John Irving - In One Person

“One day, it will be just a singlet—no tights, I’ll bet ya,” the old coach predicted. “No bare chests allowed.”

“Pity,” Miss Frost said, with a theatrical sigh.

Atkins emitted a choking sound; he’d spotted the scowling Dr. Harlow, maybe a half-second before I saw the bald-headed owl-fucker. I had my doubts that Dr. Harlow was a wrestling fan—at least Elaine and I had never noticed him when we’d watched Kittredge wrestle before. (But why would we have paid any attention to Dr. Harlow then?)

“This is strictly forbidden, Bill—there’s to be no contact between you two,” Dr. Harlow said; he didn’t look at Miss Frost. The “you two” was as close as Dr. Harlow could come to saying her name.

“Miss Frost and I haven’t said a word to each other,” I told the bald-headed owl-fucker.

“There’s to be no contact, Bill,” Dr. Harlow sputtered; he still wouldn’t look at Miss Frost.

“ What contact?” Miss Frost said sharply; her big hand gripped the doctor’s shoulder, causing Dr. Harlow to spring away from her. “The only contact I’ve had is with young Kittredge here,” Miss Frost told Dr. Harlow; she now put both her hands on Kittredge’s shoulders. “Look at me,” she commanded him; when Kittredge looked up at her, he seemed as suddenly impressionable as a submissive little boy. (If Elaine had been there, she at last would have seen the innocence she’d sought, unsuccessfully, in Kittredge’s younger photographs.) “I wish you luck—I hope you tie that record,” Miss Frost told him.

“Thank you,” Kittredge managed to mumble.

“See you around, Herm,” Miss Frost said to her old coach.

“Take care of yourself, Al,” Herm Hoyt told her.

“I’ll see you, Nymph,” Kittredge said to me, but he didn’t look at me—or at Miss Frost. Kittredge quickly jogged off the mat, catching up to one of his teammates.

“We were talkin’ about wrestlin’, Doc,” Herm Hoyt said to Dr. Harlow.

“ What record?” Dr. Harlow asked the old coach.

“ My record,” Miss Frost told the doctor. She was leaving when Tom Atkins made a gagging sound; Atkins couldn’t contain himself, and now that Kittredge was gone, poor Tom was no longer afraid to say it.

“Miss Frost!” Atkins blurted out. “Bill and I are going to Europe together this summer!”

Miss Frost smiled warmly at me, before turning her attention to Tom Atkins. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, Tom,” she told him. “I’m sure you’ll have a great time.” Miss Frost was walking away when she stopped and looked back at us, but it was clear, when Miss Frost spoke to us, that she was looking straight at Dr. Harlow. “I hope you two get to do everything together,” Miss Frost said.

Then they were gone—both Miss Frost and Dr. Harlow. (The latter didn’t look at me as he was leaving.) Tom Atkins and I were left alone with Herm Hoyt.

“Ya know, fellas—I gotta be goin’,” the old coach told us. “There’s a team meetin’—”

“Coach Hoyt,” I said, stopping him. “I’m curious to know who would win—if there were ever a match between Kittredge and Miss Frost. I mean, if they were the same age and in the same weight-class. You know what I mean—if everything were equal.”

Herm Hoyt looked around; maybe he was checking to be sure that none of his wrestlers was near enough to overhear him. Only Delacorte had lingered in the wrestling room, but he was standing far off by the exit door, as if he were waiting for someone. Delacorte was too far away to hear us.

“Listen, fellas,” the old coach growled, “don’t quote me on this, but Big Al would kill Kittredge. At any age, no matter what weight-class—Al could kick the shit out of Kittredge.”

I won’t pretend that it wasn’t gratifying to hear this, but I would rather have heard it privately; it wasn’t something I wanted to share with Tom Atkins.

“Can you imagine, Bill—” Atkins began, when Coach Hoyt had left us for the locker room.

I interrupted Atkins. “Yes, of course I can imagine, Tom,” I told him.

We were at the exit to the old gym when Delacorte stopped us. It was me he’d been waiting for.

“I saw her—she’s truly beautiful!” Delacorte told me. “She spoke to me as she was leaving—she said I was a ‘wonderful’ Lear’s Fool.” Here Delacorte paused to rinse and spit; he was holding two paper cups and no longer resembled a death-in-progress. “She also told me I should move up a weight-class, but she put it in a funny way. ‘You might lose more matches if you move up a weight, but you won’t suffer so much.’ She used to be Al Frost, you know,” Delacorte confided to me. “She used to wrestle !”

“We know, Delacorte!” Tom Atkins said irritably.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Atkins,” Delacorte said, rinsing and spitting. “Then Dr. Harlow interrupted us,” Delacorte told me. “He said something to your friend—some bullshit about it being ‘inappropriate’ for her even to be here! But she just kept talking to me, as if the bald-headed owl-fucker weren’t there. She said, ‘Oh, what is it Kent says to Lear—act one, scene one, when Lear has got things the wrong way around, concerning Cordelia? Oh, what is the line? I just saw it! You were just in it!’ But I didn’t know what line she meant—I was Lear’s Fool, I wasn’t Kent—and Dr. Harlow was just standing there. Suddenly, she cries out: ‘I’ve got it—Kent says, “Kill thy physician” —that’s the line I was looking for!’ And the bald-headed owl-fucker says to her, ‘Very funny—I suppose you think that’s very funny.’ But she turns on him, she gets right in Dr. Harlow’s face, and she says, ‘Funny? I think you’re a funny little man—that’s what I think, Dr. Harlow.’ And the bald-headed owl-fucker scurried off. Dr. Harlow just ran away! Your friend is marvelous!” Delacorte told me.

Someone shoved him. Delacorte dropped both paper cups—in a doomed effort to regain his balance, to try to stop himself from falling. Delacorte fell in the mess from his rinsing and spitting cups. It was Kittredge who’d shoved him. Kittredge had a towel wrapped around his waist—his hair was wet from the shower. “There’s a team meeting after showers, and you haven’t even showered. I could get laid twice in the time it takes to wait for you, Delacorte,” Kittredge told him.

Delacorte got to his feet and ran down the enclosed cement catwalk to the new gym, where the showers were.

Tom Atkins was attempting to make himself invisible; he was afraid that Kittredge would shove him next.

“How did you not know she was a man, Nymph?” Kittredge suddenly asked me. “Did you overlook her Adam’s apple, did you not notice how big she is? Except her tits. Jesus! How could you not know she was a man?”

“Maybe I did know,” I said to him. (It just came out, as the truth only occasionally will.)

“Jesus, Nymph,” Kittredge said. He was starting to shiver; there was a draft of cold air from the unheated catwalk that led to the bigger, newer gym, and Kittredge was wearing just a towel. It was unusual to see Kittredge appear vulnerable, but he was half naked and shivering from the cold. Tom Atkins was not a brave boy, but even Atkins must have sensed Kittredge’s vulnerability—even Atkins could summon a moment of fearlessness.

“How did you not know she was a wrestler ?” Atkins asked him. Kittredge took a step toward him, and Atkins—again fearful—stumbled backward, almost falling. “Did you see her shoulders, her neck, her hands ?” Atkins cried to Kittredge.