Playtime (7 page)

So the brothers are walking down the block after
making the so longs, and Blaine says "Well, what do you think?" They
are ambling right down the center of the street. Not any traffic. Birds are
lined up on one set of wires, hundreds of them. Blaine doesn't remember them
doing that when he was small. He had shown Todd the pole he hit. 

 "Beautiful girl," Todd says. "That
Doug is a lucky man." 

 "Talented too," Blaine says. 

 "That's no lie. I was exaggerating a little
bit, but not much. He knows how to make that brush move." 

 "You think Mandy really didn't know she was
still covered by the insurance?" 

 "Probably not," Todd says. They are
coming up to the front porch now, the neighbor's dog howling like a banshee. They
pause out in the yard looking at each other. Blaine has his orange University
of Texas cap on, and they both have shades going. The sun is merciless, even
this early in the day. Todd reaches down and plucks a blade of grass. "Don't
need to worry about someone breaking in, huh?" 

 "I don't know," Blaine says. "You
would think a girl that apparently smart would know more about what she's
doing, even at that age." 

 "What are you thinking, conspiracy? Second
gunman on the grassy knoll, CIA involvement? Man, we did our good deed for the
day and helped ourselves out too. Doesn't get much better than that." 

 "I don't really like it that she took up
with Doug," Blaine says. He tells Todd about the scene at the impound
yard. The dog has finally recognized him, he guesses, and has shut the hell up,
is just standing by the fence, tongue lolling from his mouth. He is good-sized,
some fashion of mixed breed, with it looks like some Shepherd in him.   

 "So Dougie can be a bit of an asshole,"
Todd says. "I'm shocked." 

 "He had it dialed way down in there this
morning," says Blaine. "That boy has the cold fish-eye when he wants
to. He was playing nice for Mandy. I don't like him." 

 "You wanna march back down there?" his
brother says. "Make him rue the day he screwed with the HardRocks? Stomp a
new mudhole in his ass?" He throws an arm over Blaine's shoulder and moves
him toward the door and inside. 

 "You know what I mean," Blaine says.   

The brothers decide to go surfing, having gotten
the Mandy business out of the way. They grew up on the beach. It is like a
second home to them. They would drag their boards up to the seawall on bike
trailers when they were teens, stay out surfing all damn day, coming in to rest
every once in a while, or for something to drink and a sugary snack from the
convenience store, or one of those frozen burritos or sausage-and-biscuits. Stay
out till they looked like broiled lobsters. Screw the skin cancer: it didn't
know their name. They know better now, use sunscreen. 

 It is already way hot, with the prevailing
southern wind starting to kick up, and Blaine thinks he can hear some breaking
wave action from where they are standing outside the garage. They go into it
and he hauls his two boards down from the rafters. Both boards are the tri-fin
jobs, designed for the smaller, choppy wave conditions that are found most days
in the gulf. Todd has kept the Hawaiian shirt, Blaine has on a Tee, and they
both have their surfing baggies.   

 The Dodge fires right up like it always does, and
Todd makes a comment about maybe not shooting the old beast yet. They rumble
for the beach. Blaine is sure the doctors wouldn't want him out surfing, but he
doesn't see the harm in it. Salt water heals. 

 The seawall is packed with tourists since it's
summer, traffic moving at stop-and-go speed, inner tubes and floats and
surfboards strapped to the top of vehicles, stuff packed on that little
platform you can mount behind the car, now, gives that touch more carrying
capacity. Lifeguards sit in their towers, with different colored flags flapping
to tell you the water conditions. Almost like traffic lights: green for good,
yellow for caution and red not to go in. They get lucky and pull up behind some
guy by the 53
^rd
street groin as he's pulling out and nab the spot.
Cars stack up behind them as Blaine maneuvers the big truck in. Somebody honks,
and Todd flips them the bird. 

 They strip down to their trunks, leaving
everything of value in the truck, except the keys, which Blaine tucks into the
Velcro pocket on his suit; they are barefoot, ready to roll, and they grab the
boards and hoof it down the wall to the stairs, the hot pavement scorching
their feet, making them break into a trot to minimize contact. Finally, they
make it down to the sand, which is packed with people lying in the sun,
families taking shelter under umbrellas near the waterline, folks building sand
castles and playing volleyball. A typical summer day at the beach. 

 Blaine's ears had not deceived him; the waves are
breaking, maybe three or four feet high, not glassy, because of the summer
south wind, but rideable, definitely. 

 The water is nearly as hot as the air, but it
still feels good, and they splash around near the shore for a minute, then hop
on and paddle out, away from all the swimmers. This is a designated surfing
area, but swimmers can swim at their own risk, and they are all over. But a few
minutes of paddling in the murky brown water and the brothers are outside,
beyond all that. 

