[Brackets] (35 page)

“How did you know that?” Tucker asked, startled.

“I
drove out to
your house this morning. I was going to
surprise you by going jogging with you, but you never came. You didn’t answer your phone
.
Not even yo
ur parents knew what was going on.”
Lena looked into Tucker’s eyes. “Where were you?”

Tucker leaned back in the boot
h, irrationally relieved that Lena hadn’t followed him that morning
. “I don’t have to tell you about
everything that
I do.
J
ust because I don’t live up to your expectations for me—which is impossible, by the way, unless
I’m like
running for president or stopping wars all by myself—
it
doesn’t mean that I’m not doing things with my life. I told you a long time ago what
my plans are, and they haven’t changed.
I don’t care if you, or my parents, or Tonkin, or Rick and Abby, or anybody want
s
me to do something else.”

“Who are Rick and Abby?”

“
Who is Carla?
” Tucker spat out. He took a deep breath. “Look, we have already had this exact same fight in this exact same booth, and I don’t need to have it again. So
unless we’re going to talk about what we really need to talk about,
I’m going
back to my apartment
. I have some dip to make.”

Lena watched him stand up to leave. “Wait,” she said softly. “
We’ll talk.”

Tucker sat down
and folded his arms, waiting for a good explanation
.

“
I met Carla a few days ago. She found me
.
She offered me a job, and I took it.
I won’t be around much longer.
In fact, I’ll be gone by tomorrow, they have a project for me this week.
”

Tucker raised an eyebrow. “You want to leave before the end of the semester, a year before graduation?
”

“It’s an opportunity, Tucker, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Real leadership, real activism, real resources. I can do what I’ve always
wanted to do, follow a path that college really can’t give me.”

Tucker stared ahead in disbelief. The
place inside
that always compelled him to return to Lena started to ache.

“You trust Carla? You know she was in Tonkin’s office too, trying to get him into whatever weird organization she’s recruiting for
.
”

“I know,” Lena said. “And they’re not a weird organization. They’re an amazing group of people working for social justice all over the world. I asked them if they would offer you a job, too. They
said no. I was hoping that maybe they had changed their minds when I saw Carla at your house last night, but they hadn’t. But Tucker listen,” Lena reached out across the table to hold Tucker’s hand, and he felt himself melting a little, as he always did when she touched him. “We can still ask. Now that you know about them, if we both pitch the idea that we can work together—”

“Hold up, hold up,” Tucker pulled his hand back, his head reeling. “First of all, who are ‘they’, and second, what makes you think that I’m going anywhere? I have school to finis
h, I’ve got law school to do
, I’ve got things to do back in Ashland, I can’t just go with whoever these people are—”

“You would be with me!” Lena pleaded. “If you stay here, you may meet your goals but you won’t reach your potential, I mean your real potential.
I feel like I’m the only person really push
ing you to succeed, and if I go—
”

“Wait,” said Tucker, “that’s what you’re worried about? You think as soon as you leave, I’ll drop out of school and start smoking weed or something? Are you my girlfriend or my life coach?”

“I’m both, sometimes, and you know it.
Would you even be where you are without me?
Unless
I’m on
you
all the time
, you miss opportunities, you waste
whole mornings like today—
”

“Oh really? You want to ask Wol Pot if I wasted my morning?” As soon as he said it, he knew that he
had
slipped up. “I mean, Tonkin had me…”

“Woah, what?” Lena sat up with interest. “Did you see Wol Pot this morning? I thought he
was locking everyone out
. How did you
get in
? How did he look?”

“No,” he stammered, “I mean, yeah, I saw him, but we didn’t, I just gave him a present. I can’t really talk about it.
It was really nothing
.”

“But did he say anything?” Lena pressed. “Do you know what he’s going to do? Is he finally going to endorse Many Hands?”

Tucker shook his head. He could feel himself starting to sweat. “I don’t, um, forget it. I want to talk about what you said about…”

“No, no, no, you don’t change the subject now. I need to know this, and you
know you can’t lie to me. What is
he going to do? You know if he caves to international pressure, if he lets China
come in and take over and stop Many Hands, it means starvation and panic and probably war. So
you have to tell me
, what is he going to do?”

She stared into his face, her eyes wide, trying to read everything that he was trying to hide. He turned away and mumbled
,
“I can’t talk about it.”

“Of course you can’t
.
” Lena shook her head
in disgust
and swore under her breath
as she stood
.

“Where are you going?” Tucker asked.

“To finish packing.” She gathered her bag and made a motion to leave, but turned around.

“Do you want to know why they didn’t offer you a job, Tucker? I asked Carla about it. I explained what I knew about you, and she even said that she knew what I was talking about. But they still didn’t want you. You know why?” She paused a second to let him think. “She said that you weren’t the kind of person who would succeed in their work. They said that you didn’t care enough. And the worst part was that I couldn’t
disagree with her
.”

She stopped herself,
paus
ing
as if wanting to say good-bye,
then
pursed her lips tighter and stepped out of the restaurant. Tucker watched her through the window as she took out her phone and dialed. She crossed the street, and only after crossing did she look back, hesitate, then turn and disappear.

