He still dreamed about Blue, from time to time.

This time, he was out on the CCU basketball court, warming up before a game. He was in his tear-offs but they were actually a different colour than he was used to—Central Columbia’s colours were a light blue with black stripes, but this time he was in full red—and his teammates didn’t look like anybody he’d ever seen before, and the arena had seating in it, and the fans pouring in were holding small banners and those foam fingers and streamers and horns, and the lighting of the place wasn’t like Central Columbia at all, or, at least, the way he remembered it, which was a dull-green gym which made it look like something out of a high school, not like where the top Division 1 schools play, where every picture of a player taking flight has this black backdrop to it, as if they’re playing in a deep cavern instead of CCU’s swimming pool aesthetic. But in this dream that dull green was gone, and he was playing in a big-time gym in a big-time game—who were the opponents? Duke? (and instantly they were Duke)—and he was warming up, and there was a television crew, but no sideline reporting, which was alright because this was a dream and you couldn’t expect everything to work out properly.

Blue was there. You don’t belong here, he was saying.

And Roy knew this to be true. Arenas like these were where his brother played now, both at home and on the road, the Big Ten teams, the Pac Ten teams... while Roy’s team rarely left the state. It was time for warm-ups. Roy dribbled the ball for a little bit, and took a shot. It missed, and he looked back at Blue.

Follow me out of here, Blue said. There’s a game on and we need you.

Roy took a pass from another player who only two seconds ago was a Latin-American centre but had somehow in the interim been transformed into a blonde shooting guard with a bad case of acne and a slight slumping posture. Shoot, that player said. You’d better make it, too. Montross is going to eat us up down low if we can’t make our outside shots.

Eric Montross played for North Carolina, Roy wanted to say, not Duke, but there he was on the other side of the court, taking a alley-oop pass and throwing it down, seemingly uninterested in the fact that he was playing for the wrong college team several years after he’d already been drafted to the pros. He looked over and smiled, that great big white country-boy smile. He could have been from Waldron.

Strangely, Blue was paying no attention. "You’ve got your cleats on," he said, and he turned and walked through the gaps in the stands (they were completely full now, and the organ was playing) towards the exit, a double-door exit that should have led straight to a parking lot, main road, or some other marker of heavy big-time college infrastructure, but instead it was a field, which wasn’t the way Roy remembered CCU’s arena complex, but he paid it little attention as he walked across the hardwood floor with his cleats making a metal-on-wood clockclocking sound—the janitors wouldn’t like that—and he tore off his tear-offs and saw that he was in fact, wearing his rugby shorts too, but he didn’t have his mouth guard or his jersey so he asked Blue (who was far up ahead now) if there was an extra jersey, and Blue produced one from nowhere and threw it his way, and he put it on, and it was a Blue and Red checkered jersey (nothing like he’d ever seen before), and everyone on Blue’s team was wearing something a little different in their jerseys, and the other team was all dressed in black, and then there was the Latin-American centre again, only this time he was definitely the black team’s second-row (on account of his being seven feet tall and too oddly-shaped to play anywhere else), and when they got there a scrum had already been set up, and Blue was walking over to take the ball from within the eight-man’s feet, and Roy was in place to catch it, and Blue picked it up and tossed it to Roy, who took the pass on the run, and then passed it back again to Blue who was looping around behind him, and Roy kept running for a bit because his legs felt weird and heavy, and he wasn’t sure how helpful he was going to be if this was going to be one of the usual dream-games where he just couldn’t move with any speed at all, and he looked back to see what play was developing with Blue and the backs, but they were all gone.

Beyond the pitch was the CCU arena again, locked in the barren stranglehold of a CCU campus (still not looking all that familiar, but damned if it wasn’t CCU, because there was the Whiten Music Hall where he played the trombone for the orchestra and there was the Engineering Faculty club complete with its own golf course) that resembled an army site more than university grounds, but the doors were open and he could vaguely see inside that something was going on with the game he’d been warming up for.

