And just so’s you know, I’m telling you straight, it wasn’t like I didn’t ask Blue to come along. Damn it all, he knew everybody wanted him to be there. Wasn’t his fault that goddamned referee probably has a whistle up his butt to match the one in his mouth. It was a bullshit call. I just hope Blue can see it that way tomorrow. One bullshit call isn’t worth throwing a whole night away.

I guess it’s just because I hate feelin’ guilty about the look he had on his face earlier, when all twelve of us—Harting and Yula had plans, and I can tell you Yula’s are probably shaping up to be one helluvalot more interesting than Harting’s—all twelve met before coming to the bar tonight, outside that hotel we got ourselves settled into. We’d just come back from the game, y’see, and the overall feeling was that everybody was just about ready to get to the business of becoming downright pissed tonight, and we were gettin’ out of the cars and all, and it was dark and everything, and it felt like one of those movies where the focus isn’t all that hot and everything’s dark and fuzzy and there’s only that one light source coming from the hotel, but you got to walk through the trees in between the parking lot to get to those lights so the light’s all cut up and shit by the branches and- oh hell, I’m rambling. Anyways, point is, Blue had this look on his face, watching Harting going towards the hotel, leaving us all behind to read one of his goddamned books, and just as we were making arragements about who was the best drunk driver out of all of us and the Colonel was in the middle of tryin’ to figure out a way to get Harting to come pick us all up after the bar closed, when Chanteuil looked over at Blue and yelled, “Hey, are you coming with us?” And Blue looked back at us, and shook his head, and while I couldn’t make out his features too well, what with him being black and all, and with it being night and all too, I knew he was in hurtin’ shape.
But I didn’t say squat, just watched him go through into the trees, and I didn’t see him appear on the other side, kinda like he went into the shadows and disappeared, I swear that’s exactly what it was like, y’know? Just up and vanished, and then there was nothing but the orange light of the hotel and the trees and the cars all shadowed over and... and Jeezus there I go again. Heh heh. Anyways, Blue went to sleep.

“That’s what happened. I don’t know why it’s weighin’ on me so much but it is. Chrissake, kid’s grown up too fast, if you ask me. I used to coach him in high school, y’see. It was me who actually convinced him to come out to the Lions and play with us.”

“Really,” she says. Damn she’s hot. What’s her name? Shawnee Eden? Something like that. Christ, I better slow down on the beers a little, y’think? Heh heh. God, but she’s got white trash written all over her. Tight blue jeans, like neon blue, and no belt, and a pink collared shirt that’s tucked down deep inside, and frizzy blonde hair all eighties style, and runners and white socks, too. And blue eyeliner, to go with the jeans. And lipstick. I can feel my hockey hair growin’ back just looking at her. Sideburns and mustache, too. Absolutely beautiful.

“Yeah really. Why would I lie about a thing like that, miss?”

“I don’t know,” Shawnee says. “I’ve seen your type before.”

“And please tell me what type that is, Shawnee Eden.”

“Braggarts,” Shawnee says, wiping the corner of her mouth like excess lipstick’s showin’ or something. “You athletic types like any chance you can get to brag.”

“Now thas nat true,” Roy says, and I can tell he’s making a little fun of my accent. He’s sitting next to her on the other side of me, on the long table in the bar. It’s pretty crowded, but that’s not the reason he’s leaning in so close—y’know, so she can hear him and all? He’s got a good case of the itching going on in his pants. How do I let him know this girl’s spoken for?But I guess I don’t have to. The look on her face is telling him for me.

“Isn’t it?” she says, looking quickly back to me, and suddenly there’s a touch more appreciation coming my way than there was a few seconds ago. The lighting in this bar isn’t so great—the ceiling is sorta like a dark wooden structure that absorbs most of the light coming from the lamps, which are stuck about seven feet up along the pillars, and there are crossbeams all over the place, although I guess that doesn’t have much to do with the lighting so’s I might as well shut up about that.

