Marcus gave Betsy a car, an MX-5. She came home from work and it was there—with a ribbon tied to the windshield wipers and the keys pushed under the front door. She kicked them when she walked in, thinking, what the hell. Along with a note that said, “With the compliments of Marcus Hayes,” written by Amy Freitag, who added her own PS. “I drove it over here and it’s just like … I mean, enjoy. Brian says you could use some fun. This is fun with a key.” His signature was underneath, which he’s signed a million times, and which I used to watch him practicing on the kitchen table.
I checked out the sticker price online: twenty-nine thousand dollars. I mean, it was a totally ridiculous car—it had no back seats. Not even the kind with the folding front seat, so you can squeeze in behind. To give this car to a woman with two small kids … I said something like this to Betsy after dinner, after the boys were in bed. We sat on the porch together while she smoked a cigarette. October in Austin is still a warm-weather month, and even at night you can sit outside in your shirtsleeves.
“It just shows he has no clue. What are you going to do with this car? Even when the boys are big enough to sit up front, it’s like Sophie’s Choice—which kid do you take along. He’s completely out of touch with how people actually live their lives.”
“The point of this car isn’t to take your kids to the grocery store.”
“That’s my point.”
“I drove it to work this morning and—”
“Do you know how much it costs? I’m talking about the basic package, I have no idea what the bells and whistles add up to.”
“I decided not to look.” 166
“Twenty-nine thousand dollars.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment but lit another cigarette and stubbed the old one out in the Frisbee. “I’m not sure I can describe how much fun it was to park outside the office, but if you want to say it was twenty-nine thousand dollars’ worth of fun, I wouldn’t disagree with you.”
“Come on, Betsy. It’s a midlife crisis toy.”
“I’m having a midlife crisis. At least, that was the intention.”
But we talked about other things, too. I was moving out in the morning—I couldn’t keep sharing a room, or falling asleep on the couch. After six weeks, you get on everybody’s nerves, including your own. So we agreed that Dad would stay and help out with the kids, and I should get an apartment in the neighborhood. An editor at the Statesman had a place she was looking to rent out. Her kids were grown up, her husband had divorced her, the house was too big and she liked to have a man around somewhere in the background just for peace of mind.
The house was on the same block as Shelley Vance’s house, with a garage at the end of the driveway that had a decent-sized studio on top. On one side you looked out on the backyard, on the other you could see parked cars. The conversion was done in the eighties and hadn’t been touched since—the woman told me, when the kids were kids, that’s where the au pair lived. For the past twenty years it was used as storage and part of the deal was I had to help her clear it out. Old box springs and dead televisions, garbage bags full of mothy clothes, the usual mess. So I hired a moving van; it took a day.
When it was empty, what was left was: wrinkled brown linoleum floor tiles, dirty flowery curtains, a futon, a bookshelf, and a water-damaged tulip table you could eat and work at. But it had a separate kitchen, with one of those old electric ranges where the oven makes a noise when you turn it on like a man falling slowly down stairs. There was a ceiling fan and an air-conditioning unit propped up in one of the windows. It was fine, and I could walk to Betsy’s house in five minutes if I felt like 167I needed to be around people who didn’t in the first instance see me as the lonesome male.
*
Quinn’s birthday party was a few days later, which was also the opening night of preseason basketball. But Marcus planned to sit out, so I had no excuse to stay home and watch TV.
The first thing I bought for the apartment was a 40-inch Panasonic. I also bought some new clothes. You can’t show up at a party with twenty-something college girls wearing Florsheims and dirty chinos and not feel like what you probably are anyway … like everybody’s least favorite uncle. Betsy tried to make me get blue jeans. She said, they’re cheaper than a convertible, and we spent almost an hour online looking at Levi’s and Lee and Wrangler … But jeans on me either slip below the ass, so I have to keep hitching and pulling at the belt, so the crack doesn’t show, or if I buy them high enough make my butt look inflatable—like somebody who might tip over backward in the pool.