He walked back, and before he knew it he was over the field and in the door and sitting in the front row of the stands as Richard took a pass from one of the players in red, made a quick move on the player that used to be Eric Montross but was now Tim Duncan (not of Duke either, formerly of Wake Forest), but it didn’t make a difference as the move threw Tim off as if he had been as slow-footed as a dead rock, and Richard took his one step, lept into the air, and dunked the ball over him.

The dream came back to him in his brother’s arena, including the embarrassing realization that neither did he play the trombone nor did the Engineering faculty club has a golf course, as vivid as both memories felt. But he put it in the back of his mind because there was a game going on, and Shiela was next to him, and they were both excitedly clapping, lifting themselves up on their tiptoes to get a better view, through the waving fingers of the fans, of the hardwood floor where his brother had gone on a run.

It had been two baskets in the last three possessions when it started, and then it was a three-pointer as the shot-clock’s buzzer went off, over the outstretched hands of the other team’s shooting guard—a sleek black guy who seemed at least four inches taller and two steps faster than Richard. Then it was a no-look pass from Richard to his teammate, who hit another three-pointer to cut the visiting team’s lead to six, with nearly five minutes (“Lots of basketball”, Richard would have said) left to play. Then it was Richard stripping the ball from the centre, taking the ball the whole way down the court, and getting fouled on a lay-up that went in, followed by a perfect foul shot. “He’s amazing!” Shiela yelled after the shot, looking over at Roy. “He’s even better than he was in High School!”

Roy clapped along with the crowd. Shiela was right, in his estimation. He’d become a complete player, someone with Europe in his future, and maybe a shot at the NBA, who could tell for sure the way things were going? He’d definitely made an impact here today, and this game was getting some television coverage, and the shooting guard he was taking to school out there had already declared that he was coming out early, although he might have wanted to consider that again after what Smedley was doing to him—Smedley, a six-foot one shooting guard who’d dunked three times in his life and only once on a regulation basket; Smedley, a non-scholarship player in his first year, an unknown from Canada, which is hardly a basketball country; Smedley, a white kid (you knew that had to hurt, somewhere); Smedley, an unknown whom you never would have guessed could have made the transition from a nowhere high school to college ball as gracefully as he’d done, although it didn’t really surprise Roy all that much; Smedley who’d just stolen the inbounds pass, tossed it up in the air vaguely towards the basket, where it was caught by his team’s candidate for the draft’s first round (Maliq Something), although probably not for a couple of years yet, and dunked with a flourish and a yell, before the other team called a time-out, and the arena went several decibels beyond insanity for the play of Roy’s twin brother Richard.

“I think I’m still in love with him, Roy,” Shiela said, later that smester as they sat under a tree near the CCU library. Roy looked up. Things with Shiela hadn’t gone on so long that he was starting to feel attached to her, and certainly this wasn’t the first time that this had happened, but the situation demanded a wry smile and an intense downwards glance.

“And when did you figure this out?” Roy said to the grass. He was amazed that it had grown so green already. Winter in the Midwest had been brutal enough—Hellespont never saw snow—but spring here was magnificent. The trees were already blooming, and the April overcast he’d grown used to as a kid was a distant memory in the full sky that loomed above the branches in a perfect blue, surrounding, and in fact holding up, the sun. “You knew this back at the game, didn’t you.”

She looked away. He didn’t understand this about women, how a man showing off his skill to the delight of those around him could arouse feelings in someone. It didn’t make sense on either end. Was she so shallow that a slender, muscular frame with a good jump-shot constituted ideal boyfriend material? And, if in fact those qualifications did fit, was she so arrogant that she thought she could pluck him away for herself? There was history here, with those two, and he knew it, but that thought was left behind as he thought of other girls he had known who were the same way about other guys doing other things.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I phoned him while we were there, while you were out getting the food.” Aha, the betrayal, he thought laughingly. He chose not to conceal it, it would make him seem even more angry. It was his role, to be angry at the girl who’d come to him after Richard was through with her, only to lose her back to his brother later on, when the subjectivity and feeling, having disguised itself in the denying cloak of reason, returned like Spring. He looked up and away at the trees, feigning a search for escape from this web of emotional torture she was spinning on him. It certainly was a nice day, he realized. The ground will probably be hard enough to play rugby sometime soon.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, her tone pleading. “Please tell me.”