“How’s it true?” I ask, leaning in close. That itching look Roy’s got on his face goes away a little, as I lean in. Part of me wants to tell him to go buzz off, and do like what his brother Richard’s doin’ with that Asian sweetheart who came up with the Barbs and cheered them from the sidelines. I kinda want to point that out, but Roy would take one look at Richard and his friendly little covert operation with the enemy—or, at least, the enemy’s cheerleader—and get real sore on me, because Roy’s got some unsettled business with Richard which I probably shouldn’t go into here. Not the right place for it, I guess you could say.

“I was talking with that fellow on your team... is Yula his name?” she asks, bringing up the Molson to her mouth. Man, she’s hot shit. I wonder if she knows it? Must know it. Nobody fills out the look like she does and doesn’t know she’s hot shit.

Someone yells out something. Singing, like. Suddenly everyone—all the guys, anyway—stick their hands up in the air and deep-throatedly reply, Smell my finger! It’s this little thing I won’t go into now because it’s kinda crass, y’see, but anyways, I was supposed to stick my hand up in the air and sing, Smell my finger! the same way you’d sing Alleluia! that first time in that church hymn there. But I didn’t do it, didn’t even think to do it, really, what with this beautiful Shawnee sitting here right in front of me, and Roy leans over and gives me a punch in the arm, because well, he did sing it, and the rule says if you do sing it you got the right to give a shot in the arm to the poor sap near you who forgets, and, well, I’m not going to go into it any more than that because it’s real crass and totally beneath present company.

“I don’t want to know what that was about,” Shawnee says when Roy’s back on his side of the table. Roy laughs and gets up, and goes over to where the rest of the guys and standing around, singin’ their songs. Now, I’m gonna level with you. I’d normally be in there too, singing along with a couple of them, especially that song about that guy who Used to Work in Chicago and Owned a Department Store. Heh heh, I even made up a couple verses myself that the guys never seem to get tired of, I guess with this accent of mine it sounds pretty comical. But I’m not in the mood for that. There’s something about this Shawnee girl. I know you aren’t getting a good picture of this, so I’ll try to start from the beginning or something.

I moved up from Ohio with my mom when I was around twelve or so, and I know’s I looked something fiercely comical to these fellows up here in Hellespont, being a little bit of a hillbilly and all, but I decided being a transplanted soul that I was going to make the most out of my humble background. So I started overdoing the backwater inbred shit and it turned out to be a real hit in high school, and it saved me from being alienated the way a few kids in my classes back when I was in elementary school in Waverly were, y’know, being from out of town and shit. Christ, I’ve overdone this act so long I can’t hardly remember the way I actually used to sound back home, but hey, it’s what’s goin’ on in your insides that counts, hey?

So I come over to Hellespont and I’m living the hick life but playing the local sport—rugby instead of football, because after high school football isn’t quite the thing here that it is back home, in Ohio, with every kid hopin’ to catch a pass in a Buckeyes uniform in a Bowl game or something. I still get to play pickup sometimes during the summer with some guys I played with in high school, on the weekends where Cynthia and me don’t have nothing planned. Heh, some of them call me Tex, never mind that there’re four states in between where I grew up and where Texas is. But ever since I moved in with Cynthia I’d been seein’ less and less of those guys, and working later nights at the company Cynthia got me a job with—Christ, you know, I still can’t say their name proper, what is it, Columbus and Mackenzie Limited, or Columbus Mackenzie Limited? Jeez, I don’t know. Like I care. All’s I do is push paper around the place, anyway.Anyways, that’s pretty much where I’m at now.

“So, like I was saying, I was talking to your friend Yula,” Shawnee says, and I swallow quick. Yula’s a bad guy to give a first impression, unless he’s talking to the sort of girl lookin’ to get laid by a massive European brute. Me, I love Yula, personally. But I can see how Shawnee wouldn’t.

“And what did Yula say?”

