“It’ll be a good way to get back in with people. But when you were just describing it—the games under the lights, like when we were little—it’s this weird full circle, and I don’t know, dude…erasing the old memories with new ones. I like the fact that I’ve lived other places. I’ve been proud of that. I don’t have all that many grown-up memories there, and I just worry I’m gonna replace all the old stuff. When I was a kid, I’d see the old guys—who were probably, like, our age now—waiting with a case of beer to take the field after our game ended. I remember thinking that was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. It’s just gonna be weird to be one of those dorks hanging around the park, smashing beers on that field. That field’s for Gatorade and orange slices.”
“What a protector of innocence,” she said. “Jack Pickle: catcher in the rye!”
“Maybe I’ve just been over here too long,” he said, plodding ahead earnestly. “Alone for nine months out of the year, six years in a row. It’s been hard sometimes—like, really really hard. But I’ve also gotten used to it, these cities, these languages I can’t understand, the unfamiliari—”
“The grilled chicken.”
“Exactly.”
The pleasant lull that followed was filled with the screech of children in a park close by. An ivy-covered wall with portholes, and through the portholes, Whitney could see, dozens of kids scattering about. They couldn’t have been out of school yet—they seemed to stay in session until five each afternoon. But in this city, she’d learned, every day was meant to feel like Saturday.
“You need some work. You need some boring-ass office job to distract you. By Week Two, all these concerns will be behind you.”
“You hiring?”
She smiled sweetly. Then after a pause, she said: “Actually, want a distracting homework assignment?”
He glanced down at her from way up high.
“Once you get back this afternoon,” she said, “write down three ideas. Three movie pitches. And send them to me tonight? I’ll help you on the next steps.”
“I appreciate that, but I don’t know if you know what you’re getting into. I truly have no clue what I’m doing. You don’t need to take pity on me.”
“I’m getting as bummed out by all this talk as you are imagining you all fat and sad on the kickball field, raising up the trophy at the end of the season like it’s the best win of your career. At least here we’ll have something to keep you busy, right?”
He mimed hoisting the depressing trophy. “This is getting too real!”
“Gotta keep you focused, engaged. Nobody wants to see that body go from elite BMI to, I dunno, what I imagine most guys on the North Shore look like by thirty, after too many imported sausages and cheese wheels from Pickle Products.”
“Ah, you refer to the standard-issue physique of the older Brothers Pickle. It’s not a bad bet, given what’s come before me.”
“Just keep a couple abs, huh? Not necessarily eight, or whatever you’ve got going on in there now…” She exaggeratingly peeked down the armhole of his jersey, a deep gap that showed off some ribs.
He laughed and the laugh made her fully recognize what she’d done. She’d not only peeked, but touched his arm, right above the elbow, at the base of his tricep.
“Well,” he said, “I do appreciate it. I’m embarrassed, but you’re probably right, it might cut against the…the way I’m taking this whole thing, like it’s an injury. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say: This week’s been like waiting to hear how bad an injury is. Waiting to hear if you’re okay, or if you’re gonna be out for the season—or if your career is over for good. The difference is I already know the deal. I know I’m never playing again. I know it’s a career-ender.”
Will followed Jenna to the edge of the body-spill that spread out from the stage. The band shell opened away from the water, so the mass, with no natural corral points, was just a thumping shifting whorl that beat like a pulse. They pushed into the rear of the crowd. Will would have stopped there and made camp on his own modest swatch of concrete, but Jenna pressed deeper into the jungle, hacking away with her machete.
She didn’t so much reach back for him as flash an expression of clear intention. She was going in and he could follow her or not. She edged into the mass with one shoulder forward. Perturbed male faces snapped hatefully to the source of pressure at their backs, only to see the eyes and the height, only to sense the smell of the blonde bountiful hair, and to acquiesce, to step aside, to make a narrow gap to pass. If Will left too much space between them, the gap would close before he had the chance to draft, sealing shut like a wound.
It went like that for an interminable stretch of awkwardnesses and apologies, as Jenna pushed in closer and closer to the band shell. Then, at a seemingly arbitrary point stage right, she pulled up and stopped, having determined that the spot satisfied some triangulation of sight lines and acoustics and space, at least enough for her to dance around the way she wanted. Will was proud to have stuck close enough in her wake. He would never have made it otherwise. Never dreamed of attempting it. He’d received his share of grim looks, but he would never see these people again. He could act a little selfishly for once.
It was inarguably better up there. He’d paid for two tickets and only used one. He was entitled to a little something extra, wasn’t he? It had been his last hundred-euro bill. He still wasn’t sure why he’d pulled it out of his wallet, who he was trying to prove something to—Jenna or Jack or Whitney or the scalper? It was as though an