“What do you think I’m thinking?” he answered. The perfect response, of course. The right button. She’d been letting herself be eaten up by the guilt of this, the guilt of not truly feeling bad that she wanted someone other than her boyfriend. “What did you two talk about while I was gone?” Roy asked. A knife in the gut. He could yell at her at this point and he’d be justified, but he didn’t really feel the desire. Shiela had always reminded him of his brother, simply by being herself around him, and there was only so far that your heart could wander into that. “Old times?”

“A little,” she said. “I think he wants to see me, too.”

Oh, he lifted his eyebrows, this really is arrogance. “Well, he really played a great game that day,” Roy said as he stood up, grabbing his bag and coat, and walking off. It had practically been scripted this way. How could he fight it?

Lem grabbed the rebound and passed it out to Roy, who’d taken a spot five feet over from where he was before. He planted his feet, took the shot, and released within a heartbeat. Swish. Lem caught the ball before it bounced, and sent it out again, this time to another spot five feet over more that Roy had jumped to. Again he planted his feet, took the shot, and released. Swish. Lem caught it again before the bounce.

“So it’s over,” Lem said.

“Yup,” answered Roy. Up and away. Swish. Take two steps to the right.

“You sound terrible,” Lem smirked. He caught the ball and sent it out.

“I don’t know,” Roy said. Plant. Up and away. Swish. “It’s hard to get all choked up about her. I knew it was a bad situation from the beginning.”

“Really,” Lem said, pausing before sending the ball out. Roy focused in on his friend, waiting for the ball. The glare of the gym lights made it difficult to see something real, the Zen of the hand, ball and net having blocked out everything else from his vision. “You know, I think you really ought to talk to somebody about this. You’re starting to sound like you believe your own press.”

Roy motioned for the ball, and Lem sent it out. Roy caught it, planted his feet, and in a slower motion took the jump shot. Clang. “Thanks, Lem,” he said, as his friend chased down the pass. “You’ve fucked up my concentration.”

“I’m serious,” Lem said, as he grabbed the ball before it bounced off the court. “Think about it. You’ve just broken up with a girl you’ve been seeing for four months, and you couldn’t care less. What’s going on?”

“It’s a thing,” Roy said, wiping his face with his shirt. “A doomed alienation.”

“A what?” Lem asked, holding the ball up to his chest with a questioning gesture. Roy shook his head, and Lem relaxed, leaning the ball against his hip with one arm as he wiped his brow with the other. “You’ve got to explain that to me.”

“Do you remember Alice?” Roy asked, walking over to the water bottles. He was still having trouble focussing in on things, and he had to close his eyes for a moment to centre his bearings. “From first year? Intro?”

“No,” Lem said.

“You couldn’t shut up about her and her goddamned ponytail,” Roy said. “You were determined to ask her out. You never did.”

“Oh Alice,” Lem said. “Thanks for the memory.”

“Ran into a mutual friend earlier this year, near the library,” Roy said, sitting down against the gym wall with his unopened water bottle. “Alice got married shortly after that class. You missed your chance. It was the keener who kept asking about Hegel before we could get to Hegel. Remember?”

“That guy?” Lem said. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Roy said. “Don’t worry about it, though. She’s actually his type. They were a great couple, my friend was saying.” He paused, opened the water bottle, and took a long sip. With the corner of his shorts, he wiped up the stray droplets that hit the floor. “She got pregnant midway through second year. My friend said she’d never seen Alice so happy. I remember it, but I didn’t know there was a pregnancy going on. They walked everywhere together, bragged about the baby to their friends, had a name. Samantha if it was a girl, Roger-” Roy stopped again, staring up at the lights. He took another drink before continuing. “Roger if it was a boy. There were annoyingly happy, annoyingly in love, my friend was saying. It got so that it was hard to deal with all that joy, my friend said.”