“He told me there was going to be a little party back in his room,” she says. She almost laughs, to be honest. There you go, if I can just get you to laugh that beautiful little laugh for me, Ms. Eden. Just one time, please, that would make this whole tease worth it. Then I wouldn’t have to go back to the friggin’ city tomorrow and into Cynthia’s cold bed and not have one little image to remember you by. And hey, you never know, hey? Maybe you see it too, darlin’.Lord Jeezus am I a drunk bastard. Cynthia would have a laugh.

“He told me, he said, I mean, he actually said...” And she’s breakin’ up now, full on. And I like watching her laugh. She’s got a nice laugh. I could tell by the way she was tucking that purse under her waist, or the way she poured the beer out of the bottle and into one of those tall glasses, and the way she sat up til now with a really steady posture, that she was a little uppity. But now, letting loose, that laugh, the way her lip curls back over her teeth, and even shows a little gum, and those earrings of hers bobbing away and those curls in her hair bouncing a little, as she brings up a hand to cover her mouth, and even with those long fingernails of hers—and motherfuck if they aren’t bright red press-ons—she can’t quite hide it, none of it, none of that simple happiness.

“What did he say?” I ask, and lean across, and touch her forearm. Now that’s a gesture she doesn’t quite appreciate. She pulls herself back all of a sudden, and I let my hand up, and bring it back to my side, like I’m tryin’ not to be a threat or nothing, but it’s too late. She’s stopped laughing.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she says, and she’s got this nervous look on her face as she brings the beer up to her mouth.

“What did he say?”

“He said that because all of you guys were planning on coming here tonight, there would be two free doublebeds to play on.” She took another sip.

“He actually said that?” I smile, hoping she’ll laugh again, but she doesn’t.

“Yeah. Say, Evans, it was nice meeting you.” She stands up to leave, and tucks her purse under her. I smile, and wave slightly. She takes her glass of beer. “I have to go talk to some girlfriends of mine.”

“Sure, Shawnee. It was nice meeting you too.”

"Now where’s Blue at?" Roy asks when I come over, tryin’ to sound like me again.

“He didn’t say he’d be comin’ out,” I say, looking over to where Shawnee has gone, another long table, with a bunch of guys there too, some of whom are Wanderers. Damn local buttfucks.

Cynthia’s a number, let me tell you. A real vampire. She’s got this straight black hair and this pale face, and she only barely looks alive after she’s put a little makeup on. At nighttime, she’s this thin, frail woman, and you’d expect she wouldn’t have any more strength in her than a popsicle stick. But she’s a tough one. The apartment we live in’s a real beaut. Designed like the places in those lingerie catalogues, except that it’s also right downtown, and it’s high up. Looking out over the water, so you can see all the lights from the West Side broken up into ripples, and there aren’t even any walls facing the water—everything on that side of the apartment is complete glass sectioning. It’s filled with nice furniture, and the floor rises up two steps in between the bedroom and the living room. The only parts of the apartment that don’t have that crazy view of the water are the kitchen, bathroom, and the closet.I don’t spend much time at the apartment if I can help it.

Anyway, back to Cynthia. She designed the place, and every now and then she touches it up a little to match some new piece of clothing she’s bought herself, or some new look she finds in a magazine, y’see. I don’t think there’s one thing in the apartment that you can point a finger at that isn’t hers. She even makes more than I do, too, so I guess that’s her excuse for havin’ most of the say, so that she doesn’t have to come outright and say she doesn’t trust my taste any. She wears these crazy outfits—all business suits, with pants instead of skirts, and silk underwear. Once, on her birthday last year, I decided to go against my own judgement and got her somethin’ that I never would’ve gotten for someone I liked. It was a black kimono thingamajig I saw when I was walkin’ through Chinatown in Vancouver, and it had this embroidered dragon on the back of it with smaller designs on the front and the sleeves. She friggin’ loves it. Fucked my brains out the night I gave it to her. Everytime she puts it on I think I’m in a ninja movie and she’s going to kill me right ninja-quick.

