Kate Christie (7 page)

In a way, I was relieved Jess was letting me know she knew I wasn’t straight. But at the same time, I hoped she hadn’t heard the gossip that Holly loved to report linking me with a handful of different women at a time. Flattering as the stories were, I hailed from Oregon, not California. Sleeping around wasn’t really my style, no matter what the campus rumor mill claimed.

A moment later Jess asked me about our schedule this week.

I told her we had two games, Wednesday and Saturday. It was our first full week of play, so Coach had scheduled a Wednesday game instead of the usual Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday lineup.

In order to ease us into the swing of competition.

50 Kate Christie

“Same with us. Maybe I’ll check out one of your games next week.”

“You’re going to come to a soccer game?” I asked.

“Well, yeah. I always catch at least a couple.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You don’t really notice what’s going on off the field, do you? I always feel like I’m totally alone out there once the match starts. I don’t even hear the crowd.”

“That’s because you’re a tennis player. The crowd isn’t allowed to make any noise,” I teased, “or we get kicked out of the stands.”

“Zip it,” she said, and threw a mushroom at me.

I ducked, and the mushroom landed on the windowsill behind me. “Nice shot. I thought tennis players were supposed to have good hand-eye coordination.” I picked up a pasta shell dripping with red sauce and raised it menacingly toward her.

“Cam!” She backed her chair away from the table.

I popped the shell into my mouth. Then I smiled at her, hoping I didn’t have parsley stuck in my teeth.

“Don’t worry,” I said as she pulled her chair closer again.

“I wouldn’t trash your apartment. Otherwise you might never invite me back.”

She smiled too, her eyes nearly golden in the sunlight angling in through the back window. “Don’t worry. You’ll be invited back.”

We looked at each other until I felt color rise in my cheeks and glanced away. I was really here in Jess’s kitchen, eating a dinner we had prepared together. How unexpected. I felt my life shifting, spinning out of control at her smile, at the look in her eyes. More than anything just then, I wanted to hold time, to stay there with Jess in her warm apartment, Janis Joplin crooning in the background. Then the CD ended, Jess got up to change the music, and time speeded up again.

Geez, what was my problem? I could be such a freak.

“By the way, do you like football?” I asked.

“It’s okay. I haven’t been to many games here. I’d rather watch NFL than college.”

“Me, too.
Monday Night Football
should be on.”

Beautiful Game 51

Her eyes lit up. “I love
Monday Night Football
.”

“The Bears and the Packers are playing. Do you want to watch a little?”

“I really should do some homework,” she said, hesitating.

Then she shrugged. “But I guess I can always catch up later.”

We finished the meal and cleaned up together. She washed the dishes while I dried, putting them away by trial and error cupboard opening. She didn’t have that many dishes, I learned.

A couple of the shelves were empty, yellow contact paper dusty with disuse.

Grabbing a couple of bottles of Dos Equis—what was football without beer, we agreed—we headed into the living room. Jess dialed up the game on her small television and we sat back on the couch to watch. There was a local ad on for a car dealership on El Camino Real, the road that ran north-south nearly the length of the entire state of California.

I glanced sideways at Jess. “Do you speak Spanish?”

“I do.”

“Say something, then.”

“Like what?” She took a sip of beer.

“I don’t know. Your choice.”

Her eyes focused behind me for a moment on the painting of the storm. Her voice was soft. “
La luna brilla debajo del oceano
.”

“What did you say?”

We were sitting close together in the darkening room, faces lit by the flickering light from the television screen. She was staring at the painting, her eyes dark with an emotion I couldn’t quite read.

Then she looked back at me, and the haunted look I’d glimpsed faded away. She smiled and knocked her bottle against mine. “I said the moon shines beneath the ocean. Go Bears!”

The game was already half over when we turned it on, but the score was only 7-3, Packers. As one might expect of an NFC

Central showdown, it was a defensive battle. We cheered the players on rowdily, kicked back on the comfortable couch with our feet up on the coffee table. Whenever someone scored or made an impressive play, we slapped hands and Jess whistled between her teeth. She tried to teach me how but to no avail.

