The Sea of Light (22 page)

Fine then, I told her, Let’s move here.

She was silent awhile. I thought maybe she’d fallen gently asleep. Then:

I’ll watch for openings, she said—calmly, quickly, taking me by surprise, so that I woke up a little—If that is what you want. But are there opportunities for you around here, Coach?

Probably not, I thought, since every club coach in the world wants to be here or in L.A. or in Texas or Florida, and I could feel the dream die quietly in my chest, and didn’t reply.

I slept and had strange dreams—which, in the morning, I would not remember. Although, Kay told me, I’d had a busy night: rolling away with all the covers, twisting and kicking and babbling up quite an incomprehensible fuss. So that, some time in the predawn hours, she had woken up very groggily again to hear me speak—and, she said, I had told her great and interesting things about us, about life—but, half-dreaming herself, she’d forgotten.

*

Now, I am jet-lagged again, gazing out my hotel room at a San Francisco afternoon again, and things seem unchanged but also changed utterly. This conference stifles me. Which I resent. Still, in a way, it’s a relief. I cannot be myself here—here, where I’ve always felt most myself—but maybe that’s good. Restrictive. Safe.

The apparent sameness of the material things I’m looking out at—buildings, street signs, layers of paint—seems mystifying somehow. Like a pool you return to, after being badly injured. All the things that once seemed effortless have become, for the time, impossible, each movement a frightening attempt acted out with caution and with pain; the other wall you once reached in seconds now unattainable, except in the make-believe of the mind—and when did the mind ever really suffice to satisfy physical need, or passion?

But no. This is really much worse than all that.

The creeping steely rose-tinged sky over pastel buildings—it’s empty. These buildings, too, are empty. And the streets, ghost streets; the shop lights, phantom lights. To be here, this fall, is no longer like dying and going to heaven. Now the feeling is merely of death—not Kay’s, either, but my own.

I would like to cry, only the tears don’t come. They’re blocked, frozen inside this obstacle of chest and throat. I touch my face expecting to feel a familiar grimace and don’t. The face, too, is straight, blank, unmoving, numb. Standing, I shift from foot to foot, and feel nothing. Will myself to speak, to whisper. Nothing.

What must I look like? Stiff. Agitated. Blank and sullen and weird. An automaton. I stay where I am, avoid mirrors.

And, for the first time, understand Babe Delgado.

* * *

Bob Lewison knocks later, looking remade in a nice navy blue high-neck sweater and pale sports jacket, definitely off-duty, smelling of aftershave.

“Have dinner with me, Bren. You’re the only one I love.”

The
only
one? I tease. Well, he says, around these parts, anyway. I tell him that’s a dangerous stance to take, pledging his troth to one, and one only—here, at least, in the city of love. He laughs. Saying, Tell me about it. Or better yet tell my bouncing alimony checks.

We sneak along hotel carpets past colleagues’ rooms, carefully skirting the concierge desk—where a lot of them are clustered, pestering the polite, efficient, handsome gay man in deep scarlet uniform for ideas on where to eat—and take a cab into Chinatown.

The air’s chilly, clear; the sidewalks less tourist-crowded than they’d be in summer, curbs punctuated here and there by the soundless blinking-on of streetlamps. We choose a place that’s neither crowded nor empty, settle into an obscure table and examine vast menus, surrounded by the subtle babble of English, Mandarin, Tagalog. Order drinks first and sit back sipping them, plucking frilly straw decorations from the rim of each glass.

“How’s Delgado doing, Bren?”

“Oh, all right. This isn’t the year to tell, really—she’s just getting back into it. Lots of hard work, diet, swim bench and free weights, lots of taping up to do—she’s got
extremely
damaged knees and a bad ankle or two, and the shoulders aren’t exactly in great shape, either—you know how it is. You play Coach Fix-It, you try not to hurt them—well, anyway, you fix what you can.”

He leans across the table, elbows crinkling paper mats. Looks around before speaking, and when he does he speaks in a near-whisper, as if describing conspiracy.

“Fine. So tell me, the truth now, Bren—I mean, a Lamborghini can be fixed, right? you fix it all the time—is this kid really spectacular, or what?”

“Was.”

“Can she still pull out a great race or two?”

“Yes,” I admit. “She can.”

