The Game Player (13 page)

I had recovered my books and was again level with them. Frankie looked stunned and I got a disturbingly vivid image of Bill naked. Bill said nothing for a moment. Brian held Bill's eyes, his mouth in a twisted, mocking grimace.

“I'll bet that's it,” Bill said at last. I heard a laugh escape me.

“Great comeback,” Brian said. We all stood stupidly for several seconds. My eyes were on Brian, trying to understand what
his
were so busy calculating. He put out his hand. “Come on, Bill, let's forget it.” Bill was paralyzed. “It's not a seduction,” Brian said, smiling. “Come on, shake it.”

He did.

“Now,” Brian said, “shall we all go to a bordello?” We burst into laughter and talked happily until reaching the intersection where Bill had to part from us. Good-bys were exchanged and we began the ascent to our houses. Halfway up, we heard Bill call out to us with his healthy lungs, “I still want to know who that girl was.”

When we reached Frankie's house, I said to him, “I'm sorry, Frankie, I didn't mean to tease you. And besides, I didn't tell Bill who it was.”

“Don't!”

“It shouldn't worry you,” Brian said.

“Well, don't anyway. He's such a blabbermouth. It's okay, Howard. No hard feelings.”

After we had said good-by and were out of earshot, I said to Brian, “Why does it bother him that she's only a sophomore?”

“Oh, for God's sakes, Howard. You gave up being coy two years ago except about women. Don't you realize it shows how scared you are?”

I tried to cover my mortification. “Who said I gave up being coy?”

“I say!” he yelled. It bounded back to us from the trees. “As soon as you were comfortable about school and games, you were perfectly straight about them. But you're a mealy-mouthed whiner about girls. You're as terrified as the rest of them.”

“Don't try and act as if you're different,” I shot back at him. “You put on that cool. I haven't seen you touch any of the girls.”

He slammed his books down on the concrete. “What!” He stared at me. “What!” His voice was escalating marvelously with each one. “What!”

“Yes. What,” I said, a little amused by his display. I had never gotten to him like this before. I enjoyed it.

He suddenly braked his exuberance and rapidly passed a hand through his hair. “So like the rest of them, you think we're in a race?”

“Of course not, Brian. I'm kidding. But you seem very sensitive about it. I'm kidding.”

He put his hands on his hips, leaning forward with his body. “I-seem-very-sensitive-about-it.” He repeated each word slowly, with such an effectively mounting tone of ridicule, that I was embarrassed.

“You're not sensitive. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, no you're not. Anymore than that fool Bill. Well,” he said, as he knelt to gather up his books, “it's been an instructive day.” He finished and stood up. “But my learning experience will be nothing compared to the one in store for you and Bill.”

6

Man is neither angel nor brute; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.

—Pascal

P
EOPLE SAY MANY
things that they never do, especially in an argument, and I thought Brian's threat to teach Bill and me a lesson was of that order. I remember the day, I remember the moment, that I knew this was a promise he intended to fulfill. It was three or four months after the quarrel, during a break in the rehearsal of the senior production for 1969. Mary Tyler, because she was a beauty, had been chosen as the second female lead in spite of her being a junior. Though Brian had stuck to his refusal to do any acting, Mrs. Rosenbloom had come to depend on him to oversee or handle all the other jobs and problems involved with production. He was there after school every day: he would help design the set, or build it; rehearse the lighting with me and another fellow, cue the actors, or check on the freshmen while they arranged things for the morrow's auditorium. We were to block the lighting that day, but most of the work was Brian's; he sat next to Mrs. Rosenbloom to observe the actors and mark in a notebook the arrangements she wished. After the first act, he asked me to take over, which I did gladly, and ten minutes into the second act, the male lead had to say, “That whore!” He pronounced it, “who-er,” which I considered loathsome compared to my pronunciation, which was to treat the
w
as silent. I looked away in disgust and saw Mary, her proud head balanced on the longest, finest neck I have ever seen, leaning against one of the sets, her face flushed and her eyes full of delight and excitement at what they saw. What they saw was Brian, his left hand on the set for support, so that his arm almost brushed her cheek, his face, also intensely busy with excitement, slightly above and very close to hers.

