And there I was, about a month ago, having another phone conversation about my infidelity—as opposed to what, fidelity?—the inexplicable choices I made, those selfsame choices I must—we all must, at some point—answer to, holding a coffee mug, or some other terrible excuse for a birthday gift for my mother, when I spotted, at a distance, Chip Engelland—yes, Chip Engelland, the world-renowned shooting clinician for the five-time world champion San Antonio Spurs.
Chip Engelland—the guy who singlehandedly redoctored Tony Parker’s jumpshot! Who every day stared up into the stoic eyes of Tim Duncan, my sports hero growing up.
Chip Engelland grabbed a book off a display, thumbed through it, then looked up in my direction, at me, quickly; a sightless glance, the kind one delivers to strangers thoughtlessly. In the next second—or was it shorter, that instance?—Chip Engelland put the book down and walked away, his lengthy legs swiftly transporting his body like a bullet train, like it was nothing, effortless, like I was some good-for-nothing nobody—like nothing was nobody’s business—nothing is nobody’s business, right?
The space between Chip and me spread rapidly. The distance between us, myself and the decorated assistant basketball coach, grew long, wide, wider, then chilly, like the aftermath of a macabre river massacre.
I’m not sure—how could I be sure?—if you’ve ever read a novella by Patrick Süskind called The Pigeon, about a Parisian security guard who one day encounters a pigeon in front of his apartment door, the sight of which, in that moment—that instance—hurls him into a nightmarish existential crisis. The Germans: they write this kind of drivel, the type in which Gott isn’t pulling the strings.
Now call it what you want, dear reader—no, I’ll call it what I want since it’s my story—but Chip Engelland walking away from me that day in that moment—that instance—in Barnes & Noble about a month ago, slicing off our connection, injecting impossible stuffing into the geography separating our bodies, was in my mind my … pigeon moment. Yes, I’ll say it: Chip Engelland is a flipping pigeon! His wiry legs, his flowing white pigeon wings swept him off to destinations unknown, and I, like a low-grade security guard, a rent-a-cop who knows not one iota about self-defense nor the finer points of safeguarding the inner workings of my eggshell brain, bumbled epically.
How delicate a creature is the German. How delicate a creature am I—a thirtysomething San Antonian learned in English history, less so in the language of my culture. Even less in the important field of knowledge of Keeping My Marriage Alive.
I must’ve uttered strange utterings because my wife—we’re separated, by the way—asked me over the phone:
“Sorry to interrupt, but what does your grandmother have to do with us?”
“It’s the carpet here inside the store,” I said, thinking on my feet. “It’s green, Great Gatsby green light green, the same color the carpet was at my grandma’s when I was a youngin.”
“I miss her too, your grandma,” she said civilly. “I do. But that’s not what we’re talking about right now.”
“I was going to say,” I said, changing the subject, “I just saw Chip Engelland. You know, the shooting coach for the Spurs?”
“What?”
Case in point: I’m cursed with the uncanny ability to string together doomed combinations of words at the worst times. If only the sweet essence, the saccharine juice of thought inside my nucleus, could be rightly dispensed.
“The thing is, honey,” I said, unable to contain myself from deploying the pet name, “I’m not a bad guy, and I don’t want you to think I am. I feel like complete dookie today. I love you, honey—I love you so, so much, with every ounce I’m made of. But what can I say? I’m a man and I effed up. I’m a freakin’ moron. And now I’m dragging my feet around this bookstore like a nincompoop, a ghost, a dumbass rumor. Wait, I don’t mean it like that,” I said. “I’m not trying to make you pity me. Please don’t pity me.”
“I don’t,” she said acidly.
The brief hush afterward sunk in, somehow, bittersweetly—super-duper heavy.
“I’m a colossal failure, always will be,” I said, surprised to find myself holding open a book of love poems by Pablo Neruda. “Guess what I have in my hands.”
“What now?”
“The book I bought you the day after our wedding. The one I read to you deep into the night.”
Silence, then, “Fuck, dude.”
A jazz song saturated the bookstore in a sterile, concealed mist. A Weather Channel kind of number.
Then my wife said something priceless before releasing an awful blitzkrieg of brutality—a machinegun fire of poison-tipped sentences she’d never be able to take back, nor would she, the punishment of which I’d deserve for all eternity.
“How’s the song go, ‘Love’s kinda crazy with a spooky little boy like you,’” she said.
“Yes. Groovy song,” I said. “Good ol’ Dusty Springfield.”
And before I had a chance to recite to her, for the last time—for old time’s sake—a young Neruda love poem, before I had the chance to explain to her what it felt like to cross paths, ever so briefly—for just an instance—with a coach from my favorite NBA team, she ripped me a new one. She ripped me a new one good, for the ages.
Boy, did the wound gape.
My heart spilled over messily like a water tower punctured by a bazooka missile.
Then I fell—no, I dropped, no, I stumbled, no, I tumbled, nosedived, cannonballed—yes, I fell in love again—again—for the thousandth time.