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  Did it matter? she wondered as she washed.

  She would have lost her virginity anyway. It was bound to happen, sooner or later. The pain inside her would still hurt if it had been someone trying to be tender, someone she loved. Her father still would have died. Maybe he would have crossed Washington Street and had a heart attack. Or been shot while being robbed. There was crime everywhere, even in the halls of her school. She could have been attacked behind the school or in an alley or in a gangway. She could have been knifed and killed. Her father could have eaten poisonous food or been killed in a brawl in a tavern. He could have contracted some ugly, hideous disease—

  No, she thought. She held her body perfectly still. Nothing moved. There was no sound. No, what happened mattered. She’d made a mistake, trying to trade herself. And now there was no one to fix her.

  She looked down at her legs. She pretended they were broken. She imagined her entire body was paralyzed, because she’d touched the subway’s third rail. And now was the moment when her great efforts would allow her to move. She tried to wriggle her toes in the water. Yes! She was doing it! She was cured! She slowly rotated her right foot, then her left foot. She bent her knees. Moved her head, her hands. A complete recovery.

  Bobbi looked at the sink, the toilet, the gray walls. She was aware that she was acting silly, and she tried to laugh out loud at herself—she was kicking her feet now and flexing her arms and splashing sheets of water out of the tub—but instead of laughter a bitter cry came from deep inside her. Bile rose in her throat. The girl’s cry echoed terribly in the small, darkened bathroom.

  Idling

  Sometimes when I’m hauling I drive right past her house. The Central Avenue exit from the Kennedy Expressway, and then north maybe two, three miles. The front is red brick and the awnings are striped, like most of the other houses on Central Avenue. Her name was Suzy and she was the kind of girl who liked cheese and sauerkraut on her hot dogs. She was regular. She went in for plain skirts, browns and navy blues, wraparounds, and those button-down blouses with the tiny pinstripes all the girls wore back then. She must be as old as I am now, and the only girl ever to wear my ring. She was special. Suzy was my only girl.

  I met her at a party at a friend’s house. A Saturday night, and I was on the team, only I had pulled my back a couple of days before—too serious to risk playing, they said, sorry, we think you’re out for the season. I’d been doing isometrics. And though they gave me the chance to dress and sit with the team, I said the hell with it, this season’s finished, get somebody else to benchwarm with the sophomores.

  Which was O.K., because the night I met Suzy the team was playing out in Oak Park, and had I gone I’d have met my father afterwards for some pizza, like we usually did after a game, but instead I went over to Ronny’s. The two of us hung around the back of his garage, talking, splitting a couple of six-packs, with him soaking out a carburetor and me trying to figure if what I had done with the team was right. Ronny told me stuff it, you can’t play you can’t play. There are things nobody can control, he said. You just got to learn to roll with the punches. He was maybe my best friend back then and I was feeling lousy, here it was not even October and only the second game. Let’s get drunk, Ronny said, laughing, so I said stuff it too, there’s a party out in Des Plaines tonight. So we got in his car and drove there. Then some of the game crowd got there, all noisy and excited, and I met Suzy.

  It went real smooth and I should have known then, like when you’re beating your man easy on the first couple of plays you should know if you’ve got any sense that he’s gonna try something on you on the third. I started talking to her, thinking that since I was a little drunk I had an excuse if she shut me down—maybe I even wanted to be shut down, I don’t know, I was still feeling lousy—but she talked back and we danced some. Slow dances, on account of my back. And when I told her my name she said you’re on the team, I saw you play last week. I said yeah, I was. She seemed impressed by that. But she didn’t remember that it was me who intercepted that screen pass in the third quarter, and damn I nearly scored. She smiled, and I held her.

  Things went real fine then. We danced a lot, and later Ronny flipped me his keys, and me and Suzy went out for a ride. Mostly we talked, her about that night’s game, and me about why I’d decided not to suit up, which, I told her, was really the best thing for me. There’s something stupid about dressing and not playing. If they win, sure it’s your victory too, but what did you do to deserve it? And if they lose, you feel just as miserable.