Lem came over to get himself a drink, diverted quickly by the temptations of an uncontested layup when he passed by the basket. The sound of the ball hitting the floor echoed throughout the gym, before Lem caught it and continued the saunter over. Roy looked up at the ceiling, and closed his eyes in fatigue. “She went into labour in third year, and my friend said she’d had this look of excitement on her face even with all the pain. It was going to be a natural childbirth, done the right way. The guy was by her side the whole time, apparently.” Lem placed his back against the wall and slid himself down into a seating position next to Roy, before reaching into his own bag for a water bottle. “There’s a reason you wouldn’t have known that she was a wife or anything. The kid didn’t survive the delivery. Complications with the heart or something, I don’t know. It was all vague. She would have been a girl.”

“Jesus, that’s rough,” Lem said, before taking a drink.

“But that’s not the end of it,” Roy said. “The thing is, she’s pregnant again. And my friend was saying that the two of them are so cautious now. There isn’t any of that joy. He helps her into and out of every seat, and there’s a weight to it. Regular visits to the doctors, and then some. Totally unnecessary, my friend was saying.” He took another drink. “They’re scared. They can’t be happy because they’re so scared.”

Lem raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything, instead staring ahead to the empty bleachers.

“And so I got to wondering what it would be like for that second kid, to be born into a world not of happiness and joy, but of relief.” Roy stood up slowly. “The ghost of that first kid is always going to be there, somehow, if not in her own form, then in the way the parents treat this one. The new kid’ll be alienated from where he or she could have been, or should have been. No joy. Just a doomed alienation.”

“Christ,” Lem said, after a long sip. “Is that what you’re saying you’ve got going?”

“I don’t know,” Roy said, somewhat embarassed that it had come back to him. He had gotten used to Richard’s two-minute head start a long time ago, he had recognized it as being just that midway through High School, and was no longer surprised by anything. He caught himself from then on, trying not to look at Richard as another version of himself only two minutes quicker. Two minutes, but it could have been two years. Two lifetimes, even. “Maybe. Alice is just an extreme example of it. Women are drawn to Richard—or in this case, drawn back to him. It’s almost a fact of life.” Roy stood up, taking the ball away from Lem to get back to practicing his catch-and-release. “Could be worse, though. I’d hate to have all the distractions of girls and expectations and shit.” He smiled. “Gives me a chance to go my own way at my own pace, not one that’s determined for me, you know?”

“How does Richard handle it?” Lem said. Roy caught a sharpness in the comment that wasn’t intended. Lem was like that, cruelly and ignorantly blunt sometimes. It made for a good friend most of the time.

Roy started to dribble, and he thought about his brother, a carbon-copy of himself, playing under Division 1 lights, with swooning cheerleaders and demanding fans. How does Richard handle it? he thought.
He handles it just fine...

That summer Roy went back to Hellespont to be with his family. His father was excited to see him, but his mother and Richard were talking excitedly about the scouts from Australia. “It’s not the pros, mom, not really,” Richard was saying one time, in a permutation of their usual back-and-forth debates over his future. “But it’s a wonderful opportunity, Richard,” their mother would answer. “Australia is a beautiful place.”

His father, who was the only brunette in the family, would usually take Roy, the other son, outside and they would throw the rugby ball back and forth. They’d talk about the provincial team and the national team. His father would complement his son’s hands, practiced and precise, so fluid now you couldn’t notice the mechanical motions he’d once had. “It’s the basketball,” his father would say. “It’s improved your rugby. Sometimes you need that, to get outside of something so you can return to it with a new approach.”

Roy, who was taking philosophy at CCU, accepted the roughly-formed aphorisms for what they were worth—a sympathetic dad who saw a mother loving one son more than the other. Oh, the melodrama.

When they were all asleep one night, Roy stayed up and watched the videotape they’d made of his brother. There was a voice-over and resonant music, slightly orchestral, and the voice that could have made soup ingredients sound like spoken music, and the picture was of his brother, laying up in practice, going behind the backboard, jogging up along the other side, joining the rebounding line, moving up behind the kid making his own layup, catching the ball, throwing it up to the person at the front of that line, jogging around, all of this effortlessly, calmly, happily even, the voice talking about this kid from nowhere, Hellespont, up in British Columbia, Canada, growing up not far from where that other come-from-nowhere Steve Nash grew up, playing with the Dallas Mavericks now, another white kid done good, another “product of hard work”, another “team player”, because oh, Richard Smedley’s team needs more team players, not only on the court, but off the court as well, which is where you, the alumni, come in, but we’ll get to that later...

