How Lucky: A Novel Page 15

  you sound like you don’t get out much either. i get it man. trust me i really really do. but you cant let it make you so mad. being by yourself aint so bad. it doesnt mean youre alone. it just means you get to do your own thing. i know what its like to be alone. but youre never really alone. we can work this out.

  can we work this out? i’m here man.

  Daniel

  I decided not to push the Ai-Chin delusion. Officer Anderson was tough enough on him. He can talk to me.

  But he can talk to me after the game.

  38.

  Travis has me in my game-day costume. I am not sure how much dignity this costume affords me, but I cannot deny its inherent popularity. I am never more loved than I am on a Georgia football Saturday.

  He came bounding up the steps on the front porch like nothing had happened at all over the last two days, like I didn’t almost die, like we haven’t been hanging out with cops all week, like this is just a perfectly normal morning. This is one of Travis’s greatest gifts: the ability to make all unpleasantness and worry disappear simply by not paying attention. He’s like a goldfish with a head injury.

  He has his vape in his left hand, a backward St. Louis Cardinals hat on, dark sunglasses even though it’s 9:00 a.m., and he smells of so much weed that we might as well be . . . well, I was going to say at Coachella, but honestly, these days, we’d just as likely be with all the moms in the carpool line. He’s carrying the massive duffel bag he always shows up with on football Saturdays on his back, a massive red monster with the Georgia logo on the side and the words DANIEL’S LINEBACKER TRANSFORMER KIT written in deep black Magic Marker across the top. He makes a big theatrical moment out of unpacking it in front of me, like a guy trying to show someone how to fix a leaky sink on a YouTube video, Here are all the tools you’re going to need.

  The duffel bag’s contents:

  Two cases of beer. Terrapin Golden Ale. Midwesterners hate hops. Travis never shuts up about how wrong southerners are about their fancy beers.

  A full handle of Maker’s Mark.

  Three Frisbees.

  An extra pair of Travis’s underwear. “Just in case, you know?”

  Then, my costume. First: a Georgia football jersey. It’s red, with the circular G logo on the collar. In place of a name, the back says MOVE IT OR LOSE IT. The number is 69, as if you hadn’t guessed that already.

  Shoulder pads. My shoulders increasingly look like the McDonald’s logo these days so Travis has the smallest possible set of shoulder pads, size child’s small.

  The Georgia helmet. It is not a regulation helmet. It’s just an oversize plastic thing that makes my head look like the center of a pinwheel.

  I think there are a few more stray beers rolling around there as well.

  Travis meticulously lays everything out on the porch, opens up a beer, and says, “Let’s get to work. Oh, wait . . . you wanna hit?” I nod, smiling, and he puts a fake joint up to my lips, and I pretend to inhale. One real puff would kill me, but goddammit I love him so much for always asking.

  And now I’m all costumed up.

  Travis hauls me into the Woolly Mammoth and straps me in. He hops up into the bed of the truck, puts his face right in front of my helmet, and puts his vape between his teeth in imitation of Hunter S. Thompson. Travis loves him some Hunter S. Thompson, though it’s all from that Johnny Depp movie; I’m sure he’s never read a word he’s written. “Faster, faster, faster, Danno,” he says, his eyes cartoonishly darting all over the place behind his glasses. “Until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death. DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!!”

  You’re a dork.

  You love it. It’s a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream!

  I don’t know how much gas I have for today.

  It has been a long week. Are you OK? Are you up for this?

  I am. This is always the best day of the week. I am just tired. I am very tired.

  We won’t push it. You just gimme the signal. Or if I’m not around, holler at Jennifer.

  She’s coming?

  Is that OK?

  Yes. She is great.

  Good. She rocks.

  I am glad she will be there.

  Me too, man. But you sure you’re all right? That was some shit the other day.

  I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

  Mammmmothhhhhhhh!!!!!

  This whole production is a lot of work for someone who didn’t even go to Georgia and doesn’t particularly like football. But one does not spend a football Saturday taking half measures.

