Chris Bachelder - The Throwback Special

The woman did not look up at Trent as he neared the fountain. “An old traveler’s trick,” she said, scrubbing.

Trent nodded, though he didn’t understand.

“They put so much bleach in,” she said.

Trent looked around. He could see, through the automatic doors, a luggage cart gleaming in the rain. At the front desk, a young clerk stared at a monitor. He paid no attention to Trent or to the woman.

“He doesn’t care?” Trent asked, pointing at the desk clerk.

“He doesn’t see,” she said.

Trent knelt beside the woman, exposing the dirty soles of his feet to security cameras. He looked up at the young clerk, but he was no longer visible behind the desk and monitor. With great effort he resisted looking at the enormous clock, as he did not want a way to name the moment. He did not know if it was early or late. The television in the lobby was, remarkably, off.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The fountain is for everyone,” she said. Her tone was inaccessible to Trent. The sentence was a locked pine box, simple and pretty. She looked at Trent for the first time. She smiled, deepening the mystery. As she turned back to her work, Trent realized for the first time that he was still wearing his nasal strip, that his nostrils were still clogged with red bits of toilet paper.

“Help yourself,” she said, indicating her toothbrush and washcloths.

Trent looked into the fountain. All of the dirty coins were gone. What would he wish for with one wish? He watched the business traveler at work beside him. The muscles of her forearm fluttered as she scrubbed. Wispy strands of hair pulled out of her ponytail, dropped like a curtain in front of her face. Her necklace, some pendant or charm on a silver chain, dangled just above the water. She was meticulous, devout in her attention. If she noticed the large bloodstain on Trent’s garment, she made no indication. Trent dipped the Mark May jersey into the water of the fountain. Kneeling, silent, he tamped, brushed, and blotted the stain, imitating his fellow pilgrim. They worked together, apart. The water gurgled and splashed, cold drops leaped to touch his cheeks and neck. Gradually, the blood swam in wavy lines away from the jersey, vanishing in the clear pool.

IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO OVERSTATE THE men’s enthusiasm for continental breakfast.To be clear, their zeal had little or nothing to do with this particular hotel’s version of the standard spread. As petulant online reviewers made very clear, the hotel’s breakfast was not in any way exceptional or distinctive. It was a completely average continental breakfast, and this was why the men loved it. The breakfast involved no surprises and no risks. It involved no deliberation and no ordering, no indecision or regret. With plastic tongs they heaped large quantities of known sweet rations onto their Styrofoam plates. Everything tasted like it looked. There were no interesting spices or herbs, no local flavors, no subtle variations on classics. It was a bounty of carbohydrates, and the items never ran out. There was always more, and it was always free. Continental breakfast made them feel — made many of them feel — as if they were getting away with something. And at the same time they felt it was a form of recognition, and at the same time they felt it was but a tiny portion of what they were owed. And so it was that the long table of processed food and crop-dusted fruit was for the men simultaneously gift, reward, and restitution. Their appetites were severe.

Wearing their jerseys, the men arrived in the dining area early, but they discovered that the buffet had been set upon by dozens of employees of Prestige Vista Solutions. The men lurked at the boundaries of the dining area, anxious about resources. They watched the employees scoop and tong and toast. The female employees decimated the fruit. The male employees leaned close to inspect the plates of pastries, their ties grazing the glaze. There was good-natured joking about PowerPoint, about the taking of minutes. Those in line for the waffle maker shared wedding photos, baby photos, house photos, injury photos. Someone had adopted three more dogs. Everyone was eager to talk to Jim — Cyber Jim, not Khakis Jim — about their computer problems. When the employees of Prestige Vista Solutions had filled their plates and cups, they filed out of the dining area, and disappeared into the conference room like a line of ants. The men in their jerseys watched, and when they turned back to the continental banquet, the serving platters had been replenished, the yogurt pyramids reconstructed. They descended on the simple sugars, ravenous but with a clear and disheartening sense that there was no real connection between breakfast and merit.

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FAT MICHAEL stirred gray powder into each of the three plastic cups in front of him. The powder did not dissolve. In wet, floating clumps it spun inside the rims of the cups, suggesting, somehow, the passage of time. Fat Michael drank all of the cups rapidly, one after another, his eyes pinched shut. He did not look good. He looked incredible, but he did not look good. Also, he was itchy, and he raked his legs with his fingernails. Myron and Tommy sat across from Fat Michael, eating silently. It was the one time during the year they used flavored coffee creamer. Their presence at the table somehow made Fat Michael seem more alone than he would have seemed if he had actually been alone.

“This muffin is all right,” Myron said in a low voice. Tommy’s face looked weird because he was doing exercises to strengthen his pelvic floor.

A hotel employee named Nick walked into the dining area wearing Chad’s shoes. The shoes were too small, and very wet, but he liked them. They made him feel like a lucky person, though he knew himself to be an unlucky person. He wrapped a bagel in a napkin, filled a cup with orange juice. He remembered the time when Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s leg on Monday Night Football . He remembered exactly where he was, and what he was doing. He clearly remembered Howard Cosell’s anguished reaction, though he remembered it incorrectly because Cosell’s last season on Monday Night Football had been 1983. He moved toward the men in the jerseys. He had a burden he was eager to set down.

From across the room Charles saw Nick approaching the defensive backs’ breakfast table with an expression of fullness, and he stood quickly, placing his napkin on the table. “Excuse me, guys,” he said. He walked through the dining area, into the lobby. For a moment he stood before the fountain, which was once again dry. Each year in this hotel lobby he was forced to recall that as a child he had stolen quarters from a mall fountain (soaking the cuffs of his sweatshirt) so that he could purchase, in the filthy bathroom of a gas station near his house, an erotic puzzle entitled Boobs Galore. The small puzzle box contained nine cardboard squares that could be arranged, on a floor behind a locked bedroom door, to form a picture of a sad, shirtless woman with enormous breasts. Charles remembered that the woman, when reconstituted, was sitting on what he now knew to be a Windsor chair, and that any adolescent lust he could gin up at the sight of her demoralizingly large breasts was almost immediately dowsed by the way she looked back at Charles. The puzzle piece with her face (top row, middle column) countervailed all of the other eight pieces. That face was more nude by far than her body. The look on her face implicated Charles. It suggested that she was forced to share Charles’s shame and disappointment, and she was resentful. Or perhaps Charles was forced to share her shame and disappointment, and he was resentful. In either case, Charles and this nine-piece shirtless woman in a Windsor chair had been trapped together in a sticky web of shame, disappointment, and resentment. Charles had stolen coins for this experience. In his backyard he had dug a small hole. He had put the puzzle in the hole, and then lit it with a long wooden match. It burned in blues and greens.