 Todd reaches a good spot first, sees a wall
arching up, wheels his board around and strokes furiously to catch the swell.
Then he's up, alone on it and cutting right. He's got a graceful style and goes
from top to bottom, working it for all it's worth, until the wave passes Blaine
and all he can see is the back of it, Todd's head and shoulders visible then
disappearing then visible again. He hears him yelling from way inside and can
tell he's stoked about the ride. 

 Then he sees one he likes and he's up himself,
doing the familiar dance up and down. He passes Todd paddling out, cuts in
front of him sending a rooster-tail of foamy spray his way, and Todd holds up
one fist and hoots at him. 

They go in and out, catching the nice little waves
and riding them through the swimmers, then paddling back out. They lose track
of time. Hours pass. The prevailing current is from the southwest and moves
them toward one of the rock groins that jut out from the shore every hundred
yards or so. It is necessary for them to keep paddling west just to keep in
place and stop their drift into the groin. Warning flags are posted, and the
lifeguards will come run them off if they get too close. And the currents are
bad and unpredictable next to the rocks on the side that is facing them: the
waves tend to smash you into them when you are on that side. If you are on the
side opposite the prevailing current, the water is usually calmer than anywhere
else, and it is a good way to get outside the breaking waves without working
too hard. In the winter surfers do it all the time, but in the summer the
lifeguards don't like it, even though they know as well as the surfers that the
risk is minimal on that side. Warnings are posted on both sides.   

 Back and forth they roll in rhythm that seems
primal. Neither wants to go in. They would sometimes see who could stay out
longer when they were kids, hanging in the water and heat till they were so
dehydrated and tired they couldn't take anymore. Could barely lift their arms
to paddle. It is nature's dance, and Blaine thinks that people who have done it
know something you can't find out any other way. Sometimes they talk about it;
more often they don't, because when it is put into words it somehow cheapens
it, makes it seem trite. 

 He has felt the same feeling climbing in the
mountains, but not quite as strongly. It is something about the movement on the
wave. 

 They both are surfing well, especially Todd, much
better than he would have thought after being away from the water so long,
unless he is sneaking away to some of those fine California surf spots. He must
be.   

 They take a break, get something to drink then do
it some more, until the sun is sinking toward the horizon. They call it a day,
then: neither of them is catching much anymore; their arms are too wasted.
Blaine heads in first and stands on the beach as Todd waits for one last good
one, making it almost all the way to shore, then they hustle up the still-warm
pavement and throw the boards in back of the truck. 

They hit the showers, knock all the sand off, and
sit in the living room sipping cool beers. Blaine had called Renee and told her
they would probably come by the club later. 

 "What's new on the brain front?" Todd asks.
He's not interested enough to buy the books and study, but he likes to hear the
short version of whatever Blaine is into. He's good at getting and distilling
the knowledge of those around him. He is a good listener, which Blaine knows is
a necessary talent for a guy in his line. You don't have to kiss ass, he likes
to say, but you'd at least better listen to what people have to say. Kissing a
little ass every once in a while doesn't hurt your chances either. 

 "Got a guy studying every connection in the
brain," Blaine says. He is in the big recliner he thinks of as
his
chair. Todd is in the plush brown fabric chair with his feet on the ottoman. "Beginning
to map all that, though they don't have the tools they really need." 

 "What will that accomplish?" Todd asks.
  

 "Everything, someday," Blaine says.
"They get it all mapped, they'll know exactly how the brain works, what
each connection does. Possible they could fix something if it's wrong, rewire
it. If they get a good enough idea how it all works, they could transfer that
knowledge into making something artificial that has the same properties." 

 "You think artificial intelligence is going
to happen?" 

 "Yeah," says Blaine. "It's getting
closer every day. On one side, you've got people making instruments that allow
you to control physical items with only your brain waves. Controlling
artificial limbs and machines. On the other, you've got people working to make
machines that learn, similar to the way the brain learns, from experience. Yep,
I think it's going to happen." 

 They have the TV on with the sound off again. To
soccer: that guy who is supposed to be the best player in the world by a
quantum leap is playing. Neither of them knows much about the game. Todd has
one of the huge books of the brain that is full of diagrams and pictures on his
lap. The AC is droning away. Every once in a while the dog next door starts
barking and won't stop. It barks when cars come down the street or birds fly
by. Snaps at insects sometimes. Blaine has seen it. 

 "So what is the main hang-up keeping all
that from happening?" Todd asks. 

 "Technology, man. They just don't have machinery
that's good enough to capture all the movement and action that's going on. But
it's going to happen." 

 "What about the MRI and all that?" 

 "Good, but not what they finally need. It's
machinery like that that has made the explosion of knowledge in the last ten or
fifteen years possible. For the first time they could really see what's
happening inside someone's brain. Before that, they studied the brains of
people that had lesions and mental deficits, after they had died. That was all
they had." 