[
Midwest Division
: Final Four]

[Saturday, April 4]

Tucker sat wedged between a messy desk and a water cooler in the Verizon Center security office, nursing his sore knuckles with a bag of ice. He’d been sitting there for nearly twenty minutes—long enough to calm down from the brawl with Neeson, long enough to start a couple of dead-end conversations with the moody Cole Kaman, long enough to look at everything around him three times over. There was an
autographed
picture of Michael Jordan in a Wizards uniform holding a ball aloft over some poor rookie. There was another picture of the 2003 George Mason Men’s basketball team, exultant after their win against top-seeded UConn. Among the papers on the desk, Tucker
noticed
a police sketch of a big man in a grey hoodie with a goatee and glasses, and he thought about asking Cole if that was really what the Wall Street arsonist looked like. But seeing Cole slumped forward in his chair, hands covering his face, Tucker thought better of it.

There was a commotion outside the
door, and after a minute, the arena’s chief of security
,
a gruff, balding
red-head, shoved in two staggering
teenage
boys.

“Do not move from these chairs,” the security chief barked. “We’ll call your parents shortly.” The door slammed shut and one of the teenagers, alcohol heavy on his breath, leaned forward toward Tucker.

“Hey! You’re the B
racketeers, right? You’re that guy that punched that guy! Awesome.” Tucker smiled briefly. That was the substance of fifteen out of the eighteen text messages he’d
received in the past half-hour: “Dude, nice hit!”
The other three were from his mom, who was not happy with what she’d seen.
It was Regina who had, after a long conversation with her son about the way his life was going, strongly suggested that he go
to be
alone as a kind of retreat to help clear his head. It would be good for him, she said, to have some time just to himself away from everything. Now she felt guilty about her advice and openly wondered in fragments of digital text if he would be better off with his father or brothers or some friend next to him. Henry, for his part, sent a congratulatory message praising
his right hook.

One of the teenagers
slurred
,
“So
like, how did it start
? Was it a money thing?” Tucker shook his head.

“Nah, he was just mad that he lost.”

“That’s
not cool,
” said the boy with a righteous sigh. “They aren’t throwing you out, are they? I mean, for fighting?”

Tucker shrugged. He had been wondering that same thing since they
’d
arrived at the office. The other boy shook his head in sympathy.

“Oh dude, they’re gonna throw you out. I have a buddy that got into a fight during a hockey game last year and he was banned from the arena for a month. For fighting at a hockey game! Where they fight, like, right there! Isn’t that the craziest?”

“So what was the final score?” Tucker asked the boy.

“At the hockey game?”

His friend punched him in the arm. “No, you idiot, at the basketball game just now.”

“Oh yeah, you didn’t really see the end. It was sweet—UCLA made one more three-pointer at the buzzer and that put them up 78-73. Other Williams had a towel over his head for like ten minutes and wouldn’t move until somebody made him. He was totally crying, we could tell. It was awesome.”

The security
chief
came in, and Tucker was relieved when he spoke to the teenagers first.
They
each
got
fines and phone calls to their parents.
Then, amongst many loud complaints against the injustice of it all, they were gone.
The
chief turned to
Tucker and Cole.

“You boys a
re giving me ulcers,” he groused
. “Here’s the deal. We’ve reviewed the tapes we have, and we spoke with the eyewitnesses around the scene. They all back up your claim that Mr. Faulkner initiated the incident without being provoked, and that you, Mr. Barnes, stepped in to help. In most cases we would dismiss any party that was involved in a fight in the stands and ban them for the remainder of the season. But it seems that, under the circumstances, there is some interest in making sure you come back for the Championship. I’m not very happy about it, personally, but you will get to come back on Monday—”

“Thank you,” Tucker exhaled.

“—
under certain conditions,” the chief continued, glaring
at Tucker. “During the game on Monday, you two will be sitting on opposite sides of the court. We will be watching both sections carefully to make sure that we don’t have a repeat of what happened today.”

He looked at both of them and shook his head like a disappointed parent. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people, but if you two don’t control yourselves on Monday, if you step out of line even a little, we won’t just kick you out, there will be significant legal action. You understand me?” They both nodded.

“So can we go?” Cole asked, his voice exhausted.

The man sighed. “No, there’s one more thing. I’ve been kept apprised of the search for your stalker, Ichabod, in case he was to try something in the arena. I got word tonight that they’ve found his apartment in Connecticut. He wasn’t there, but, based on some evidence they found, it looks like he may be headed south. So he might be around. I don’t think I have to tell you that you should inform the police if either of you sees or hears anything.” The chief waved to the door. “Now, please get out of here.”

They
happily complied
.

Outside, they had to pass through a cadre of reporters and cameras who wanted the inside story on this most bizarre side plot to the tournament. Tucker was so
caught up in
getting through that he didn’t notice who was driving the
ir
car until they were underway. The man in the driver’s seat turned and said in an awful New York accent, “Where to, Mac?”

“Are you kidding me?” Tucker yelled.

“
We kid you not!” beamed Rick O’Shea beneath a chauffer’s cap. “Nice hit, by the way. We’re going to remember you in case we ever need to sneak a secret message to an amateur boxer.”