  I took her home then and told her I wanted to see her again, and all the talking made me sober up, and that started it.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever had duck’s blood soup. It’s a Polish dish, and honest to God it’s made with real duck’s blood, sweet and thick, and raisins and currants and noodles. Her father, the father of three beautiful little girls, with Suzy the oldest, took all of us out to this restaurant on North McCormick Street and he ordered it for me. He said the name in Polish to the waiter, then looked at me and winked. He even bought me a beer, and I was only seventeen. The girls watched me as I salted it and kept asking me how it tasted. I didn’t understand. I said it tasted sweet. Then Suzy’s mother laughed out loud at me and told me what was in it. I think she wanted me to be surprised.

  Suzy went out with me for her image. There was no other reason, it was as simple as that. Now there’s no glory in dating a former defensive end. Suzy went out with me because the year before I had dated Laurie Foster, and Laurie Foster had a reputation at Saint Scholastica, where Suzy went to school. This is where everything gets crazy. Laurie somehow had a reputation, which I don’t think she deserved, at least not when I was taking her out. We never did much really of anything, but because I had dated her I got a reputation too, and I never even knew about it. I guess there was some crazy kind of glory in dating and going steady with a guy who had a rep.

  She said let me wear your ring, hey, just for tonight, and I said sure, Suzy. And she asked me if I liked her and I said of course, don’t you like me? She laughed and said no, I’m just dating you for your looks. I was a little drunk that night and she said do you ever think about it, Mike, do you ever just sit down and think about it, and I said what, and she said going steady. I told her no. Then she asked me if I wanted to date other girls, and when I said no I didn’t she said well, I think we should then, and finally I said it’s all right with me, Suzy, if you think it’s that important, and she said it is, Mike, it really is. She wore my ring on a chain around her neck until she got a size adjuster, then she wore my ring on her hand.

  Pretty much of everything we did then was her idea, not that I didn’t have some ideas of my own. But Suzy initiated pretty much of everything for a while back then. Ronny was dating a girl who lived near Suzy out on Touhy Avenue, and I remember once when we were double-dating Suzy and I were in the back seat of the car fooling around and she said can’t you unclasp it, and I said oh, sure. And that time we were studying at the table in her kitchen—her mother was down in the basement ironing and her father was still at work—and she says not here, Mike, but hey maybe in the front room.

  She said hold me honey, hey, and she touched me and I touched her and she was wet and smelled like strawberries and her mouth nipped my neck as I held her. She said Mike, do you like me I mean really do you like me, and I said yes, Suzy, that’s a crazy question I really like you, and she held me and made me stop and we sat up when we heard her mother coming up from the basement.

  The next weekend I bought some Trojans, and Ronny lent me his car for the night. But before I went to pick her up the two of us got a little drunk in his garage. Ronny said I’d better try one first to make sure they weren’t defective. He said people in those places prick them with pins all the time just for laughs, and I said yeah, I sure hope this thing’ll hold, and Ronny said there’s seventeen years of it built up inside of you, remember, and I said damn, maybe she’ll explode, and he said she’d better not on my up
holstery, and we laughed and he threw a punch at me and we drank another beer and then blew one up and it held good and we let it fly outside in the alley.

  The back seat was cold and cramped, and Suzy cried when it was over, and we wiped up the blood with a rag. It meant something, I thought, and I started taking going steady a little more serious after that.

  It must have been the next month that her mother started in on me. She was young then and still very pretty for a woman who’d had three kids, and she began out of nowhere saying little things like here, Mike, take a chair, and did you really hurt your back or is there some other reason why you quit the team? I had always tried to be polite to her. Then Suzy started to get on me, asking me sometimes exactly what was I doing when I pulled my back, how was I standing, and couldn’t I maybe try out for track or baseball or something in the spring? I couldn’t figure where they were coming from, and I tried to explain that even before I got hurt I hadn’t been that good a football player, that I’d been on the team simply because I’d liked to run and play catch with my father on fall afternoons. Suzy’s father seemed to understand, and he’d tell me stories about his old high school team, funny stories about crazy plays and the stuff the players wore that was supposed to be their equipment, and then sometimes he’d get serious and say it wasn’t a sport anymore at all now, that it was a real butcher shop, a game for the biggest sides of beef, and if he had a son he’d let the boy play if he wanted to but he’d hope his kid would have the good sense to know when to quit. Because all athletes have to quit sooner or later, he said. Everyone quits everything sooner or later. The trick is knowing how and when. Toward the end I got to know him a little. I’d go over there sometimes even when I didn’t feel like seeing Suzy but when I knew there was a game or something else good on TV, and once the three of them came over to my house in the city and the three of us, me and my father and Suzy’s father, sat around and shot the breeze and had ourselves a good time, and we must have drunk a whole case of beer, and Suzy and her mother ended up out by themselves talking in the kitchen.