52 Kate Christie

At the start of the fourth quarter, Jess glanced at her watch.

“You didn’t have anything planned tonight, did you? I mean, no one’s expecting you?”

Was she asking if I had a girlfriend? “Not a one,” I said.

“What about you?”

“No way.” She laughed a little and looked back at the TV.

“Not me.”

Undercurrents in the conversation. Again, if it had been anyone other than Jess Maxwell, I would have thought there was something more going on. But for some reason, I didn’t want to be into her, as Holly had put it. There was something untouchable about Jess, something good and pure in the friendship growing between us. I didn’t want to ruin it by making a pass at her.

Anyway, she was probably straight. I would have heard if she wasn’t. Wouldn’t I?

It was after nine when the game finally ended. The Bears scraped by with a victory, thanks to a field goal in overtime.

“Have you ever thought about trying to play soccer after school?” Jess asked me. The postgame show had started, but neither of us moved from our places on the couch.

“I wish. Unfortunately, I’m not that good,” I said, and stretched, arching my back, arms over my head. “I’m pretty sure I’d like to coach, though. That’s part of why I want to be a teacher. That, and summers off would be pretty sweet. What about you? Any plans to join the pro tour?”

She frowned a little, hugging a cream-colored pillow to her chest. She even had throw pillows. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Seriously? If anyone at SDU could go pro, it’s you.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head. Still frowning.

But I didn’t notice. I was too caught up in the thought of Jess playing the Acura Classic at nearby La Costa, the Sony Ericsson WTA tour, the U.S. Open even, eventually.

“Why not? God, I’d kill for the chance to play pro. You have so much talent, Jess.”

She shook her head again. “No, I don’t. I’m just lucky. It’s not real.”

Beautiful Game 53

Was she serious? “It’s not luck. I’ve seen you play. You’re really good. You’re the real thing.”

“No, I’m not. You don’t know. I was never this good before, back in high school. It’s not real.” Her knuckles whitened as she nearly mangled the pillow.

“What do you mean?” I kept my voice soft, hoping she wasn’t about to shut down again. Talking to Jess felt a little like walking into an unfamiliar body of water at night, aware that the bottom might drop off at any moment.

“Nothing.” Staring at the painting of the storm again, she relinquished her grip on the pillow. “Forget it. I just don’t want to live my whole life like that. It’s okay for now. It’s college. But I want a life someday. I want a normal life, you know?”

I nodded like I understood what she was talking about.

The theme song from
M.A.S.H.
blared out from the television just then, breaking the relative quiet. I looked up to see the credits roll over Alan Alda’s face.

“I used to be able to play this song on the piano,” I said conversationally, hoping to break the odd tension between us.

“Yeah?” Jess said, eyes on the TV.

“Can you believe it’s called ‘Suicide is Painless,’” I added,

“not ‘The M.A.S.H. Theme’ or something else? Weird, huh?”

“That is weird.”

A little while later I got up and rinsed my beer bottle out, even though she said I didn’t have to. Then she walked me out to my car, though I said she didn’t have to. The night air was warm, but I still felt chilled as a breeze blew down her street, mussing our hair.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said, key in hand, watching her in the streetlight. We were standing on the pavement next to my car, looking at each other. Undercurrents, I thought again, and wanted to reach out and. . And what? I wasn’t sure.

“Thanks for coming.” She hesitated, then touched the sleeve of my sweatshirt, just for a moment. “Don’t worry, Cam. It’s nothing.”

She really could read my mind. I glanced toward the house, saw light shining at the edges of the third-floor windows, looked back at her.

54 Kate Christie

“Okay.” I unlocked the door, climbed in and rolled down the window. “I’ll see you soon, won’t I?”

She nodded and smiled, her fingertips trailing briefly across my windowsill. “I hope so.”