  After an unnecessary but scenic drive through campus that gets me cheered by every Athens tailgater—it is flabbergasting how many people are already out here at 9:30 in the morning for a 4 p.m. game—we arrive at our tailgate, by Stegeman Coliseum, where the Georgia basketball, volleyball, and gymnastics teams compete. I enjoy this spot because it’s highly populated, so you can just sit and watch all these weirdos, and it’s close enough to my house that I can leave anytime I want. There is a limit to how much of this I can take. Eventually, you realize these people just like football too damn much.

  But it’s an irresistible scene. The South has all sorts of problems—the Confederate flag, systematic voter suppression, not a single decent sushi place—but this is not one of them. Folks drink their bourbon and sit in their chairs and watch the cars go by, perfectly content just to get themselves lightly wasted, together, as one, as the day goes along. Eventually there’s a game at the end, and the game is important, but it’s more the nightcap than the main course. Most of the fans don’t even go to the game. They just take these seven days a year to go sit with all their friends, the ones they’ve met and the ones they will, and enjoy a day of everyone casually pulling in the same direction.

  I just sit and watch, like the rest of them. As always, I’m not totally a part of it. But for a while, in this ridiculous helmet, I also am a part of it.

  Jennifer sidles right up next to me and puts her hand on my leg. She is very touchy, this girl. Her hands are always everywhere. I don’t mind.

  “Daniel, how you hanging in, dawg?” she says, in a way that’s a little forced and clearly for the benefit of Travis, who’s standing nearby pretending not to pay attention, but I don’t mind that either. “You had quite a night the other night.”

  Jennifer hasn’t figured out how to communicate with me without words like Marjani and Travis have, obviously, but she gets the general gist through my series of head shakes and bobs that I’m just fine, thank you, nothing to worry about.

  “Oh great!” she says aloud. “Then let’s get drunk!” She kisses me on the cheek and throws her hands in the air. “Shots! Shots! Who has some shots?” She and Travis strike me as compatible.

  As usual, everyone goes along with their tailgates and forgets I’m there, so I just sit and listen to what’s on everybody’s mind. Tailgates are like my own little news feed, a way to tap into the hungry, yearning brain of your average Athens, Georgia, resident. The topics this week mostly skirt the bounds of the usual. Sure am glad all that heat’s over with, you can finally go outside now. Why doesn’t Georgia just run the danged ball? Did you see what the president tweeted? There was the funniest video of a baby and a kitten, here, you gotta watch it, gimme a second, lemme find it on my phone. Did you hear about Debbie’s sister? It’s the saddest thing. Just the saddest thing.

  But it is clear that the lead story, as it surely had to be, is Ai-Chin. The rallies this week have everybody abuzz with theories. One of the college kids one tailgate over, after casually doing a keg stand, as if being upside down and chugging beer while two strangers hold your legs in the air is just like hanging around the watercooler, says she heard Ai-Chin had a fight with her boyfriend and “he’s a really shady guy.” One guy who works at the record store downtown informs Travis, loudly, that she’s just scared she was going to fail out and disappoint her parents, so she’s hiding somewhere, and she’ll show up any minute now once she realizes the ruckus she h
as caused. A cop strolling by jokes to a lady waiting for the porta-potty that “everybody keeps calling us every time they see an Asian girl on a college campus, which is every second of the damn day.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jennifer bristle.

  There are posters on every light post and street sign now, and it’s not just the ones from the Rook & Pawn anymore. This cause has been taken up by the entire campus. Three different groups of people, two of them for Asian students, one a campus women against sexual violence organization, have marched down Sanford Drive, chanting “Justice for Ai-Chin” and “We will not be silenced.” Four different news trucks from Atlanta are interviewing anyone they can find about Ai-Chin, and I overhear one talking head (not Chesley McNeil, sadly) doing a live hit: “The euphoria of a college football weekend can’t help but be dampened by the Ai-Chin tragedy, the missing girl a haunting fog that hovers over every Georgia Bulldogs fan.”

