The first impression was of Kendrick on a date. Errol played Kendrick by stuffing hand towels into the chest and sleeves of his T-shirt, and then more towels into the front and back of the compression pants he wore beneath his mesh shorts. Slo-Mo played the girl, wearing a blonde, pie-matted wig one of the freshman had worn during the first performance. The gag was that Kendrick was too packed with muscle to go on a normal date. First, he and the girl sat in chairs across the table from each other, pretending to have dinner. But when Kendrick picked up his plastic wine glass he accidentally crushed it to smithereens, just as when he tried to use his metal fork he bent the thing against his plate. Next, Kendrick walked his date home, but when he tried to kiss her at the doorstep his gigantic pecs got in the way and, try as he might, he couldn’t make his lips reach the girl’s. The girl wasn’t deterred, though, and for the final bit she invited Kendrick inside her place. They tried to have sex doggie-style, but Kendrick’s quads were so big and bouncy that his first thrust sent the girl flying. We howled. Even the stoic Kendrick formed something resembling a smile.
For the next impression, Errol and Slo-Mo were joined by a special guest, Cornelius, dressed in the coach gear from the Beastie Boys performance. Slo-Mo and Errol sat in two chairs side by side, pretending to be players in a meeting. Cornelius stood in front of them and said:
—Good morning, fellas!
—Morning, Coach Hightower!
I laughed: Cornelius had nailed our coach’s wry scowl.
—Special day, Cornelius-as-Hightower said. Special day! You know what day it is?
—My birthday! Slo-Mo yelled out.
—That’s right, Miles. Happy goddamn birthday.
If Slo-Mo was me, Errol most definitely was Chase. I looked two tables over at the real Chase, who was fidgeting in his chair, his grin doing little to hide his unhappiness.
—Chase, Cornelius said. What you get Miles for his birthday?
—Oh, the best present, Coach! Errol-as-Chase said in a ditzy voice.
He reached under his chair and presented Slo-Mo with a small box done up in bright wrapping paper.
—What is it?! Slo-Mo asked, shaking the box next to his ear.
—Now, Miles, that’s from me too, Cornelius/Hightower said.
Slo-Mo tore off the wrapping paper and gasped when he saw what was inside. He turned to Errol.
—For me, Chasey?!
—For you!
Slo-Mo reached into the box and removed two pink squash balls and held them up for the room to see.
—It’s Chase’s balls!
Let’s pause a moment to consider why Errol would have done this. One possible answer is he wanted to humiliate Chase in front of the team as Chase had humiliated him when he’d booed him down during his freshman song. Errol was too narcissistic to register anything other than the humiliation, and too petty to blame that humiliation on anybody but Chase. Another, related answer is Errol wanted to put a hard stop to the friendship with Chase that Errol had been growing tired of during camp, and was using this impression as the nuclear option to kill off the relationship. A third answer, which I think is both simplest and strongest, is that Errol wanted to strike while the iron was hot, to use a piece of team gossip that couldn’t have gotten any fresher for his skit, so he could maximize the laughter.
And maximize he did. The players lost their minds when Slo-Mo held up the two squash balls—shouting, stamping feet, cooing at a blushing Chase as Chase rose from his chair and fled Training Table.
The talent show ended and the players started for the parking lot, everyone heading to the Football House to celebrate the end of camp. Meanwhile I lingered, eating another slice of tonight’s coconut cake and watching the Training Table staff clean the mess we had made. Once I was the only player left, I started walking across Central Campus to carry out the plan. When Reshawn was driving to the Hay to turn himself in last week, he had seen Wheeler see him driving my Saturn. Reshawn realized that if he parked my car in the players’ lot, the lie about taking care of his mother was in danger of being exposed; so he had changed direction and driven my car to a parking garage on the far end of Central Campus, where he knew no players would be going during camp. And because Jimbo had continued to insist that in my car lay the real explanation for where Reshawn had gone, we decided it would be best to put a week between the time Reshawn returned to the team and when I started driving my car again, so that the two didn’t seem in any way connected. Enough time had passed for me to fetch the car.
Royalty had returned to campus, and as I walked across Central I passed juniors sitting on the concrete porches of apartments they had recently moved into, barbecuing burgers and hot dogs and brats on small Coleman grills, slouching in beach chairs as they caught up on each other’s summer break. These people felt like my classmates in a way they never had, and I knew this was thanks to the regular student who was at that moment waiting for me to drive to his off-campus house in Carsonville, the boy I was starting to think of as my boyfriend even if I hadn’t yet dared to say the word out loud, the warmth with whom I would spend the night and who would be there smiling when I woke the next morning.
I passed Chase’s building, where he would be living for another year. The lights in his sliding glass window were on behind the drawn shades, and I knew there was no way he would go to the Football House tonight, not when every