  Suzy’s father asked me how I quit the team, and told me once he had worked for a guy and after a while he realized he was getting nowhere. He said even though they already had Suzy and needed every penny they could get, one day he sat down with his boss and told him that he simply couldn’t work there any longer. He said Mike, there are things sometimes that you just have to do, but you need to learn that it’s almost as important to go about doing them in a decent way. I told him that maybe I had been a little hotheaded with the coaches.

  He said he respected me for what I did, on account of it showed that things mattered to me, but maybe staying on the team and picking up a few splinters on the sidelines might have been a better way to go about doing it.

  I knew even back then that me and Suzy weren’t going to last long, and then I started realizing that what we were doing was serious business, especially if Suzy got pregnant. I was cool toward her then. It was around this time that I found out from the guys at school that she had gone out on the sly with another guy. This guy, she told me when I asked her about it, was her second cousin who was having some temporary trouble finding himself a date. I laughed good at that and said damn it, at least if you would’ve told me I wouldn’t have had to hear it from the guys, and we both found out then that I really didn’t much care. We had a long talk then, and then for a while things went O.K.

  For a while. Until May, until I was walking down the second-floor corridor at school and I got wind from Larry Souza, a guy who was dating one of Suzy’s friends, about a surprise six months’ happy-going-steady party Suzy was going to throw for me, with all the girls from Scholastica and the guys from Saint George invited too and even some kind of a cake, with MIKE & SUZY in bright red icing written on the top, and me and Ronny were sitting in his garage late one night drinking some beer and talking, and then we were thinking wouldn’t it be something if I didn’t show, wouldn’t that be a real kicker, and then the night of the big party comes along, with me expected to drop by at around nine, just another date, Mike, maybe we’ll stay home, sit around and watch a movie on TV or maybe if the folks aren’t home we can sneak downstairs after the little ones go to bed and you know what, and at eight me and Ronny are in his garage scraping spark plugs and still talking about it and laughing, and at eight-thirty we need just a drop more of beer so we drive out, and by nine we’re stopping by the lake because Ronny thinks he sees an old girlfriend racing down Pratt Street on her bicycle and I’m saying damn, Ronny, that girl must be thirty-five years old but we drive there anyway and end up sitting on the trunk of his old Chevy sharing another six-pack, still laughing, and then we meet some kids who’ve got a football and Jesus it’s a beautiful night, a gorgeous night in May, and we pick sides and then some girls come along and we ask if they want to play, it’s only touch, and below the waist and not in the front, honest, and we’ve got some beer left in the car if you’re thirsty first hey come on, and I’m guarding this goon who couldn’t even tie his own shoes by himself let alone run in a straight line and on the very first play Ronny is throwing to him high and hard and the clown falls down and I move up and over him and make the interception, easy, and I’m laughing so hard I stop right where I catch it and let the boob tag me, here, tag me, I’m going nowhere, I’ll tag myself, hey everybody, please tag me, laughing so hard and we play until past eleven when a police Park Control car comes crunching up the cinder track and this big cop gets out and says all right kids, the park is closed, and one of the girls says please officer please, have a heart, why don’t you take off your gun and stick around and play, and the big cop says sorry, wish to Christ I could, and we all laugh at that, and then Ronny and I say hey who wants to go for a ride and two of the girls say sure, where, and Ronny looks at me and shrugs and I say damn, anywhere is O.K. by me, so we all get in and we drive and drive and drive, nearly all the way up to Wisconsin, the four of us drinking what beer is left and stopping here and there along the road to see if we can buy some more, I’m sorry, come back in three years, they say, and I’m telling this girl who looks like the Statue of Liberty holding up her cigarette the way girls do in the dark car with the tip of it all glowing all about what I did that night, and she says can you picture them all waiting and then you don’t show, surprise, and then we have ourselves a contest to see who can guess what kind of cake it was and Ronny says chocolate and his girl guesses pineapple but my girl comes up with angel food and we laugh and say she wins, I give her her prize, a kiss, and damn she kisses back, hard, and then Ronny stops on this quiet road in the middle of the blackness and says hey, where do you want to go now, and I say Canada, and my girl says take a left, and Ronny turns and says what’s left, and his girl says we’re left and I want to stay right here, and damn that is funny and we drive and drive and drive, and it’s long past three and silent like a church when I finally get to my house.