...because for now let’s go watch Richard Smedley in that game, Richard (white kid done good) in that game against the nationally-ranked team, that upset Roy had watched in the stands with Shiela, the camera in tight as the voice describes the score and the scenario, a win here could give Richard (white kid) and his teammates a shot at placement in the national polls, could send Richard to the NCAA tournament, the national championships, and Richard (our white kid) knew this at the time but he was as calm as he always was, even looking towards the camera, pointing up towards the scoreboard, which showed his team down by a pretty wide margin, and then him looking back at the camera, shaking his head knowingly, mischievously, and smiling, and saying “lots of basketball left to play”, and then, and you couldn’t hear this because it wouldn’t do to have it in the video for the alumni, but if you looked closely enough, you could see Richard’s mouth, mouthing the words, just barely visible through the shoulders and heads, Richard looking at all his teammates and his lips saying, Alright guys, I want to see only the good shit out there, you got me? Only the good shit...

...but Richard (white) would have other things to say, and other ways to say it still, as he stole that pass, alley-ooped that ball, to the black kid, and later, ran around the black kid covering him, using the pick from his team’s (black) power forward and then adjusting to the defensive switch, and as the other team’s (black) power forward came to him, leaning and passing around the hips of that man back to his (black) teammate, who went up for the monster dunk, but ignore the animal dunking the ball, look at the man who made the pass, give the high-five to the (black) point guard, to the (black) power forward, and to keep this all going our ways requires money, lots of it, freely given...

...never mind the power forward’s story, the voice seemed to be implying as it continued talking about Richard, it’s probably the same thing you’ve always heard, the first six years of his life in South Central Los Angeles, dodging bullets and wondering which bandana to go with, until his mother packed him and his sixteen brothers and sisters and moving them out to the suburbs where she took three jobs and managed to put them all through school, where one of them, that power forward, first picked up a basketball and realized where the money was...

...except that Roy knew different, because that same power forward, he had a name, Dwight Taylor, and he didn’t start off playing basketball but instead started off playing soccer, and he was already growing up in the suburbs, and while he was only moderately good at soccer—because by the time he was twelve he was already six feet three inches and the ground seemed to be looming further and further away whenever he chanced a look down—he loved soccer, and practiced harder at it than anything, and Richard had said that once during practice the balls had all spilled off the shooting rack onto the ground, and Dwight watched as one rolled over to him, and he let it roll up over his toes, and he kicked it up into the air, and then he delicately placed his thigh underneath it when it came down, and then hit it up towards his forehead, and then he started playing around with it, like one of those homeless pseudo-rasta-hippies Hellespont is teeming with (funny how the voice doesn’t mention that about where Richard is from) hacky-sacking away in the park as though achieving a Zen of their own, and Dwight kept going until the coach yelled him out for becoming unfocussed, and Richard said that Dwight laughed, all deep-throated and smiling and good-natured and apologetic, and Roy remembered Richard pointing him out, when the two of them were walking around the campus towards the different fields, and there was a soccer game going on, and Dwight was there in the stands, because of course it’d be damned-near impossible to miss a six-foot-ten black guy wearing his brightly-coloured tear-offs and sitting in the middle of all the fans (white kids), and Roy remembered wondering what was going on inside Dwight’s head, just what was it...

...and Richard, after that game, after the big win, being interviewed, given the Pizza Hut Player-of-the-Game honours, and the camera focussing in awkwardly on the player-of-the-game and his arm around his twin brother, and saying, “This is my brother, Roy. Whenever I get too far ahead of myself, I think of him. He’s a rock. He’s always been the smart one.”...

...and they’d asked Roy questions, but that didn’t belong in this video...