Betsy said, “Come on, you’re not that fat. You’re heavy set.”
“Call it what you want.”
“You’re a catch.”
“Whatever.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a nationally syndicated sportswriter. You’re six foot three. And you’re a nice guy. Any woman who sees you with my kids will think, marriage material.”
I hadn’t told her, the girl’s in college. She said, “It’s not like high school anymore. There are women out there making reasonable decisions.”
“Well, I haven’t met them.”
But even she admitted, you have to try jeans on, you can’t do this kind of thing online. And I hate the whole staring-at-yourself experience, the little cubicle, the unsatisfactory curtain, the hook for your old clothes, the public display of misplaced vanity, where you 168have to go to the sales clerk, who is probably young, who is probably good-looking, and say, I just want to try these on. Like it’s going to make a difference.
In the end, I settled for new Dockers and a pair of retro Jordan high-tops, the black on reds, and drove over to Nueces Street on Friday night. You could hear the party noise from half a block away. Fred Rotha was in town for the Sonics media day, and I’d persuaded him to come along. “I’m an old married man,” he said, getting out of the car. “I have a kid, most of my conversation is shit and sleep related, I’m going to bring the atmosphere down. Like, this is what awaits you.”
But he agreed to stay for a drink.
We didn’t want to show up early so it was ten o’clock before we pushed through the open front door and walked up the stairs, feeling like, these are the stairs that lead you back in time. The music volume was an act of violence. It sort of darkened the senses. Like, under cover of this, all deeds are possible—except of course an actual conversation.
It took me a while to find Quinn, and for the first half hour we didn’t try. Nobody seemed to notice us anyway. I said to Fred, “Did you tell Sarah that you were going to some campus party?” and he said, “Of course.” Sarah is Fred’s wife; I’ve met her half a dozen times in LA, after Lakers games, when a bunch of us go out to dinner. It was loud enough that after every statement or question you had to gather your thoughts and think of the shortest and clearest way of expressing yourself. But sometimes these pauses also lead to confusion. Like, maybe he was offended. But then he said, “I told her, Brian needs a wingman, and she said, do me a favor, tell me what the kids are playing these days.”
“What do you mean, playing? Like Donkey Kong?”
“Like music, like a playlist. She thinks my taste in music is twenty years out of date.”
The beer was in the bathtub, which was filled with ice; and for a while we actually stood around the toilet, drinking. The music was 169some synth-y shit that you could feel in your jaw. All that I needed … was the one thing I couldn’t find—this was the refrain.
Fred wore what he always wore, jacket and tie, and looked like somebody’s semi-hip TA. These were the parties I never went to when I went to UT, and here I was fifteen years later trying to make up for lost time. Eventually we gave up trying to talk and Fred looked at me, like, sympathetically. He made a motion with his head, so we pushed our way out and found the kitchen, which had a fire escape running off it for the smokers. But there was also a kind of platform where we could stand around in relative quiet and taste the outside air, cool and nicotine-y.
“The presence of twenty-year-old women makes me unhappy,” I said, when we could hear each other.
“So what are we doing here?”
The fire escape overlooked a parking lot. It was a real nothing neighborhood, student-ville, and the party noise bounced out into the low night sky like some aural equivalent of fire in a wilderness, the revelry of people on the fringes of civilization, in a makeshift landscape. Alcohol intensifies my sense of metaphor.
When I didn’t answer, Fred said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s the book?” And after a minute, “Are you getting what you need?”
“I feel like all my life I’ve been subservient to this guy because he can play basketball better than I can.”
“You realize that what you have is like, ridiculous-level access.”
“What do you mean access. I grew up with Marcus, for ten months he slept in my sister’s bed. You only say that because you don’t expect him to be an actual human being … Why are you smiling? You’ve heard me say this before.”
“I’ve heard you say it.”
“Oh, well.” And then: “How about you?”