 "You're talking about people with brain
damage." 

 "Yep." 

 "Anything new coming down the pike right
now?" 

 "Something new could come any day,"
says Blaine, getting up to look out the peephole on the door. He loves that
thing, gives him a panoramic view of the porch and street outside, the house
next door. Everything real small, though. "It's like airplanes or
electricity. One day you're in the dark using lanterns, the next thing you know
you have cold storage for food, appliances, lights, and TV. Satellites in space,
and jets flying by." 

 "Well," Todd says, "it took a
while for all that to happen." 

 "Blink of an eye in the big picture,"
Blaine says. "Blink of an eye." 

 They turn the sound back on and watch the soccer
game. The stadium is filled with over a hundred thousand people going wild.
People die in Europe every year at these games: fan fights or stadium
collapses. Europeans are nuts for soccer. Blaine doesn't really get the
attraction. Todd must be thinking along the same lines. He says, "Not like
the NFL, is it." He's alternating between the brain book and the TV,
watching for a few minutes, flipping a page, watching some more, flipping a
page. 

 "Any particular companies you like in the
brain field, anybody doing big things right now?" he asks. 

Finally they get moving. Blaine fixes some tuna
sandwiches and chips, throws the makings on hoagie buns with cheese and melts
them in the oven. He wants to roll up to the beach and see Renee before it gets
too late. 

 The club she is working at is a big fancy joint
in one of the large hotels on the Galveston beachfront. Sometime they have a
band playing, but not tonight. He and Todd had changed into Tees with sports
jackets over them, jeans on. Trying to look nice. Blaine doesn't go in there
much. He doesn't really like to sit around and watch the guys hit on Renee. 

 The hotel entrance is grand, ceiling over twenty
feet up, the club over to the left, with the walls facing the gulf all glass
from waist-high, so the beach is right there in panorama. The club is circular
with the bar set in the center. The lights are clusters that hang chandelier-style
and can be brought from dark-night dim to spotlight by the guy at the bar. Most
of the time, like now, they are dim. Seats at the bar or small, round tables
with cushioned, wicker chairs. Carpet clothes the floor, with a wooden dance area
on the other side of the bar that gets packed whenever a band plays. Right now,
something soft and faintly familiar is playing. The dance floor is empty. 

 Renee is tucked into the cocktail waitress
station that is partially hidden on the side of the round bar. The side away
from the beach. She is wearing a tasteful but very sexy dress that comes midway
up her thighs. The dress has blue and gold swirling designs that highlight the
large, gold hoops dangling from her ears. Blaine thinks she might look better
with clothes on than naked. Something to be said for imagination. Tossup.
Win-win. 

 Next to her is a taller, slender blonde who
smiles at them automatically as he and Todd come walking up, smile not quite
reaching her eyes. They are a cold and calculating blue. Blaine smiles back,
thinking that brown eyes seem more passionate, more feeling. Brown eyes are the
default as far as the genes go. Renee gives Todd a hug and him, too, and a
brief cool touch on the lips. She can go either way with displays of affection.
Doesn't bother her. She seems genuinely happy to see Todd. Takes his hand and
moves them over to a nice table by the window, smiling back at Blaine as she
chats to his brother.   

 The place is about half full, even though it's
early and there is no band. It will be packed later, people crammed in till you
can barely make it up to the bar, dance floor a seething mass of motion. Even
without live music. 

 "I forgot how good-looking you really
are," Todd is saying to her as they reach the table. "How did the Dip
here let you get away from him? I think you're probably out of his range,
really. If you feel like visiting me in California, I'll fly you out." 

 "First class?" She smiles. 

 "Nothing but," Todd says, "First
class all the way." 

 "I'll keep that in mind," she says,
looking at Blaine. "Meantime, what do you sluggers want to drink?" 

 "Two beers," Blaine says. "I don't
think Junior here needs any hard stuff." 

 "Man, she really is something," Todd
says as she walks away, hips moving slow and assured, like she doesn't care
who's watching. 

 "Okay, I can see how this is going to
be," Blaine says. "I should have gone ahead and taken you to the strip
club." 

 "Too late," Todd says. "Your woman
has ruined me." He looks at his expensive gold watch, back at Blaine,
smiles.   

 Renee brings the frosty Heinekens, and they sit
sipping, staring out the window at the gulf they'd been surfing in all day. Blaine
is so tired he could lay his head down on the little round table and take a
nap. Todd seems to be getting his second wind. His head is moving almost imperceptibly
in time to the music playing.   

 "So what brought you guys back together?"
he finally asks after a while. 

 "Actually," Blaine says, "it was
the accident. She heard about it and brought me some soup at the house." 

 "She didn't visit you in the hospital?" 

