Gary figures he’ll be fine when he gets over the idea of devotion. There was that morning in Rotterdam a man and a woman got down on their knees in the street. They took him up to their room, gave him dope to smoke, played his music for him as though this time he would hear it anew. The man pulled tablature of Gary’s songs from a cold oven, his file drawer.
“Your band is one of those bands,” the man said, “in a few years, forget it. Legends. People will see, separate the wheat from the chafe.”
“What about now?” said Gary. “And you mean chaff.”
“Now is different story,” the man said. “There is still a lot of chafe.”
Besides, he’s sick of rock. He likes kids. He’s shooting a lot of cocaine, sure, but that’s just because he’s off for the summer. This bust, though, it bothers him. Community service? What community? The cop and the cart guy? The man with no teeth? This city is just a lot of brickwork and stonework and people bearing down on nothing at all.
He remembers the last time he saw Lorraine Lily, a few winters ago. A tag-along, sweet, with tits. Maybe he could knock off the death trip, get clean, get clear, with Lorraine. Benefit from her training.
“Last licks,” he says out loud, pulls the plunger back, eases the needle home.
Neuron, axon, penalty kick.
Now the Africans are leaping into each others’ arms, sobbing, falling to the field, grabbing the turf.
“This carriage isn’t going to turn into a pumpkin anytime soon, I’ll tell you that,” the color man says. “In years to come we’re going to look back on this. This moment will become legend.”
“What I hope,” says another announcer, “is that moments like this will help promote international brotherhood through the majesty of the athletic endeavor.”
“Well put,” says the color man, “and well-hoped. But let us not forget that this is just a game.”
“But a hell of a game!”
“The beautiful game. You can see why from the slums of the far-away slums to the war-torn fields of warring lands, this is the world at play.”
“So simple, yet so complex.”
“A dance and a battle in one.”
“You fucking idiots!” Gary says to the screen, but it feels forced, as though he is just some man watching TV.
Maybe Lorraine is religious, thinks Gary, the inner roar of his ears on the wane. I could learn the words. I could sing of God.
There is one last O’Doul’s.
One day Gary chaperoned a field trip to the city’s science library. The kids unpacked their knapsacks and set to work. Gary loitered in the stacks, found a book about barbed wire. It had sketches of every variety, maybe named for the rancher who first knotted it that way. Scutt’s Clip. Corsicana Clip. Brotherton Barb. He thought he could do something with this, something creative, but he didn’t know what. Maybe a song with all the names of barbed wire in it. It would be good not to explain.
There was one boy in his charge they said might be trouble. It was a private school, so no one ever put it quite like that. What they said was that Vernon was a genius.
Now the boy sat alone at a silver table.
“Hey, man,” said Gary. “What’s wrong?”
“My homework,” said Vernon. “My fucking homework. I don’t want to do it right now.”
“I know where you’re coming from,” said Gary.
“Sure,” said Vernon.
“No, really,” said Gary.
“I bet you couldn’t even do my homework.”
“It’s not about whether I can do your homework. It’s about a feeling.”
“What a pile. Look at you. You’re not even a real teacher. What happened to you? I bet you’re over twenty.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“See,” said Vernon. “If I’m anything like you at your age I’m going to kill myself. What do you think of that?”
“I think you ought to save yourself the hassle and do it now,” said Gary. “I was at a faculty meeting and your name came up. Turns out you’re not a genius, after all.”
“Liar,” said Vernon, but his voice wavered, and in a moment he was crying. Gary went back to his book. He felt terrible but harbored a secret hope that this moment would count for the genius as a minor scar. Someday Vernon would be accepting a prize at some institute and self-doubt would flare up in the guise of Gary, leering.
They are waiting for him at the park station uptown. He sees the trash sticks leaned up in a bucket. A woman ranger in a tight uniform leads him to a bench where some others sit. There are reams of flyers and boxes of envelopes piled on the floor. The flyers announce a summer program for kids, nature walks, rollerblading, marine biology by the lake.
“Are you still hiring for this?” says Gary, holding the flyer up.
“Oh, good,” says the ranger, “I was worried we wouldn’t have a comedian today.”
“No, really,” says Gary, “I’m qualified.”
“Fold,” says the ranger.
The others are younger than Gary, not white. Kids from nearby.
“You got a car?” says one of them, who has announced himself as Junebug.
“No,” says Gary.
“Well, if you did, what car would you get? A Lexus, right?”
“A Gremlin,” says Gary.
“A what?”
“It’s a cool car,” says Gary. “Like in a fucked-up way.”
“Gremlin? What’d you do, anyway?”
Gary tells them about the cart guy, the tomato crate, the cop. He doesn’t mention the cocaine.
“Hey,” says Junebug to the ranger, “Qualified Gremlin here threw down with a cop.”
“Well, he better not try any of that shit with me,” says the ranger. “I’ll put my foot in his ass.”
They fold flyers until noon, break, fold again.
“What about the garbage?” says Gary, finally. “Shouldn’t I go out into the park with one of those sticks?”
“Why, looking for a weapon?” says the ranger. She gives Gary a mop and points him to the toilet. The seats are gummed, the tiles caked with boot tracks.
“When it sparkles, you can go,” she says.
Gary sees the man with the leggings outside the bagel store.
“How’re the teeth?” calls Gary.
“What?”
“The teeth?”
“Look,” says the man, moves in, as though about to show Gary his mouth. “I’m not your homeless. Got it, fucker?”
Gary goes up to his place for a clean shirt. When he comes back down the man is sitting on a grate, cinching a seabag.
“No hard feelings,” the man says.
Gary holds out a buck and the man waves him off.
“I have other offers on the table right now,” the man says.
The bus is packed going over the bridge. Gary presses his head on the tinted window. He stopped at the bank on the way to the bus. The gods of the machine have wearied of him. The buyers are off at their bungalows, yoga retreats. He will have to borrow some money from his mother again.
It’s hot on the bus and everyone wears short sleeves except for Gary. He picks at the few tiny flecks of blood on his shirt with his fingernail.
Gary’s mother hugs him at the door.
“You look like you got some sun today. Out with the kids?”
“Yeah.”
His mother hooks him on his arm’s tender spot, guides him across the room. A group is gathered near the bay window, pouring whiskey.
“Boy, am I glad you came.” Today his mother has that almost dazed expression which, along with the featherings at her mouth, people take for mirth. “These people are drips. Put on any music you like.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” says Gary.
“Hey, there’s Jacob Gelb,” says his mother. “Remember him?”
Gary looks at the man, tall and tan, easy with his body in casual silk. Gary has that flicker of thought that comes along with his mother’s house: I wonder if I’ll turn out like him when I grow up. But Gelb is a few years younger. Gary remembers once putting worms in his hair, or firing an air pellet at his nuts, something senseless and maybe not forgotten.