He grins, raises his glass. “To your winning then, Coach.”

“And to hers.”

“Amen,” he says, “drink hearty now.”

We do.

He tells me the indoor track season is shaping up okay. No chances for a top-three finish this year—too many injuries, too many seasoned runners graduated—but a couple of guys are looking good, and strong, and for all any of us know one of them might make All-American. Skinny, string bean distance kid. Senior this year. Does the five and the ten. Appearance very deceptive: your typical runner’s greyhound physique, you know, ninety-pound weakling look; but this guy can just about bench-press his weight.

Impressive, I say.

We order food, more drinks, and keep talking sports. Partway through the second drink and the egg-drop soup, something tugs at my insides, a sense of discontent. I wonder why. Tell myself that, once upon a time, Brenna Allen, you could talk shop nonstop, into the wee hours; once upon a time, living and breathing and talking and thinking these things, these athletic things, made you happier than anything else in the world. Yet now, when all the work is beginning to pay off in a big, big way—now when, let’s face it, it is really all that you have—it seems banal. Unnecessary. Boring. Or obscuring, somehow, as if it blankets something else altogether; but what, or how, you cannot or will not see.

The main course arrives. I realize that dinner has gotten pretty sloshy. We’re chugging down the drinks like folks on death row facing an execution date. Maybe the consumption of booze hides something else, too, for both of us. But it occurs to me that I really don’t give a damn. I have gotten drunk only twice before in my life: once in college, after which I was terribly sick; once on Kay’s birthday, after which she and I kissed and fell pleasantly, nakedly asleep. And if this is the third time, so be it. I’ve been disciplined enough, for long enough. Even if it kills me, tonight I don’t care.

We muddle through the food and beverage, babbling away. The restaurant lights become dim. Although maybe, I think, it is an illusion; your eyes are glazed, Super Coach, averted from the real light, seeing only its dull, dull shadow.

Mounds of rice soaking up soy sauce. Fortune cookies.
You will
be successful in love,
mine reads, and I laugh. We pay the check, leave a tip larger than either of us can afford.

Outside it’s colder. I huddle chin-down in the long, sleek folds of a lightweight autumn thing Kay made me buy, wait in a slowly spinning sidewalk crowd while Bob goes away somewhere, then returns in a cab.

The Wharf, someone says. I don’t know who.

Soon, though, we are moving arm in arm through a bright-lit crowd near ships and the Bay, sniffing chilled salty air and hot dogs, candy, cloth, frying things.

Out on the oily black water, moonlight shines. It cuts right into the middle of the Bay, a harsh reflection that is sheer bright silver, glistens like a wound, blinds in its intensity. For a moment I’m frightened, and look away.

“Bob. Can you see it?”

“What?”

I shake my head; it’s gone. “I don’t know. Never mind. The sky.”

“Sure.” He moves ahead and turns to face me, scuffing his good shoes on the wharf, tries to dance a jig. “The sky’s up there, right? And everything else, present company included, is here—”

Both feet stomp. The gesture is intended to be firm but, standing there, he weaves slightly back and forth, and both of us laugh. Wandering remnants of crowd, sweatshirted tourists, bump against him. I manage to inch forward, arms open, as if to rescue him. We hold hands then and stumble somewhere else.

Ugly, piercing pallor. Ceiling fans. Costumes circa 1900. Sitting at a fake marble tabletop, we examine some boat-sized chocolate fudge sundae, buried beneath cherries, sprinkles, whirling fists of whipped cream. He dabbles at it with a long-stemmed spoon. Once in a while he faces me, serious expression, very earnestly. And I listen—although, later, I will not remember any of it—while he tells me the story of his life.

You? he says. We’re moving again, walking through the windy, crowded dark. Time has passed—a lot of it, I think—so it must be late. I think. But I am not sure. I can feel myself giggle. It sounds odd, phony, girlish.

“Oh, you know me, Bob. My life’s a closed book.”

“No, Bren!” He faces me again with exaggerated urgency, grabs both my shoulders, while everything else twists around us both. “That’s just it!
I don’t—I do not—know
you. And I
want
to—”

“You
want
to?”

“I want to! Know you! That’s right! From the heart and from the soul, woman! Very, very much!”

