Tom Barbash - Stay Up With Me

“What sort of things did you learn?”

“ Learn? Hmmm. That I would die someday. That I had wasted a lot of time worrying about things that weren’t important. It sounds trite when you say this sort of stuff aloud. It’s a bit like in chess, when you can see the next three moves? I could do that. I could see the traps.”

“Do you want to sleep over?”

“I do,” he said. “But not tonight. How about tomorrow night?”

He was playing this perfectly.

He came over the next night with five different boxes of Chinese food, a six-pack of Tsingtao, and a movie. I ate a little of everything and drank two and a half beers. My fortune cookie said that I was comfortable in my own skin, which didn’t really sound like a fortune, and certainly not mine. “They should call them compliment cookies,” Roland said. His fortune said that he was wise in the way of finances. We imagined disparaging fortunes we’d sneak into Chinese restaurants. “Your spouse will be unfaithful and your children will dislike you,” I said, reading mine.

“Your investments will tank and the bank will seize your home,” he said.

I watched him as we polished off our beers and I could see this turning into something. I laughed out loud for no reason, a goofy, raucous sound that shocked me. He kissed me then and I kissed him back. And then we were rolling around on the floor, groping for body parts and kissing necks and shoulders. He had a much more athletic body than Mitchell, who, when you got right down to it, was too tall and too thin, his voice too raspy from cigarettes, his hair too long and directionless, until he cruelly buzzed it short (the way I’d urged him to have it cut) the week after we broke up. We started pulling at each other’s clothes, and somewhere along the way I fell off the ride and back into the ditch.

Roland beamed at me affectionately, and I felt suffocated.

“I like this,” he said.

“Me too,” I said, slithering out from beneath him. “Let’s go get some air.”

There was a soft snowfall outside and we decided to go sledding in the park. We passed Tavern on the Green with its garish holiday lights, and the honeyed words of a torch song streaming through an opened window; then we walked by Sheep Meadow and the Bandshell, uptown until we found the park’s hidden sledding spots. Mitchell had found two long planks of cardboard in the recycling bins of my building, and we used them as sleds. Did I say Mitchell? Roland . We climbed to the top of the hill — Dog Hill, they call it, or more precisely Dog Shit Hill, because a lot of dogs do just that, only it’s hidden way beneath the snow. It was very cold, and the ground felt hard, even as the new snow was falling. The sledding would be fast. I got a running start and jumped on the cardboard and I yelled out at the top of my lungs, “ Shit be gone! ” Which felt good, and liberating.

Roland followed me yelling the same thing, even louder. The cardboard glided nicely over the crunchy snow. The ground whipped by, and I could feel every bump and hard-cornered chunk of ice. I laid my body luge-style, and then I soared off of a sudden rise and flipped into the air for a full second and a half. The ground smacked my head, and for a moment it knocked me out, as though I’d inhaled the gas from a whipping cream canister, like we did in high school. I saw a trail of light like a comet in the sky, and then the world spun around me, white and dazzling. I gathered myself to my feet and went running back up the hill. Roland was already there. We started up again, faster this time. “This is completely crazy,” he said, with a reasonable, kind smile that I wanted to love. I wanted this. I allowed myself to believe it was possible. I could crash into a tree, or a rock, or a bank of snow, and land hard enough so that something inside me would break. I would stay out here, burning down the steep dark hill until it happened.

Dear Mr. Wilcox,

I would like to let you know how your son Lee is progressing at the Tennis Academy. I’ve chosen to communicate by letter because I believe what we’re witnessing requires more than a casual phone call or email, as I suspect you will agree.

I should start by confessing that I did not at the outset peg Lee as a star player. Your son was a bit spacey, and antisocial really, whereas the main cadre of top players cling to one another like a pack of young wolves. Lee has a tendency to look away when you speak so that it appears he isn’t listening, though it has been my experience, as I’m sure it has been yours, that he’s heard every word. He has invariably incorporated what I’ve suggested into his game.

But by the second week I’d see him staying late in front of the backboard and hitting way into the night, and there again at dawn with a hopper of balls and the targets, practicing a thousand or more serves. And now, a month in, I can see just a little Becker in his volleys and a touch of Agassi in his returns. I do not use those terms lightly. In the last tournament Lee was made to play the fourth seed, a boy from Kentucky with a huge serve-and-volley game, and Lee destroyed him in straight sets—6–2, 6–2. He never brags about his accomplishments, but I figured Lee would have told you this; when I talked to him a few days afterward, though, I understood that he probably didn’t. He said he hasn’t spoken to you in a while.

Lee won two other matches in that tournament, and when he finally lost, it was because of a broken string that forced him to borrow a racket. I plan to make a deal with Wilson so that Lee can begin to receive free equipment. I hope this will be an arrangement you will go along with. There is nothing you would need to do financially, but Lee would have to wear only Wilson clothes and use only Wilson rackets. In all other respects, I now think, he is ready for the responsibility such a deal would entail.

He still reads all the time when he isn’t practicing and I wonder if that’s what’s caused his eyes to deteriorate. Usually he wears his contacts when he’s playing but sometimes he wears those thick glasses, which makes other kids poke fun at him, although to his credit he doesn’t seem to listen to them or care all that much. I’m not sure if he has any real friends here, other than a boy from the school our athletes attend who doesn’t play tennis, but who watches Lee play. This boy smokes cigarettes, which I certainly hope Lee does not do, because it would result in his suspension from the Academy. So far, so good. There have been no issues with girls, although a few seem to be taking interest in him. I don’t think it would be all that bad for Lee to go on a date or two, but I have not spoken to him about it, and I imagine that’s more your territory than mine. There have been off-color things said about Lee and the boy from the school, although that’s what’s always said about unusual kids. I have caught Lee staring a few times at Vivi, the girl from Denmark, who is one of our best players and is something to look at.

What is so remarkable about Lee is his ability to focus on a single task, so unusual for a boy his age, or for anyone at any age. The world recedes for Lee when he is on the court, and his face looks purposefully placid, like Borg’s or Lendl’s. It’s rather intimidating, really. And he has a terrific sense of balance. As he runs, you can imagine him keeping a stack of books over his head and not spilling one. His racket speed has improved, as has his footwork. These improvements are incremental, and barely detectable day to day, but I’m beginning to think he’ll be one of our top players by this spring. It will be a different life for him, and perhaps for you, because I believe he will be traveling soon for tournaments, perhaps to the nationals. And I for one would like to be part of that.