  Everybody’s talking about it. But nobody knows a damn thing.

  Not even me. Not anymore.

  39.

  My iPad buzzes. An email from a guy at work, wondering why I didn’t book any hours yesterday. Nate Silver has just released some new numbers that I will find very alarming if I click right here. Your Pie has a two-for-one special this weekend. The Supreme Court issued a ruling on something I do not understand.

  And then there is Jonathan. I haven’t looked at my phone for most of the afternoon, but he apparently returned my email mere minutes after he received it.

  I move my chair to the side of the tailgate, away from a man loudly extolling the virtues of his current stock portfolio while wearing loud red pants with pictures of little bulldogs on them, sporting sunglasses that are attached to the top of his head by some sort of string and drinking a Bud Lime-A-Rita. I open the email.

  Daniel—

  See, now I’m not sure we’re on the same wavelength. You know that neighbor of yours? The one from another country? You know he probably has a better job than you do, right? Or at least he will someday. I’m not a racist or anything like that at all. I hate racists. But let’s not kid ourselves, Daniel. This is not a time for you and me.

  Last week, one of the teachers at a high school here in Athens wrote an op-ed for the campus newspaper. It talked about how difficult it is for her to teach white boys. She specifically said that: “White boys.” Why did she say it was so difficult? Get this, Daniel: “They barely try and expect to be rewarded.” All teenage boys are little shits like that. But she calls us out. And then if one of those students were to happen to say, “Hey, you made me feel bad about being white,” you know what would happen? They’d kick him out of school!

  I’m no Nazi, Daniel. Fuck Nazis. Punch Nazis in the damn face. But think about this, Daniel. There are teachers who think it’s less their job to teach than it is to tell dumbass teenagers that they’re assholes just because they’re white. The one time in a kid’s life when he needs someone to put an arm around him and tell him he’s gonna be great, he can be whatever he wants to be, and instead they’re telling him he’s personally responsible not only for all his problems but for the problems of everybody else as well. No wonder he’s pissed off. Just by breathing the air and walking around the planet, we are suddenly assholes.

  Why I gotta get kicked in the face every time I leave the house just because I’m a white guy? Do you personally feel like someone who has a ton of advantages over everyone else? I know I sure don’t.

  It just makes me angry sometimes. Not just sometimes. It makes me very fucking angry. A lot. I don’t mean to get caught up in the race thing. It’s not just that. It’s everything. It’s the way girls look at you, shit, the way everybody looks at you. Like they all know a joke that you don’t. It’s a sneer; they’re sneering at us. They think they know better. But they don’t. I KNOW BETTER. People smile like they’re nice, but they’re not nice. I’ve got something to offer this world, but they don’t want to hear it. They don’t care. They don’t give a rat’s ass. It makes me want to scream. Does it make you want to scream? You have to feel this way. I can tell that you feel this way. We share more than I suspect you think, Daniel.

  This is another thing that Ai-Chin gets. She sees me in a way that no one else sees me. She listens. She listened right from the beginning. The whole place has felt different with her around. I finally have someone here who understands what I have to say. Who understands that I have a lot to say. I’m starting to think I might love her, Daniel. Wow. You’re the first person I’ve said that to. It feels good to say it. She’s gonna love me too. She might already. She might not know it yet. But she will.

  It’s different with her here. It makes me want to scream less. It makes everything . . . calmer. I don’t know how I made it without her. I can’t be without her. It’s so much better now.

  Oh! I think she remembers you. I asked her if she ever saw someone when she walked to school in the morning, and she said yes, yes she did. It took a while to get it out of her. But I got it out of her. So that was interesting.

  Best,

  Jonathan

  40.

  It is probably time to stop these emails. I’m indulging something I shouldn’t. Fake phone calls to the cops or not, something is clearly up with Jonathan, and it doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea for me to be all that close to it. He’s having a psychic break or . . . something.