“Well,
caveat emptor,
my friend. Buyer beware.”

Huh? he says, but I never reply.

*

It is later that things slow, and die. Later, on rolled-down sheets, in a hotel room, after all these strange foul-tasting kisses we have numbly bestowed on each other. I am feeling-less and naked, and he is merely naked. I can feel his fingers somewhere along my thighs. Doing something—I don’t care what. I’m sitting over his body, straddling him, thinking that he’s in good shape for his age, very lean but muscular, only moderately hairy, nice abdominal muscles, strong, strong legs, decent chest—but there are no breasts there; though, out of habit, I reach for them.

Now he is struggling, and I am, too. To help him, I think. But maybe it is to hinder something else altogether; both of us fumble, between his legs and mine. The part of him I hold is a little hard, mostly soft. We are both trying very seriously to insert it inside me. It seems important. I don’t know why. For a moment it fits, stiffens and he pushes up and forward, and I feel something I barely remember—it has been so long, so many, many years—a foreign protrusion, half ticklish, half bruising inside me, and I wonder what to do about it all.

Then it dies like the evening. His movement slows. He falls out of me, limp and tired; tiredly throws an arm across his eyes.

“Christ.”

“Forget it, Coach. My mistake.”

“Christ,” he says, “who’s Kay?”

“Nothing. No one. The love of my life. She died.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, Bob. I am not kidding.”

The spin of things seems to calm. More becomes visible: blankets under feet, drawn curtains, terrible art on the walls. The objects of this room. I lie beside him, numbly, a rumpled fold of sheet between us. Realize, for the first time all night, an actual, strictly physical sensation: my mouth is dry and sore, the tongue so dry it feels cracked. He looks at me sideways, eyes widening when they lose focus, narrowing when they regain it. Then he yawns, and closes them, hides them under his hands.

“Excuse me for not jumping up and ordering flowers, Bren. This is all a little rough on my dick.”

“I don’t give a shit about your dick, Bob. I don’t give a shit about anything. All I want to do is sleep.”

“Yah.” He rubs his forehead, glares at the ceiling. “Well me too, sister.” Then he props himself on an elbow, with difficulty, eyelids falling closed, barely opening, manages to keep his lips from slurring. The eyes stare at me accusingly. I watch them, and blink.

“So? What’s up, Bob?”

“So. That’s really the truth? You are some kind of dyke or something?”

“Yah, Coach,” I mock. Carelessly. Tiredly. “But skip the Or Something.”

“Well,” he says. And falls asleep.

I do, too.

*

The next day is a headache, during which I lie low—skipping all the conference panel discussions and presentations I’d planned to attend, dodging every phone call, checking to make sure the DO
NOT DISTURB
sign still swings firmly from the outside doorknob before double-locking the door again and staggering into the bathroom to vomit. Luckily, I have no actual assigned duties until tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes, Coach, I tell myself, luck is really with you.

Towards evening the nausea fades, the headache dulls. I begin to feel very sorry for myself, and consider placing a long-distance phone call to Chick—on the pretext of seeing how Boz is doing; in truth, to whine about my life—but don’t. I watch as much TV as my bloodshot eyes can handle, sleep off and on until dawn, wake up feeling drained, and empty, but no longer in desperate shape. I order a high-protein room-service breakfast, drink plenty of orange juice with aspirin, shower and do sit-ups and push-ups, shoulders complaining all the way, and put on lots of makeup, a terrific dress, jewelry, nylons, heels.

I spend half the day mingling with coaches and exercise physiologists and Ph.D. candidates in sports pedagogy. All the coaches have heard about Delgado, and want to know too much. The panel I moderate goes well. I manage to blurt out appropriately sophisticated introductions, and to tie all the seemingly unrelated strands together in the end—although, later, I will not remember exactly how. I do more mingling until dinnertime, take phone numbers and trade calling cards, eat sparingly at a bland hotel restaurant with two colleagues, wincing at the sight of mixed drinks. One is a female basketball coach—who lives and works down South, has a wedding ring, talks a lot about a husband—but our eyes meet often, and I wonder; the other an affable enough swimming coach from some school in Wisconsin, a little too young and too confident. But interesting things sometimes pop out of too-big mouths, and he went to school with Bart Sager, he says, long ago, so I listen.