Looking at Shawnee now, I don’t know what to say. Lord, I would have waited if I knew a flower like her would come along in my life. I would’ve kept on livin’ in that crappy bachelor pad and kept my goddamned hair the way I like it and kept that tattoo and... aw, shit, what the hell am I complaining about? Shawnee’s probably shacking up with some guy here in Waldron and there ain’t a cotton-pickin’ thing I can do about it. Might as well enjoy the rest of the evening, or else go join old mopin’ Blue back at the hotel and listen to the beds shake and the porn music blast from the room above mine.

I tell you, Waldron’s a goddamned place. There isn’t but one hotel in the entire town, and if you thought I was backwards, Jeezus does this place have a surprise in store for you. It seems like everyone brought up here is brought up mean—with the possible exception of Miss Lovely sitting across the way from me—and ready to kick the shit out of you if you look at them twice. The way the played against us today, the way they walk out onto and off the rugby field, shit, even the way they drink their beer. It’s all ugly. Ain’t nobody in the goddamned bar goin’ near the part they’ve claimed for themselves. You got the Barbs and the Lions and even the university kids sitting on this side, and the Waldron hardasses taking up the other side. They even look at the jukebox machine like it’s asking to be vandalized. So hard to believe a flower like Shawnee fits right in to that. Oh, fuck me, if I could just take that one thing back, touching her arm, just that one thing. Man, you never realize until it’s too late how just one thing, one decision, can fuck up everything.

Kyle’s lookin’ restless. Basically, at the table, from my right, you’ve got Kyle, who’s giving some pretty cold looks over in the Wanderers’ direction, and then you got Isaac, and Pops, talking in such a way that you’d think Kyle was in on the conversation, too, and then you got Roy and myself and then the Colonel, and then you got a bit of a space, and I guess if Blue was here he could take that spot, but he isn’t, so that spot’s empty, for the moment, and maybe Richard can take it when he gets back from his little thing he’s got going, and then after that spot you got Warden and Phil, who are looking down in my direction, but past me, where there are a couple of pretty things sitting in a small table by the window, and then you got Griffith and Christopher, who’re sendin’ back a couple of shots right at the moment, and then you got Richard, at the top of the table, talking to that Asian girl across from him.

“Evans!” Roy says to me, and the Colonel turns in my direction, too.

“What?”

“What happened to the girl?” Roy says. I put a hand over my face.

“What girl?” the Colonel asks.

“The girl!” Roy says. “The girl he was just talking to! You should have seen him, man. He was totally styling on this chick, and she was digging it, too. You didn’t fuck it up, did you, Evans?”

I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about this with a couple of drunk bastards.

“Oh, man, you fucked it up!” Roy says, slapping me on the back. “Say it. You fucked it up.”

“Ah, leave him alone, Roy,” the Colonel says, taking a sip of his beer.

“You should get a look at her, Colonel,” Roy says.

“Is she good-looking?” the Colonel asks.

“Is she good-looking?” Roy repeats. “My God, you could grow rice!”

There’s a pause before the Colonel says, “What do you mean by that, exactly?”

I keep my mouth shut, and try to listen to what other people are saying. Warden and Phil look like they’re psyching themselves up to go talk to those two girls across the way, and in the other direction, Pops is teaching Isaac the words to a few of the songs. In other words, I’m on my own.

“Man, forget about it,” Roy says, leaning in close, his beer breath ticklin’ my ear. “They aren’t worth it. Shit and abuse, that’s all they’re good for. Shit and abuse.”

“It’s true,” the Colonel laughs, “you know what they say. Women are the root of all evil.”

“Chicks are burnt,” Roy agrees, with a little punctuated gumption.

At that I have to laugh. I look down past Roy towards Isaac and Pops.

"With that great big... kidney wiper?” Isaac asks musically.

“That’s right,” Pops says, before continuing, “…and his balls the size of three, and a yard and a half of foreskin, and then you wait for the crowd to go, foreskin, foreskin, foreskin, and then you say, hanging down below his knees, and then the crowd says, baddum-bum-bum, baddum-bum-bum.”