  Just to be safe, I forward Jonathan’s email to Officer Anderson with a “this dudes too much” attached. Cops must have to deal with people like Jonathan all the time. It exhausts me just to think about it. Then again: I wonder what Officer Anderson thinks about people like me who keep emailing back and forth with those people like Jonathan.

  The game is a blowout. They usually are. I don’t know much about football, but you can tell how close the game is going to be by how many people leave the tailgate to actually enter the stadium, and today, that percentage is low.

  Travis and Jennifer are happily skipping the game, instead casually throwing a Nerf football back and forth, doing shots every time Georgia scores, strolling by occasionally to make sure nobody has tipped me over and sneaking away when no one’s looking and returning smelling like . . . well, like Travis usually smells.

  By halftime, with Georgia winning 27–7 and the vast majority of tailgaters roaming the streets already unable to write their name in the ground with a stick, I’m tired and ready to go home. I’ve made Travis take off my ridiculous costume, which seriously diminishes any novelty value I might have left to contribute, and the blowout has thinned out the crowd. Three years ago, I would have happily just sat here and watched the ongoing Athens madness, maybe make secret bets with myself on which tailgater will pass out first, but I’ve seen it all before, and I just don’t have the energy for it that I used to. The late-afternoon October chill, even in Georgia in an age of a global rise in temperatures, takes a bit more out of me than I’d like to admit. By 6:00 p.m. or so, I’ll start to gasp a little when I inhale, and while it’s anything but a matter of grave concern—it’s just a little wisp, a tickle, a minor frog in the throat—it has a tendency to scare people when they see it. It’s always best practice to head back home before drunk people start looking at you askance, like there’s a small possibility that something terrible is going to happen to you and they’re far too schnockered to be of any help when it does. When you’re a twenty-six-year-old with SMA, it’s smart to leave any party a half hour before you have to. Particularly when that tickle, that scratch, still quivers in your throat.

  I wheel over to Travis.

  I’m going to go home.

  Need a lift?

  I got it. It’s a quick trip home. Nobody seems to be passed out on the sidewalk, so I should be all right.

  Marjani’s there around eight, yes?

  Should be, smelling like stale craft beer as always.

  All right. Jennifer and I are going to stay here.

  She is great.

  I know.

  He then fi
nishes the rest of his beer, pops open another one, fits it in a koozie, and then dances off into the night, not a care in the world, it’s all gonna be just fine for Travis, it always is.

  As I turn the corner away from Stegeman Coliseum and on the way back down Agriculture Drive to my home, the tailgates slowly wither. Tents are being taken down, RVs are already pulling out to beat the traffic, the college kids have already skipped to bars downtown. Even with the game still going, the activity abates, and the people exit, and the streets are messy with Dixie cups but increasingly thinning. The night feels colder now, and as I wheel toward my home, dusk approaches, and the streetlights flicker on and hum, and it is calm. I am acutely aware that, in the midst of a place that was electric just hours ago, I am suddenly very alone.

  41.

  Home. Marjani is here, ready to put me to bed, stopping by before the next gig, an alumni mixer at a Milledge frat, distracted as always on a home game Saturday, a little rougher than usual, a little rushed.

  “You need to take a day off, Daniel,” she says while buttoning my pajama top and wiping some spittle off my cheek. “You look too tired. There has been too much activity. You maybe should stay on the couch tomorrow. Should you watch the Netflix? There is much to watch on Netflix.”

  I snort at her without realizing I’m doing it.

  “Well, excuse me,” she says, and brushes my hair with a little extra elbow grease. “Go wear yourself out then, if that’s all you want. Don’t listen to me, I’m just the one bathing you. What do I know?”

  I lose a little air from my lungs and then let out a moan. She stops brushing my hair and touches my face.

  “I’m sorry, Daniel,” she says. “It has been quite the week.”

  It’s OK.

  I really am sorry. It’s all just a bit too much sometimes.