“How about me what?” 170
“Have you found anything good?”
There was always, underneath the sportswriter camaraderie, a little competitive friction—like high school buddies who also pay attention to each other’s grades. But Fred had already filed; it went online in the morning, and like a lot of journalists he was happy to repeat himself. You get used to it, it’s part of the job.
“There’s a story going around that Marcus and Mickey got in a fight in practice, and Marcus broke a rib. This is why he decided to sit out preseason. He didn’t want to make the mistake Jordan made, by coming back too soon … What started the fight, I don’t know. One account was, Mickey set a back screen that Marcus didn’t like. So afterward he took a shot; they started throwing punches and had to be pulled apart.”
“These things happen.”
“Maybe. But three years ago, if Marcus didn’t like something, he let you know in ways that meant he didn’t have to repeat himself.”
Somebody was making cocktails in the kitchen, mixing and shaking. At first I couldn’t tell if she was a girl or a boy, she had one of those Leave It to Beaver haircuts, with a snub nose and freckles; she wore blue jeans and a collared shirt and was making daiquiris. “Do you want one?” she said. The back door was open and there were rows of plastic champagne coupes on the counter, which she had been slowly filling up. So I took one, and she asked, “How about you?” but Fred shook his head.
“Listen,” he said to me. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone with these people but my flight’s at like eight in the morning.”
“It’s fine. I’m just going to try to find this girl who invited me and then I’ll go home.”
“What are you doing here?” he said again. It was one of his roles to worry about the people he knew. 171
“My apartment is somebody’s garage. I really don’t have a whole helluva lot to go back to.”
“Brian,” Fred said.
“What? I’m having fun. I’m footloose. Isn’t this what you married guys are supposed to dream about?”
“All right, all right, I’ll leave you alone.” And that’s what he did.
So then it was just me, standing on the fire escape with a yellow flavored drink in my hand. At some point I ran into Quinn. She wore a Chinese kimono, deep red, and green Moroccan slippers that kept falling off her feet, so when she moved she didn’t really lift them off the ground, she glided or shuffled. “People keep stepping on my shoes,” she said to me. But the first thing she said was “Hey, you” … I never know what that means—if it’s intimate or one of those things you say that is meant to sound intimate in a generic way, so it doesn’t mean anything. But she took me by the hand and introduced me to people.
Apparently the party had a theme: dress like your parents. Which explains why so many guys were in drag. “Is that really what your mom dresses like?” I said to Quinn, and she smiled at me and shook her head. All of her expressions were somehow slow-moving. “My dad’s job means he gets to travel. He bought it for me when I was twelve years old. I put it on and it was like—I didn’t have anything to hold it up. Twelve was my last year of girlhood, I was like a coat hanger. Before my womanly growth kicked in. But now it’s like my party dress, I love it.” And she held out her arms in a curious pose, which made the rich red fabric hang down like a flag. But then I realized The Bangles were playing, and she was dancing—walking like an Egyptian. For a second I thought she was using it as an excuse to get away from me, but then she took my hand and tried to pull me along.
“I can’t—I can’t dance,” I said.
“This isn’t dancing, it’s walking. You can walk, right?”
And I tried to follow her, feeling, you are a foolish lonely sex-sad man, as she dragged me through the crowd. People were looking at her and looking at me. Somebody said something to her, which she 172acknowledged with a very restrained motion of the head—she was still doing the pecking thing with her free hand. When we got to the kitchen, she let go of me and said, “You’re right, you can’t dance. It’s like towing a boat.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not having a very good time, are you?”
“That’s what you said to me the last time, too.”
“And yet you keep coming back …”
She used a funny voice when she said it, a sort of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark voice. We looked at each other for a minute, and she picked up one of the daiquiris on the counter and drank it suddenly. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” And then: “Take a drink.” So we took two more daiquiris and went out on to the fire escape again. People were sitting outside the kitchen, sitting and smoking, but we walked along the balcony (which was made of metal grating that shook underfoot) to the steps on the other side. Even there the music was loud enough you could feel it in your sternum.