As Isaac tries to get the chorus right, I look past him to Kyle. Kyle’s got an ugly look on his face. His mouth is formin’ the words “sons-of-bitches”, I think.

“What’s with Kyle?” I ask the Colonel.

The Colonel shrugs, and says, “I think it has to do with that game today.”

“Ah, Christ, is that all?” I say.

“Jesus, it’s only a fucking game. We’ll get our chance for payback tomorrow.”

“Hey, I’m only guessing,” the Colonel says. “Ask him if you really want to know.”

“-with the girl next door!” someone yells.

"Smell my fingers," we all yell, lifting our hands in the air. The Waldron guys look at us like we’re stupid. I find their condescension amusing, seein’ as how it’s coming from a bunch of sheep-fucking bastards like them. I look back at Kyle. He’s asking for a waitress.

“Oh shit, what’s he up to now,” I say, as I see Kyle pointing out the Wanderers’ table. The waitress looks at him inquisitively, and he smiles, and gives her a twenty, and a napkin that looks like he’s scribbled on it.

“I dunno,” Roy mumbles after downing the last of his beer. “Who’s supposed to be getting this round?”

“You are, you bastard,” the Colonel says.

“Oops,” Roy says.

I look over at the Wanderers’ table. I see Shawnee get up and walk over to the bathroom with two of her friends. One of them is lookin’ my way. I turn quickly in Phil’s and Warden’s direction. They’re getting up. Just behind them, Griffith and Christopher are toasting with their shotglasses in hand, eight empties in front of them. Richard’s ignorin’ all of us. The girl he’s talking to is blushing hard. Lucky guy.

Cynthia’s never blushed around me. Actually, that’s not true. She blushed this one time, the night when me and the team had gone to the Karaoke club at some motel for the Colonel’s birthday party. We’d all done our Elvis impersonations and our hits from the eighties and our country music, when I got this idea that I wanted to do a song for Cynthia. She’d been glued next to me the whole night, and I had this feeling that when I got home she wasn’t ever going to let herself come along to one of these things again, and so I figured I might as well go for broke. I went up and sang Unchained Melody. She blushed so hard that even with the bright lights on me I could still see it from where I stood onstage. It could’ve been worse—I mean, I could’ve outright dedicated it to her, but I didn’t, but I guess she took it that way anyway. When we got home, she told me that she’d let me go by myself next time, which was funny, because it wasn’t like she forced me to take her along.

Shawnee disappears into the bathroom, and her two friends follow in right behind her. I bet Shawnee could do a wicked good Elvis. Maybe a duet, like I Got You Babe. Heh, I bet she’d be fantastic.

The waitress Kyle talked to is up at the bar. She’s ordering something in one of them girly glasses, I think a Margarita or something. I look over at Kyle, who’s twitching his nose and smiling excitedly. Warden and Phil are over talking to those girls now, and they seem like they don’t mind. God, is it just me who can’t get anything going tonight?

“One black one, one white one, and one with a little shyte on, and one with a fairy light on, to show us the way?” Isaac sings.

“No, no,” Pops shakes his head. “Now, listen carefully this time.”

I look back at the Colonel. “Something’s gonna happen,” I say. “Kyle’s gone and done something.”

“Shit,” the Colonel says, and immediately he looks as sober as he did when he first walked into the bar. Roy’s swayin’, though, and when the Colonel stands up, Roy squints and says, “Why’s everyone leaving?”

“Nobody’s leavin’,” I say, and I get up and follow the Colonel over to Kyle’s end of the table. Isaac and Pops stop with the song learning, and look at us.

“What?” Isaac asks.

“That’s what I want to ask Kyle,” the Colonel says.

Kyle stops his grinning and looks up at us. “What?” he asks.

“That’s what you’re going to tell me,” the Colonel says.

