They moved inside. Will dumped the bowls in the dish bin near the retractable door. They found themselves at the end of the snaking line, sipping their wine.
They were paired, two by two, Whitney and Jack, Will and Leonard.
“So,” Whitney said to Jack, “what’s next for you, then? Once we’re free, I mean.”
“I have my plane ticket home. That’s as far as I’ve got. It still hasn’t fully set in.”
“You mentioned brothers?”
“Yeah, everyone’s still there. Two older brothers and a younger sister. We have a family import business. Meats and cheeses and stuff. We’re the halfway point between over here and the fine-food stores in the Midwest and the South.”
“I worked a summer in one of those in Dallas,” Whitney said. “I know the very ‘cheeses and stuff’ you mean.”
“Nowak’s? Bisset’s?”
“It was in our little town, actually. Haney…” Whitney said. “You really know all the names?”
“I’m not kidding when I say it’s everyone in my family. My grandpa started it after the war. Grandma ran it after he died. Dad took over. Now, my older brothers work at the warehouse.”
“And what about you, then?”
“I dunno, I just don’t think I could do it. It always seemed like an inevitable thing, but then I left, and now it’s hard to imagine. Plus, I’d be fourth in line. Dad’s not going anywhere. My brothers are already banking their time. They’d start me on the loading dock. That’s the rules. I mean, I’m twenty-eight. I don’t know if it’s my life anymore.”
“What about your sister?”
“She’s an astronomer. In grad school at U Chicago. The genius. Works at an observatory most days, up near the state line. Looks at stars. Figures out, I dunno, the speed of the expanding universe, or whatever.”
“Does she need a lab assistant?”
“See, you’re making me nervous now…I’m realizing just how unprepared I am for getting home, just how little I’ve thought it through.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. I’m just—” She held up her wine cup and smiled a smile that said more prying will come. “He gives me a hard time about the questions,” she went on, flipping her head in the direction of Will.
“I obviously always knew it would end,” Jack said. “I just never knew how to prepare for it. Once you start thinking about it being over, that’s when you’re through for real. No coming back.”
“So you banish the thoughts for as long as humanly possible.”
“Till the volcano goes off, at least…”
“Precisely.” She smiled again. “I wonder if I ever signed for an order from Pickle Imports.”
“Pickle Products, actually.”
“‘A Family Tradition…’”
Whitney’s neck was beginning to hurt. The craning, just to hear his soft voice over the din of the room. A mechanism he maybe employed to stand out less than he naturally did. She smiled up at the giant, up at the strange predicament he’d found himself in. This life in which for years he’d been the very best at a thing, only to be thrust right back into the old way now, with no new experiences, no new degrees, no new contacts in any of the professional worlds that valued valueless things.
“I need to stop blah-blah-blahing about basketball,” he said. “I know Dallas…Haney…but you don’t have an accent?”
“It never took,” she said, leaving it at that.
He smiled, possibly understanding. “Okay, then.…And I know you two are from New York. But I haven’t even asked you about what you do.”
She explained that she helped develop television shows that were meant to be talked about.
“No kidding!” He looked genuinely lit up. “I wouldn’t have said it, but the one thing I’ve always wanted to do is write a screenplay, believe it or not.”
“Not,” Whitney said, smiling.
“Yeah, me neither,” he said, missing the joke. “I actually tried to write one this winter. Didn’t go well.”
“Funny, I tried out for the basketball team this spring,” she said. “Same result.”
“I read some books about how to do it.” He’d missed it again. “Found this guide in this used bookstore in Poblenou. I learned the formatting. I started listening to this podcast these two guys do. I dunno, it’s not like it’s something I really should be able to do.”
“Sometimes good stuff comes when people don’t know what they’re supposed to do.”
“This time over here, I watched so many…six years, all alone, I mean. I’ve memorized a lot of movies.”
“I know the type…” Whitney said, sensing Will behind her, but hearing only Leonard’s voice. “I’m picturing you in all these romantic European cities, sitting in the dark with your laptop watching the same scenes from The Matrix again and again.”
“More like Inception and Interstellar.”
“Ah. Should’ve pegged you.”
“What’s that?”
“You are not alone in your appreciation, is all. It’s sort of become a problem. I don’t know what you’ve been working on, but if you want some unsolicited advice, I’d keep it simple—simpler than those. How ’bout an American athlete abroad, sticking out, sore-thumbing it in foreign cultures, a new team every year? Lost in Translation but with a six-foot-whatever point whatever?”
“Shooting guard,” he said, smiling. “Go on…”
“He’s in a new city every season. The American player who’s been traded more than any other. This specimen of physical perfection…”—she watched his eyes flinch—“…trapped inside, hiding from fans, watching movies, and eating…”
“Grilled chicken. Grilled chicken in every country.”
“See, keep that stuff in a notebook,” she said. “And then one day, there’s this American woman. She enters his life. Maybe she’s older…like Bill Murray’s character.”
“I’ve never seen it. I should admit that now.”
“Maybe she’s younger, then. Like…” And Whitney flicked her head back toward Leonard, whom she could hear yapping nonstop at Will still. “An American athlete abroad and a young American passing through. An affair…she makes him a worse player. She wants to bring him home with her. Reintroduce him to life’s earthly delights, whereas he’s committed to the sacrifice of training, to that discipline. He has to choose between the commitment he’s made to his sport his whole life, versus the