...and there’d been other games, including the one that finally knocked them out of a semi-final that cost them the chance to go on to March Madness, and they had to settle for the NAIA, but we can’t show those games, no, because Richard had been horrendous, too much pressure, too much effort trying to get his team involved that he couldn’t get himself into the game, but ignore Dwight Taylor and his fifteen points to keep us close, ignore Maliq Walker who cemented his shot at the first round of the draft with a twenty-point, eight-rebound performance, focus in on Richard, our boy, our pride and joy (look at him!), and how all he needs is for the program to remain strong, and maybe, just maybe, in his final year, he’ll take us all the way, he’ll take us to that promised land, as long as the program remains strong, which is why we need you, oh beloved alumni, oh beloved rich alumni, oh beloved rich white alumni...

...and Roy clenched his teeth awkwardly, not knowing how to swallow all those unspoken words, the unscripted filtering, sorting, segregating, of the story by that delicious voice, like the voluptuous sound of a word that overshadows the meaning of the word itself, of the real from the needed, of all those things in running continuously in the background, so obvious you take them for granted, at face value, because it’s easier that way...

“Funny,” Roy said, as he took the pass from Lem, who had come up to visit for a week that summer. “It all gets back to Hegel after all.” He shot. Swish.

Lem shook his head as he went after the ball. “Jesus, Smedley,” he said, “one of these days I’m going to teach you how to enjoy your summer.”

Roy motioned for the ball. It seemed like one fluid motion now, from Lem to Roy to the air to the basket to Lem to Roy... “Maybe philosophy isn’t spending too much time in your head after all. Maybe it’s just the way of boiling of all the interesting shit to get to the boring truth.”

Swish. Lem caught the ball and held it for a moment. “Hey!” he teased, “Quit disrespecting my major, or I’ll decide you don’t exist anymore.”

“I heard this story, once,” Roy said. “My friend, who plays in this jazz band called Pinelli’s Three down in some hotel bar, was talking to this blind musician. This Indian guy, Farid something, who played the guitar in a jazz band. Grew up in an orphanage outside Vancouver. This Indian guy, blind from birth, never had a chance to learn the difference between black and white and whatever, and learned jazz as well as any black man he’d ever known.” He waved his hand and Lem threw the ball over. “Farid’s own words.” Up in the air, and swish. “Didn’t know black from paisley except that the words sounded different, but he believed deep down that the black man was a better jazz musician than the white man, and that he would always be the better jazz musician.” Lem caught the ball and sent it over to cross Roy’s path to the corner. Roy caught it on the run, planted quickly, and shot. Swish. “‘I don’t know,’ my friend Norm says. ‘My friend Peter is of the ivory persuasion and is pretty sweet on the trumpet.’ Farid laughs and asks what Peter knows of loss.” Roy took the pass from Lem, held it a second, and then shot slowly. Swish. “Norm asks what that has to do with it, and Farid says that the reason why black musicians play jazz better than white ones is because the black musician has the sorrow in his blood, that what he’s playing is in mournful homage and celebration of the culture his ancestors left behind, when they were plucked away to be brought to this barren, cultureless place.” Lem’s fingers fumbled the ball, and it bounced around before he could collect it and send it out. “Swear to God these are his words, not mine. So Norm asks Farid why Farid’s so goddamned good on the trombone, and Farid points to his eyes, and says, ‘I understand loss, too.’”

“That’s all very touching,” Lem said. “But what does that have to do with Hegel?”

Roy shrugged. “History, and black versus white, and the emergence of something from that. Synthesis.” He shot slowly again. Swish. “I don’t know...”

“When did you start thinking about this?” Lem asked as he caught the ball.

“Recently,” Roy said, as he wiggled his fingers. Lem sent the ball out. “Actually, for a while. I had a friend once. Actually, he was a teammate more than a friend. There was a tournament... things have really seemed different since then. In more ways than one.” Roy extended only as far as his tiptoes as he shot. Swish.

“Come on. Is it Shiela? Or some other thing with a girl?” Lem asked as he chased down the ball.