Kyle doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then he brings a finger to the side of his nose and giggles. I look back at the Wanderer’s table. The waitress is handing the drink over to the massive second-row, saying something, and then she hands over the napkin. As he reads it, she’s saying something to the guys around him, and she points in our direction.

“Oh...” I say. The second-row stands up and throws the girly drink to the ground. Three of his friends stand up, and look over at us. Then they throw back their chairs and start comin’ towards us. “...shit,” I say.

By the time Shawnee comes back out, I’ve got my nose broken.

The other two teams mostly stay out of it—except when that girl Richard’s talking to gets shoved, and one of the Barbarians, an Indian-lookin’ kid, jumps in and joins Richard in pummeling the shit out of the Wanderer who did it. For a long while I have this one guy in a headlock, but I’m not hittin’ him or anything, just trying to do my bit and take my guy out, and keep my face from getting any more wrecked than it already is. After spending the first few minutes trying to split everyone up, the Colonel’s whaling on that second-row who Kyle sent the drink and message to. Before long half of us are outside making each other eat dirt. By the time the cops show up, the bar staff and the other teams have gone and forced everyone who’s fighting to do it outside.

As the red and blue light flashes into the Waldron nighttime, the brawl slowly gets split up, and the Wanderers’ players take off in groups to go home. As the Colonel puts up with a little bit of a talkin’ to by the police officer in charge, our boys look after each other. I’m sitting on the ground, pinching my nose, which hasn’t stopped bleeding.

“Hurt?” Roy asks.

“What do you think?” I say back.

“You’re all right,” Roy says, leaving me to join his brother, who is talking to the Barbarians player who helped him inside. All in all, we’re gonna be in sorry shape tomorrow. Phil’s ripped off part of his T-shirt and has it wrapped around his fist, and he’s talking with Warden, who’s all right, and those two girls they were hitting on before. Isaac is soaking his fist in a pitcher of ice water. Griffith and Thomas mostly stayed out of it, and they’re running around looking for things people might need. Christopher’s sittin’ with a glass of cola resting against his cheek. Pops’s face is bloody, but he isn’t bothering to take care of himself. Kyle’s shirt was ripped nearly clean off during the fight, and there’re scratch marks all over his chest, but from the look on his face, the toothy smile and the shining eyes, you’d think he was ready for another go.

The kids on the university team are staying mostly to themselves, but the Barbarians are walking around outside, checking up on us. I’m sitting off to myself, not wanting anyone to make a fuss on me. It’s gonna be embarassing enough as it is dealing with the look Cynthia’s gonna give me when she sees my nose.

My attention’s caught by an approaching figure, wearing tight jeans and sporting some big hair. With the lights, I can’t get a good look at her face. “Shawnee?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “Are you alright?”

“Me?” I laugh, “Couldn’t be better.”

I look over at Pops, who’s kneeling in front of Isaac and showing the proper way to punch. “You have to twist right on impact,” he’s saying, and Isaac’s trying to do it with his free hand.

“Are you going to be able to play tomorrow?” she asks.

“I think so,” I say, “I don’t see why not.”

She kneels in front of me, and looks at the wad of toilet paper I’m holding. It’s soaked red straight through, and it’s dripping. Here, she says, and reaches into her purse. She pulls a tampon package and unwraps it.

“You’ve done this before,” I say.

“A couple of times,” she says.

I get up and walk to the garbage can, which is further away from the rest of the boys. She comes with me, but she’s stand-offish. As I chuck the toilet paper away, and plug the tampon into my nose, I look back at the crowd. From the look of it, the Colonel’s handling the cops pretty well. Two of the policemen have already returned to their one car, and are pulling out. Isaac, Pops, Thomas, Griffith and Roy are standing in a group, and after a couple of seconds they turn and start walking towards me.

We’re heading back to the hotel, “Evans,” Isaac says. “Are you coming?”

“Nah, go ahead,” I say, waving them off. Roy gives me a wink that everybody and his dead uncle could see, and they walk past me, down the dark road that looks like it’s going off into nowhere. Richard, Phil, and Warden, all of whom have female company, walk back into the bar. The other police officers are returning to their vehicles, and the Colonel nods goodbye, before he goes over to Kyle and says something, and they both go inside.