And though I hadn't thought of it for months, I knew this was the fruit of that disagreement. No matter how logical it might seem to think their conversation was simply the start of a natural liaison between two of our best, I thought otherwise. It was one of those private thoughts that are so intense, embarrassing, and horrifying, that I imagined I had expressed it out loud, and I looked around quickly to check whether others had seen the pair. When I looked back at them I saw Brian's mouth move and stop only to smile wickedly. Mary had broad, articulate shoulders that made her big breasts somehow graceful and even more unbearably thrilling to watch when they moved, as they did now with the shaking of her laughter at Brian's remark. He turned and walked away with a smile and I knew her amusement was genuine because it endured his departure.

The following day, just after dinner, I got a call from Brian. His voice was surrounded by outdoor noises: cars going by, footsteps, and people's voices growing loud only to fade away. “Howard, are you busy?”

“No. Where are you?”

“Do you trust me?”

“What?”

He laughed. “Do you trust my judgment? Mary and I want to go to the movies, but she has a cousin, a girl, visiting and we need a good-looking, serious-minded young man like you.”

I heard female laughter at this and I felt my voice choke. “Who's with you?”

“My boy, are you awake? I told you. Mary.”

I listened to the halting, varying sounds of the street. I couldn't speak because of my shame at the questions I wanted to ask and the terror I would feel if the answers were good.

“Well, what's up? Come on, the game is afoot. Trust me, kid, you won't mind being seen with Marion.”

“Can she hear you say this?”

He made a noise. “What kind of fool do you think I am? Of course not. She's inside the restaurant.”

“Well, where is the movie? I may not be able to get there.”

“Ah ha! That's no problem. It's one of the reasons I want to see you. Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

I knew that Brian had just gotten his driver's license, so I expected him to arrive in a car, probably his mother's Mercedes. But I understood immediately when I saw a Volvo pull in. Thank God for it, because after the hellos, I had something to say that sounded natural. “You didn't even hint about it. Was it a birthday present?”

“No. My father agreed to buy it when my license came through. Do you like it? I couldn't get him to get what I wanted.”

“I think it's great.” I looked at what I could see of Marion, which was not enough for a judgment. “If he's not satisfied with this, I'll kill him.”

“Me too,” said Mary.

“Oh, I'm happy,” Brian said. “I just wanted to talk him into getting me a BMW so that I'd never be challenged to drive fast. People would be too afraid I might do it.”

Mary and I laughed, though I did so with less enthusiasm, since I knew it was a clever slap at Bill, who talked constantly of fast cars, his favorite being a BMW. “They go really fast?” asked Marion, and I got my first chance to hear her voice. It was too small.

“So they say,” Brian said. “But I think they're an ugly car.”

“Indeed?” I watched the curious speedometer of the Volvo, a red band that stretched itself across the numbers indicating miles per hour, coming to an end at the appropriate speed. “I always liked their high windows.”

“No, they look lopsided,” Mary said.

Our talk went no deeper than this during what proved to be a drive to New York City. Mary extended her arm along the seat so that her hand rested lightly on Brian's shoulder, which she occasionally would gently rub. Marion and I sat with the rippling leather ocean between us, hunched next to the side windows, she gazing out the one on the right side and I to the left. She talked little and it wasn't long before I had relaxed due to the obviously profound extent of her terror. I moved over in my seat once we were in Manhattan, so that I no longer looked like someone trying to climb out the window.

I don't remember the movie, but I do remember it had pretensions, because we came out dazed and then full of talk moments later while we had pastry and coffee in a Village cafe. Marion came to life then, arguing her understanding of the characters with an attractive emotional energy that her body didn't possess. Brian had nothing to say. He was merely handling everything: he paid for the movies, gave the waiter our orders, suggested what pastries would be good, explained cappuccino with enviable succinctness, and leaned back in his chair to enjoy his harsh Camel cigarette mix with the taste of his coffee, his arm around Mary, appropriating her.