Roy shook his head, his eyes still on the basket. Lem finally trapped the ball, turned around, and started to walk back with it. “Does this have something to do with your brother, Roy?” Lem asked. “I mean, I don’t like to prod into things, but... oh shit, I don’t know.”

Roy shook his head again, and extended his hands for the pass. “Things,” Roy said. “Some things. Maybe everything. I don’t know either. I...” He didn’t know how to say it. He remembered how he was, even at that tournament. He’d been goofy and gotten drunk now and then, and fallen for girls too quickly. It was like there was a void, walking around, following him, keeping him on his toes. He didn’t know how to say that sometimes he felt so afraid that he was acting every time he opened his mouth, and part of him believing deep down that it was true, and not really knowing why that need to perform was there in the first place.

He looked at Lem, who hadn’t thrown the pass yet. Lem had been as good a friend as he could have expected from someone he’d only known since he turned twenty. He was a pretty keen thinker, and he didn’t have to act anything. Some people, Roy thought, live outside themselves.

He wondered what that was like.

That night in front of the television, Richard asked him if he was still with Shiela. Richard looked up from his book. “No,” he said.

“Do you miss her?” Richard asked, staring at the screen. A team of college All-Stars was playing against a touring squad from Argentina. The Argentinians were putting up a fight. “I mean, do you still like her?”

Roy shook his head. “I don’t suppose so,” he said, looking down at his book. “Why?”

“I was just wondering, you know,” Richard said, twisting his head a little in Roy’s direction while keeping his eyes on the ball. “I was thinking I wouldn’t mind calling her.”

Ah, Roy thought. The room seemed to get darker.

“I mean,” Richard said quickly to keep a silence from happening, “she and I got along really well, you know? I mean, I sort of felt comfortable with her. I mixed up lust and love, a little, when it came to her. Like when you get yourself a new sofa and throw out the old one.”

This is something special, he thought. Sheila is still in love with a guy who holds her in the same regard as furniture. This is priceless. As the light from the television set seemed to shrink away, his breath caught short for a second.

Why don’t you care, Roy?

“I mean, a sofa’s a pretty fucking shitty way to look at Sheila,” Richard said, a little more anxiously. “I mean...” He sighed heavily. “I mean I think she’s pretty damned awesome, and I get to thinking about her and”—his eyes lit up—“I get that feeling, you know? Like someone I could marry. I mean that. Someone I could really marry.”

Roy looked over at the window. Where are you, Roy? he asked himself, searching for his features within the blurry vision before him. Where have you gone? Why don’t you care? Why don’t you care about anything? He thought of himself, going back to CCU, finishing his degree and dropping out from the basketball squad. You used to care, you idiot. He thought of himself and his brother, as kids, winning the city title for the basketball team, and even though his brother led the team in points and steals, Roy was a pretty good player on that team to. That was you. He thought of his brother and him, being hoisted on everyone’s shoulders when they took the title. His brother and him. Where is he now?

The air he was inhaling felt thin, and he had to take more of it in, in quicker breaths. “Roy?” Richard asked, before a pause that betrayed concern. “Roy, if you’re still into her, I can...”

The void, Roy thought, and instantly he wanted to get up and run outside. It’s around somewhere, isn’t it? It’s followed me for so long. Where can it have gotten to? Or... has it been filled...? With me? Roy? Is that were I am? Me?

I’m gone, he thought. Richard had asked a question. Roy stared into his reflection in the mirror. I’m gone. Richard wanted to know if it was alright that he was in love with Shiela. That was fine, Roy realized, since he wasn’t in love with her because... because... because I’m no longer here, he thought. I’m gone. But Richard needed an answer. Roy breathed in and out quickly. I’m... I’m... There were tears in his eyes, tears for something that no longer existed. He blinked them back, and stared at his reflection. Richard would need to see he was happy for him, Roy realized, and he sucked in one last breath, and smiled the great big smile.

It was his brother’s smile, he saw in the reflection. It was his brother’s smile, and his eyes were shadowed over. His heart floated upwards as he fell off the face of the earth.

And the smile shining back at him grew only wider.