Then she backed out of the lamplight and headed inside. I watched her go, an unfamiliar twist in my chest as she walked away, and waited until she had disappeared into her side door.

Then I drove into the California night, replaying the evening in my mind. I couldn’t shake the image of the blue-gray painting and the feeling that there was something there I should know, something I needed to understand.

I fell asleep that night still pondering the mystery of Jess Maxwell.

In the weeks that followed our impromptu dinner, I only saw Jess from a distance. During practice, I sometimes tried to catch a glimpse of her on the far-off tennis courts, certain I’d be able to identify the way she moved, fluid and lithe and strong.

Whenever Holly caught me looking, she nailed me in the butt with a ball or ran past whispering, “How’s your girlfriend?” At which point I would try to smack her back with a stray ball.

Soccer made the fall semester skip past as it always did, days slipping quickly into weeks. By the end of September, we were 5-0. I scored again in the fourth game, another penalty kick, and managed to add a couple of assists to my offensive total. The first week of October we had a Tuesday away game, Thursday home, and Saturday away. Tennis, I knew, was away Wednesday and home Saturday this week. Typical—with our 56 Kate Christie

opposing schedules, I hadn’t attended even one tennis match yet.But I didn’t have time to worry about other sports, not when I was in-season myself. Our Thursday home game was against San Diego College, our big local rivals. They weren’t that strong, but for some reason we always played poorly against them while they always played well against us, which made for some interesting games. We were 2-2 against them since I’d been on the scene.

This time around, the stands on top of the hill were almost full, even though the men’s soccer team was away. I checked the tennis courts while Holly and I warmed up together, practicing headers, volleys and passes, but the courts were empty. Maybe their coach had taken them off-site to practice.

Before every soccer game, the starting lineup was announced and the national anthem played. The day of the San Diego College game, I stood in the middle of the field with the rest of the team facing the American flag, humming under my breath.

My hands felt shaky. This was an important game. If we lost this one, our national ranking, eighth in our division as of this week, would sink below the top ten, jeopardizing our chances at postseason play—only the top eight teams in the country went to nationals in November each year. Division II had only had a national tournament since 1988, and California teams had dominated the score line so far. We, naturally, believed we could take our place alongside the other Golden State teams who had won a National championship.

After the anthem, we jogged in for a quick pregame pep talk from Coach Eliot. Then we did our team cheer—“One-two-three-together!”—and the starting lineup took the field. As we jogged out to our places, Holly passed me, murmuring, “Are we having fun yet?”

The four of us in back put our hands together and shouted

“Defense!” in unison while our keeper, a butch woman named Mel—short for Melissa, which suited her about as much as Camille suited me—executed her prewhistle ritual of pacing the goalmouth once, twice, counting her steps. Then she moved to the center of the six-yard goal box and spit into her gloves, rubbing them together. She was ready. At the top of the penalty Beautiful Game 57

box, eighteen yards from the goal line, I stretched in place and tried not to feel like I had to pee. I had just gone to the bathroom a half hour before, so I knew it was just pregame jitters pressing on my bladder. Then the whistle blew.

We had kickoff. For the first few minutes we controlled play, passing around the midfield and building an attack. Then an SDC defender stole the ball and cleared it up the field to one of their strikers for a quick counterattack. Jogging backward, I watched the SDC player dribbling down the field. She was good.

She went right at our sophomore stopper, Jeni, who delayed, waiting for the forward to make a move. Suddenly an SDC

midfielder burst forward, overlapping and leaving the player marking her behind. Now it was four versus four. Jeni tried to shut down the passing lane, but she was in a one-on-two situation. The SDC players were going to do a give-and-go, I could feel it, so I stepped up a bit, waiting, waiting, now! The forward touched the ball to the midfielder and sprinted forward.

Jeni shifted over to take the midfielder who quickly laid off a through pass. The pass was almost perfect, the forward was almost there...