready. The man was a gazelle, Donny remembered thinking afterwards, on the way to the hospital, not a wolf at all. The man could move when it really mattered. Because Allan responded to Donny’s feint by rushing toward the back of the court, head down. His intention, plainly, was to wheel around, make some miraculous return of Donny’s impending and unsportsmanlike serve.
Donny let the racket drop to his side. He moved a step to his right. Not enough to interfere with Allan’s progress, but enough to bring him within range. As Allan drew level, Donny spun and pushed hard at his friend, shoved him headfirst into the glass. The noise was unremarkable in these surroundings; players were always colliding with their environment. The injury rate was very high, but rarely was it anything serious. Allan, however, dropped as if he’d been felled by a hunter. A smear of blood on the glass, thickest at the point of impact, diminished as it approached the floor.
Donny gulped. He heard the gulp and he was, he felt, a cartoon of himself. He was two-dimensional, nothing was happening with the weight or import it ought to carry. This, instead of an act of murder, was the Roadrunner, it was Bugs Bunny. For a split second he even saw the animated figure suspended midair, just over the cliff’s edge, legs pedalling madly. He shook off the image and tossed away his racket, as if it were a gun. He dropped down next to the body, scraping his knees on the hardwood and depositing a touch of his own blood in that large cell with its begrimed picture window.
Donny had no doubt that Allan was done for. He touched his friend’s scalp gingerly, manipulated the loose mess of bone in there, the sharp edges and the soft bottom. Donny pushed. Yep, that was Allan’s brain. Resisting the fingertip pressure, but not well. It was an unusual consequence of an impact this moderate, but it happened sometimes. The skull could only take so much. And at only some angles. But hit it wrong and it was vulnerable as fruit. Great plates of bone could come free, float around under the skin. This had happened here. There was no coming back from this. It was simple tectonics; it was how the entire world worked.
He checked for a pulse and found one, but irregular and shallow. It was about what he expected. There was no hurry here. But there was, he knew, protocol. He summoned the appropriate mix of panic and professional expertise, and had the boy at the desk with the towels call an ambulance. He jogged casually back to the court, where one or two onlookers had gathered. And then a couple more, who sat on the bleachers behind them as if this were all part of a game.
He identified himself to the paramedics. They exchanged curt nods. He explained what had happened, more or less, to a policewoman who wrote it all down in a small spiral-bound notebook.
“I have to change,” he told her, and pointed to his sweaty and blood-stained clothes. She nodded and Donny escaped to the locker room. He checked his BlackBerry for any messages he might have missed. There was something from Maria: Donny. Surprise! I’ll be home tomorrow. Can’t talk about it now. But the weather, you know. Anyway, I’ll call you later. Love you. And another from his office: Adam Govington had taken a turn for the worse, he was at the hospital. Could Donny possibly get in there for a consult?
Well of course he could. He was going that way anyway, wasn’t he?
The policewoman offered him a ride.
“It’s okay. I rent parking downstairs,” he told her. “I’ll follow you. If that’s okay.” He looked at her questioningly. There wasn’t anything else going on here, was there?
She said that was fine. But was he okay?
“I’m great,” he told her. “I’ve seen much worse.”
“He’s your friend, though. And they say it looks bad.”
Donny hung his head, as if shamed by her insight. “I’ll be okay.”
He climbed behind the wheel of his new Xterra. He was still on a honeymoon with this vehicle. It pleased him. Its height above the road, its not-quite-smooth ride and its smart sound system, its awesome roof rack. It made him happy. And as he climbed the ramp and turned on the headlights, filtered carefully onto King, checking the rearview, he realized he would have to be careful. He wanted to whistle a tune, but it would be wrong. It would arouse suspicions, and more than that it just plain worried him. It was inappropriate. Shit happened, he understood that. He hadn’t intended to do more than swear at Allan, tell him not to be so fucking racist, so damned superior. But there was little point getting excited about what had happened instead. He gave serious consideration to the notion that he was in shock. And that seemed quite likely. He took his own pulse, measured his breathing, put a hand to his forehead. Yes, he thought, that might be it. He probably shouldn’t even be driving.
He saw the ambulance some two blocks ahead. He couldn’t catch it. He slipped a CD into the player. Skipped straight to the last track because it was the only one worth listening to. Grace, she takes the blame, he heard. She covers the shame / Removes the stain.
The real reason for his calm occurred to him as he entered the hospital parking lot. It was about Adam Govington, all of this. With Allan dead, or damn close, Adam would get a reprieve. He was positive. That was the way it worked. It had to. You didn’t lose two people in one day. He had offered up Allan to appease the gods. A sacrifice. In return he wanted Adam back. Allan for Adam. It was a fair trade. More than fair. He pulled into a narrow space and found he couldn’t open the doors properly on the Xterra. He could have squeezed through the opening, but who was to say his neighbors would be as considerate. He backed out and searched some more. Because Grace makes beauty / Out of ugly things.
Donny panicked for a second when he recalled Maria’s message. How she was coming home. Which was great. But it wasn’t what he wanted. If he got something for Allan’s demise he wanted it to be Adam. He loved Maria, though he also wanted to watch that boy’s beautiful mother cry with gratitude. Why couldn’t he choose?
He found two spots empty beside each other and pulled in. He straddled the line. He turned off the engine and the music and sat quietly with his hands on the wheel. Relax before you go in, he told himself. It’s okay. It’ll all be fine. The gods know what you want. Those people in there don’t, of course, you’re not that obvious, you give off only a sense of goodness, a transparent wish that things turn out for the best for everyone. But the gods know. Oh yes, they do.
About the contributors
Janine Armin writes regularly for the Globe and Mail and contributes to Bookforum and the Village Voice.
Heather Birrell is the author of I know you are but what am I? (2004). Her stories have been short-listed for Canada’s Western and National Magazine awards. “BriannaSusannaAlana” won the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart 2006 Journey Prize. Birrell also works as a high school teacher and creative writing instructor, doing all of this — barely — in Toronto’s West End, where she lives with her husband, Charles Checketts.