Rick slaps his shoulders. “We did it! What do you think of that, Sambo!”
Sam tugs his shirt across his chest and gropes for a button. “ ‘Vanity,’” he says, with a smile, “ ‘all is vanity.’”
Rick shakes his head. “So? I don’t give a shit. Why do you?”
“I’ll never forget these theological discussions of ours,” Sam assures Rick.
“Right,” Rick answers. “Blow me.”
Sam grins. “I’ve already got a date but I can fix you up with Scott Barry.”
Rick blows him a mocking kiss.
Exiting the lockers, Sam climbs the stands to shake hands with his father and kiss Pearl and Indy, before he joins Deanie in the seats the kids from Greenspark have taken over to watch the next game. Kinsale beats South Portland by a free throw in the last ten seconds and by then it’s going for eleven and they won’t reach Greenspark until one, nevermind home.
The boys’ game flickers from the monitor at the front of the bus. Sam’s unauthorized workout prior to the game, caught by the idling television crews, is used as a lead-in. It provides an opportunity for the commentators to recap his high school career and speculate upon his and Greenspark’s expected performance in the tournament. Since his freshman year, Sam has been one of a handful of state-wide stars. This year’s acquisition of an earring—exchanged for a stud at game time—not only increases the visibility that size and talent and his ponytail give him but reassuringly confirms he is merely another teenager with the same need for tribal signals as any other. He could be anybody’s kid—and is, of course.
Everyone groans when Barry knees him. Sam shrugs off the chorus of rude commentary that follows to concentrate on the game itself. Only when it is over, in the break while the tape of the girls’ game is being loaded into the machine, does he allow himself to think ahead.
The Greenspark teams have passed the first round. There are still two more games between each team and a regional championship, and if they make it, a third to settle the state title. The boys have a week to prepare to meet the Kinsale Trojans. Deanie and the girls will meet St. Mary’s Crusaders on Thursday. Until then, there’ll be practice and more practice. The next one will be a waste for most of them if the party plans he’s hearing come off.
The old longing to be part of it burbles up. He wonders briefly if he could take Deanie to a party and count on her resisting temptation. No, he decides, and he doesn’t need to tempt himself either. Immediately he plunges into gloom. She’s going to be ripped at him when he tells her they’re going home to bed.
But she never asks about partying. She gets into the truck and cuddles up to him and goes to sleep without a word and doesn’t even wake up when he carries her into the house.
41
Big yellow piglets in a double row, the buses all park together outside the Portland Civic Center. From her window, the Mutant spots Sam’s truck across the parking lot, nosing for a slot. Ignoring the faces raised to stare at her as spectators plod their way past the bus toward the auditorium, she ties off her headrag decisively and scoots between the seats to find the dub that skittered away during the ride.
Once she had been afraid the kids at school would make sport of her and ‘god. And they did and still do, though not perhaps with the same viciousness—people can get used to anything, as they have her face. It all feels false, another reflection in a mirror. The real Deanie is invisible, as if her body with its scars and tattoos and chains and plastic mask is a kind of hologram of herself. Sometimes it makes her feel safe. Sometimes it just makes her want to feel and see if she is still there or has finally disappeared entirely. She’s not sure she wants to know what they might do to her if miraculously they suddenly saw.
The other girls troop toward the auditorium. The bus is empty, the driver outside talking to another driver. Shoving the cassette into her duffel, she stays crouched between the seats, gathering herself to face the stares, and beyond that, to center herself for the game. The bus shifts and she feels ‘god walking down the aisle—deaf and blind she would know his presence by means she cannot entirely enumerate, subliminal perceptions of the dimensions of space he takes up, the way he blocks a draft and vibrates a floor with his weight.
Stooping over her, he massages the back of her neck, the span of his palm and fingers engulfing the narrow stalk, the protuberant bones like a tightwoven string of bulbs.
She arches her neck against his hand.
“Worried?” he asks.
Her eyes crinkle with amusement. “Not about this bunch of pussies.”
Her coach climbs the bus steps and squints up the aisle.
“What are you waiting on, Gauthier, a printed invitation?”
“Be right along, Coach,” Sam answers for her.
He straightens up and looks down at her, hand extended to take hers and help her up. Staring up at him, she touches him on impulse and he starts.
“Jesus, Deanie.”
Grasping his hipbones, she drags herself up the length of his legs until she is on her feet, her face in his sternum. She presses her thigh between his knees.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “Coach’ll be back here with a switch, looking for you. Come on, it’s going to be all right.”
The multiple drums of the Greenspark band advise misleadingly that “The Lion Sleeps.” St. Mary’s Crusaders, in blue and silver, mesmerized from the tip, are still wide-eyed