Marion talked to him with great respect, her voice soft, and asked questions about New York that by rights I should have answered. Mary also addressed him as if he were our elder. The illusion we were adult wasn't being created, as is normal with adolescents. Brian was simply making it clear to me that he
was
an adult, that he could dazzle women; and I knew he thought—as, indeed, I did—that that was a far greater accomplishment than simply screwing them.

Toward the end, Mary got sleepy and she leaned against Brian with a familiarity that unmistakably answered my unasked queries. He calmly took her in; her head rested against his chest and his hand massaged her. This made Marion and me uncomfortable, but Brian looked at us without a smirk of pride or a hint of embarrassment. “She's tired,” he said. “We should go.”

I dreaded the moment all the way home, but it happened nevertheless. While Brian and Mary exchanged a long, breathy kiss, Marion stood stupidly to one side while I got into the front seat of the car with a quick embarrassed wave of good-by. Brian drove us out of there at a fast clip, rapidly shifting gears, and taking corners sharply. “How long has it been going on?” I asked.

“Mary and I? Oh, well, things have been leading up to it for a while. What do you want to know?” His voice had a slight nasal snobbishness. “When we first fucked?”

“I'm sorry,” I said in a tone that had little regret in it. “You're right. I shouldn't have asked. You're made for each other.”

In the half-lit glare of the car, the kind of lighting used in the theater to make actors appear sinister, his smile, his lips never breaking to show teeth, looked malicious. I rolled my window down all the way to refresh myself with the soft, fragrant air of the spring. “What's bothering you, Howard?”

“Do you have any grass?”

“No, it's at the house. Answer my question.”

“Okay. But you know what it is. What are you going to do with Mary after Bill has been destroyed by finding out?”

“Oh, that's ridiculous. Bill's not going to be destroyed.” I had made a noise at this and he turned his head to glance at me before tending to the sharp turn on to the hill of our houses. “I don't think he is. Anyway, there are several answers to your question. I am interested in Mary for what she is, my boy. I didn't need the motivation Bill gave me to do it.” We had reached my house and he shut off the motor. He lowered his voice for the sudden quiet. “I mean, you're not going to tell me that she isn't worth some trouble.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Howard, I'm tempted to throw you out of the car. Do you mean to be this dense? Do you intend to never pursue and fuck a girl unless you love her? If you thought Mary would go to bed with you, wouldn't you work at it?” He paused, still searching my face. “I'm supposed to throw away such an opportunity because Bill and I played some brave football a year ago?” He laughed with a sneering tone, but then looked at me innocently.

“So you're saying temptation leads to evil, is that it? I can afford to, uh, pretend I wouldn't do such a thing because of course I'm too ugly to ever be in that position.”

Brian had said, “Oh, my God!” when I reached the word ugly and he repeated it at the finish. His shock was genuine. “I suppose,” he said, after staring at me for a while, “that you're entitled to a fit of craziness.”

And when I greeted him coolly the next day at school, after rejecting his offer to drive me the short distance in his new car, he remained cheerful and friendly, behaving as if I were a lunatic. The odd thing was, as I gradually noticed throughout the day, that Brian was happier than I had ever seen him. His face, normally pale and still (a quality that I had assumed gave him his handsomeness) was animated and blooming. He said hello boisterously and generally gave such an impression of relaxed, beneficent power that his usual magnetism seemed anemic by comparison.

The home room crowd was buzzing about his car. Miriam, a very pretty, blue-eyed girl, said she had seen him drive up in it with Mary. She, her best friend, Betty, and I sat near the windows and Betty asked, “You're the only person who knows anything about the secret life of Brian Stoppard. Is he having a thing with her?”

“You mean, like a bite to eat?” I asked.

Miriam said, “Oh, Howard.”

“Having a thing, get it?” I said to Betty, who was staring at me. “Yeah, they're in possession of a thing.”