  My dad is awake and angry, worried that I’d been in an accident. They called here four times, Mike, he says, and what can I tell them I don’t even know where my own son is. When I tell him what happened he says that was a downright shitty thing to do, then he shakes his head and says what would your mother have thought? I think of Suzy’s father, how I never thought that he might have been worried, and my father says you should call them right now and apologize. I say it’s late, too late to bother them, and he says you’re old enough now to think for yourself, do what you do, I’m going to bed.

  I didn’t call there for a couple of days and by then Suzy had found out what happened. The first thing she said was when can you pick up your ring? I said hey Suzy, I don’t want you to give me my ring back, and she said that ring must’ve cost you forty dollars, and we start to argue.

  Her youngest sister answered the door, looking like Suzy must have when she was that young, and you know I bet like her mother too, clean-faced, eyes all shining, with freckles across the bridge of her nose. She tells me to come in. I try to smile to make
her smile, but then her father comes down the stairs coughing into a handkerchief and holding my ring in an envelope. I tried to talk to him, to explain, but I didn’t know what to say.

  Now I drive for Cook County. A GMC truck and mostly light construction materials for building projects. It’s not a bad job. A year or so after I finished high school Suzy’s mother died, some kind of crazy disease that I guess she knew all about before but didn’t tell anyone about, and when I heard I drove out to the house. Her father came to the door and told me Suzy was out. I said I came to see you. He nodded then, looking at me. Then instead of inviting me in he told me that he was busy packing to move to his sister’s out East, and then he said he’d tell Suzy I stopped by and that I should be sure to thank my father for the sympathy card he’d sent.

  When we’d kiss she’d close her eyes and keep them closed, tight, and I’d look at her sometimes in the back seat of Ronny’s old Chevy going up the street with the bands of light moving across her face. And once when we were at the lake she took my hand and said Mike, do you ever just think about it? I asked what, and she said oh nothing, Mike, I guess I just mean about things.

  The coaches hollered at me after that interception, like I was a damn rookie sophomore. They said I caught the ball and stood still. But they were wrong—as sure as I know my own name I know I ran. My body moved up and toward the ball, it struck my hands and then my numbers, I squeezed it and went for the goal line. I think about that sometimes when I’m hauling, and sometimes I pull over on Central Avenue and look at the red bricks and striped awnings. I think of Suzy and her father. I grip the truck’s wheel, my engine idling.

  The Transplant

  The forsythia yellowed the northern city’s spring, and Luke wanted to get drunk as he lay in bed and once again began to read Melissa’s letter. The smoke from his cigarette curled golden in the room. The coffee in the mug next to him grew cool. At the foot of the bed sprawled Peaches, the mongrel retriever, sleeping atop a pair of Janet’s dirty blue jeans. Janet was Luke’s wife. She’d left in her usual rush of open dresser drawers and dripping faucets—her hair dryer, still plugged in, perched precariously on the lip of the bathroom sink—a half hour before Peaches’s sharp barks at the mailman brought Luke out of his dream and to his feet, fumbling for his robe, wincing as he stepped on one of Janet’s barrettes hiding open in the bedroom carpet. When he finally stumbled to the apartment’s back door to let the dog into the tiny yard he smelled the warm promise of the changing season, and then he saw a jay light at the no-longer-frozen birdbath, and he heard the jay sing its name. Luke thought to put out seed for the jay and for the brown thrashers and the towhees that sometimes came to scratch and the two male cardinals that fought now and then near the clothesline, but then he remembered that this wasn’t Virginia, even though he was looking at a jay. This was—Then the forsythia’s bright gaze distracted him. He caught his breath. Wagging her tail, Peaches chased the jay away.