“Where are your friends?” I ask Shawnee.

“Most of them took off with their boys,” she says, and I nod.

“You feel like goin’ for a walk?” I ask.

“I better not,” she says, “I gotta be here in ten minutes.”

“You have someone, don’t you?” I say. She nods.

We walk over to the front steps and sit down. After the sound of the police cars has died away, the country night is actually a lot noisier than I’d expect—what with the crickets and all. We don’t say much. I can barely hear her breathing.

“I saw you guys play today,” she says suddenly. “You’re pretty good.”

“Yeah, we’re alright,” I say.

“Yeah, but you, you’re pretty good too,” she says. “I asked that Yula fellow who were the best players on your team, and he said you were one of them. I could see he was right.”

“Oh,” I say, “Thanks, darlin’”

She chuckles at that. “You won’t be able to sweet-talk me with that sexy voice of yours,” she says.

“Ah hell,” I say, “but it’s worth a shot.”

She doesn’t say anything else for a while as we listen to the crickets. “You’re a coach, too,” she says finally.

“Yeah,” I say, and I start tellin’ her about how I started with coaching, how basically I was playing with the Lions back in the good old days when Vladi and Cat and Timson were there, and how at one point we were playin’ poker one night after practice in my third year, and I’d run out of money, and it was me, the Colonel, and Pops, and Isaac, and Vladi, and coach had already decided that it would be a good idea if one of us would start coaching a high school team, for recruiting and shit. I continue, telling Shawnee that because we didn’t have any money, the Colonel thought it’d be funny if instead we bet on who would have to go coach that high school team, and none of us wanted to, but one of us had to, because there wasn’t anybody else on the Lions near qualified enough, so we did it, and I lost on two pairs, if you can believe that. So I went to East Hellespont High and started coaching, and I’d been doin’ it for a couple of years when I finally got to see this one kid play, Blue, this black kid who made everyone on the field look silly—including himself a couple of times, back when he didn’t know all the rules. I go on and tell Shawnee that even after I’d gotten that job of mine pushing paper at that company whose name I never get straight, I made sure I’d still be able to coach, because it turned out to be one of the best jobs I’d ever had, even if it paid nothing, because I got to pretend like I knew something, and before long it got to be that I was pretending right.

Shawnee listens the whole time, sayin’ nothing. After I’m done, she doesn’t say anythin’ then either, until finally, she says, “You haven’t mentioned anything about Cynthia.”

I cough. “My, my” I say, “aren’t you the one with the questions, aren’t you?”

She smiles. I can’t believe that son of a bitch Yula told her that. “Ah well, I suppose it’s for the best, anyway.”

“What’s she like?” she asks.

“Nothin’ like me,” I say.

“Oh,” she says.

“What’s he like?” I ask.

“Nothing like me,” she says.

“I see,” I say.

We don’t say anything else for a little while, before I get up and mumble, “Well, I’d probably better be going. Your man’s due back pretty soon.”

“Yeah,” she says.

“Goodbye,” I say.

She nods goodbye, her eyes down around my feet. As I’m walking away, towards where the hotel is—south, which, darn it all, is back towards where Hellespont is too—I have to squint to see my way, and it doesn’t really help much, because there’s very little moon, and everything a mass of shadow extendin’ either towards me or across me. I look back, and I think of sayin’ something witty, like, Hey Shawnee Eden, it’s fun to pretend a little, isn’t it? But instead I just wave.

“Hey Evans Ferguson!” she calls out.

My heart stops.

“What?” I say back, hoping...

I have to wait for a response.

“Nuthin’,” she finally says, in my accent.

I wave, turn around, and start my blind ramble back to the hotel again, with the soaked tampon over my nose and feeling like a bleedin’ idiot.

Ha, bleedin’ idiot, that’s a good one.