 "Nah, she was out of town when it
happened," Blaine says. "Visiting her mom. She said she came as soon
as she found out. Read one of those goofy articles in the newspaper." 

 Todd knows all the background. He likes Renee,
though he has told Blaine before that picking a woman who never had a father figure
in her life is bound to be seven miles of bad road. Nothing but trouble.   

 More people are starting to roll in, the place is
filling up. More guys than couples and all of them seem to want to put their
hands on some part of Renee. She is cutting through the crowd with grace and
skill carrying that round, cork tray. He catches her eye and signals for a
couple more Heinekens then turns back to Todd. Watching her entertain the
yokels will just make him mad. 

 "You know, I'm not trying to get in your
business or anything," his brother says, "but girls like that usually
wind up where some money is." He holds up his hands as Blaine looks at
him. "I'm just saying, bro." 

 She looms up above them with the beers, sets them
down and is off again, into the flow of the work.   

 "How's the writing going anyway?" 

 Blaine shrugs. The music has gotten louder and he
doesn't want to talk about it anyway. "It's going." He stares down at
his beer. He has been writing since he was a kid, storing stuff in little
notebooks. The writing isn't going to stop. He's made a little money from it,
but not much, not anywhere near what the time and effort he has put into it are
worth. Todd had never written anything except essays for school and doesn't get
it. He thinks Blaine should give it up and move on though he never comes right
out and says that. He has always had the practical edge to him. 

 Blaine can see that some big guy has Renee backed
up against the bar in the cocktail station, using his height and bulk to try
and dominate her, custom suit and tie on the motherfucker, got the big teeth
smiling down, arm propped up on the rail on one side of her blocking her way
out. She doesn't seem annoyed, just bemused, and is looking back up at him with
just a hint of a smile on her face, arms crossed in front of her. Blaine gets
up and shoulders his way through the crowd, taps the big man on the shoulder,
says "Excuse me, I need to talk to her a minute" and looks up at him,
lets his anger and possessiveness show, getting up inside the big guy's space.
The guy looks back down at him like he's a bug he found in his drink, and
starts to say something but Renee drags Blaine off to the side. 

 "I thought we talked about this," she
says, giving her head a tiny jerk toward the big guy, who is still watching
them, drink now in his hand. 

 They had talked about it. Not under any
circumstance was Blaine to start a fight in the bar while she was working. No
circumstance. She had guys bug her all the time, she had told him. If he was
going to step in every time some guy hit on her, he was going to be a busy man.
She would lose the job. The bar has a bouncer and an off-duty cop who wander
around looking for the bad eggs that are bound to show when there is an
atmosphere like this. Even in such a swanky joint, there is trouble of one sort
or another almost every night: guys starting fights over girls or football or
who bought the last round. Whatever. 

 "That motherfucker doesn't know the three-foot
rule," Blaine says, face still stretched tight, mouth a thin line. He is
breathing fast. 

 "Let me be the judge of that," she
says, her mouth tightening up as well. "You know what
our
rule
is." She looks at the crowd swirling around them. Somebody has turned the
music up and the sounds of
Landslide
fill the room. She has to lean
close to him to make herself heard. 

 "Awright," he says.
"Awright," still looking toward the bar at the big man, who raises one
eyebrow a touch as if to say "What?" If he winks, Blaine thinks, I
will be on him like that cheap suit. But he doesn't. He looks the other way. 

 "God damn it, stop it," Renee says. She
had seen the entire exchange.   

 "Okay, Okay" he mutters, and she takes
him by the arm and they move back toward the table, where Todd is nursing his
beer. She deposits him back in his seat and gives him a kiss, leaning down,
still balancing the tray. Blaine looks back at the bar. Big man is watching. Motherfucker.
Good.   

 "You acting out again," says Todd after
Renee walks off. 

 "That's why I don't like to come down
here," Blaine says. "Some jerk-off is always putting hands all over
her." 

 "You think it's not going on when you're not
here? You want to stop that stuff you need to pull her out of this job." 

 "All a question of money, isn't it?"
Blaine says, sipping his beer, looking at everything around them except back at
the bar. Isn't it always? It
does
make the world go round. 

 "You ever think of applying for an operator
spot in some of those plants you work shutdowns at?" 

 "Sure," Blaine says, putting the beer
back on the table, wiping his mouth, "I've thought about it, but those
plant jobs always turn out to involve a lot of overtime. It's the nature of the
deal. I wouldn't be able to write." 

 Todd looks at him, hesitates a minute, says
"Maybe it's time you moved on from that, man. I mean it's been quite a
time you've been putting stuff out there and really haven't made any headway."
He sees the look on Blaine's face, raises his hands, "Or do it part-time,
in your time off, that's all I'm saying. In your stories, the good guy might
always win the girl, but in real life you need to come with something to get
her. In the real world."