“You have a lot of friends,” I said.
“Most of these people I have no idea who they are.”
“So why did you invite them?”
“It’s a party.”
“Who are the ones you like?”
“You sound like my dad.”
“I’m just trying to make conversation.”
“Why?”
And she looked at me and eventually I looked away.
“Is that your apartment?” I said at last, and she laughed.
“No way I would live here. This is a shithole.”
There was a Taco Cabana across the road—painted dull brown and bright pink, and even at midnight you could see a lot of foot traffic. Friday night munchies. College kids on college time, people with nothing to get up for in the morning. I didn’t have much. “What are you doing with me?” I asked. 173
“Right now, I’m not doing anything.”
“I mean, why would you even want to talk to me?”
“Who said I wanted to talk?”
She had on glossy red lipstick, what I think of for some reason as maraschino cherry flavor. Her face looked reddish, too, under the glare; there was a streetlight in the parking lot outside the building. Also, I remembered, drinking had this effect on her complexion. But she didn’t sound drunk; she sounded cold. The temperature had dropped in the past twenty-four hours. Fall was coming, it was a clear night, there weren’t any clouds to hold in the heat of the day. The silk thing she wore felt cool to the touch. Who knows what’s going on in her private life that makes this a reasonable thing for her to do. But you don’t find out by not doing it. I bent over to kiss her (Quinn was sitting one step down) and she let me and then she said, “Did you enjoy that?”
I was a little taken aback. “Yes.”
“It’s just that you never seem to be having much fun.”
“I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
“It took you long enough. I was like, when’s he going to make a move.”
But when I bent down again, she stood up. “It’s freezing out here,” she said. “Come on. I want to party,” so I followed her inside.
After that we kept bumping into each other and separating. At one point she told me a story—something weird happened that night they went back to Marcus’s hotel room. He had a suite at the Four Seasons, with a view of the river, just water and lights and trees, and when we got there Marcus ordered more food and champagne. There was a huge TV on one wall and somebody turned it on; it was showing music videos, and people started dancing. Marcus didn’t dance, he sat in one of the armchairs, looking at his phone. And then it rang, she was watching him, and he went out onto the balcony to talk, because it was too loud inside, and when he came back in he kicked everybody out. Kyla said she knew who it was. Someone in her sorority went to 174high school with this girl, and she was just like this real … stuck-up kind of … super Christian, which I don’t have a problem with, but like, come on, if you’re going out with Marcus Hayes, don’t act like … and Kyla was at the party now, too, and telling the story, but also saying, at least, that’s what my friend says. I don’t know.
At two in the morning I went to find Quinn and say good night. Goodbye and thank you for having me, like a good little boy. I didn’t want to be a burden to her but couldn’t spend any more time talking to college kids. The guys were easy enough, we just talked about sports, but eventually you think, what am I doing this for, why am I here.
When I told her I was leaving, she said, “Oh.”
“I mean, I don’t think … people aren’t going anywhere, even if … I’m pretty tired.”
“It’s only …” and she looked at her watch, after pulling up the broad silk sleeve. “Two.”
“I’m an old man. I need my beauty sleep.”
And she said, “Go get your beauty sleep, old man.”
“I just wanted to say …” But I didn’t know what I wanted to say.
“Did you have a good time?”
“I had a very good time.”
And thought, you creep, you loser, retreating down the stairs afterward, with the noise of the party receding slowly … and stepping out again into the streetlamp-lit night, feeling like, returning to reality, and also like, I’m too drunk to drive. So I ended up walking home, down the Drag and then over at 27th Street, through the seminary grounds, toward Speedway and Hyde Park, under the stars, watching the cars surge past. It took me almost an hour; it was after three when I opened the garage door, by which point I was totally sober and cold and wide awake.