This Blue Ball | Page 7

out of nowhere among his
childish preoccupations. That is where the prejudices and mental shortcuts that we
espouse come in handy: you know, almost immediately, where someone is coming from
and you react accordingly. An agile mind with no strong affiliations is unsettling by
comparison.
Andrew was both the easy and the difficult part of their arrangement. He was a
computer-fascinated, avoid-the-sunlight kind of kid, and his fascination with video games
gave Gary an instant rapport, at least until Andrew recognized ACD (adult coordination
disease) in him, which prevented Gary's fingers from executing a triple-double attack
jump at just the right moment. Of course, charming an 11 year-old boy was never part of
Gary's calculation. You might think that on top of every other action in this grand
campaign, Gary would consider this action the most trivial. But in fact this was
substantively different from the rest of his campaign, because there was no fantasy in it --
it was an interaction that could not be deeply and covertly sexualized. Still, on a
therapeutic level -- pleasurable in its own way -- he enjoyed the interaction, and felt how
his years of experience could provide some guidance for a boy who otherwise generally
refused tutelage.
Laughter can be the first thing that binds, and the first element of a relationship that
disappears. When he discovered Alice's sense of humor, Gary was surprised, because it is
a broad sense of humor, trailing into a slapstick, lose- your-composure, snorting guffaw.
She said it's a black thing -- not to exclude him but, he thought, to explain something to
him that he didn't seem to understand. He had developed a little private kind of laugh of
his own, and it wasn't until they've relaxed over a few dinners and at a few parks that he
found himself laughing in unison with her over Andrew's attempts to look the grown- up,
as he wiped the orange soda from his face at a self-serve soda machine.

One night the humor in their short-lived relationship expired. He could remember it only
through the shimmer of therapies of a different kind -- six packs, scotch, an occasional
baggie of grass, a prostitute or two, night clubs, gambling, pornography. Whenever that
night came through his cleverly laid fog, he still felt the confusion and anger that
accompanied him out the door and down the hall.
Alice was a woman who was slow to anger and quick to dismiss. When he said one night,
in an irritated and exasperated moment, though half humorously he thought, that she
should feel lucky that he was there -- she comprehended in an instant the subtext and the
implication, and she told him that it was time he got going, matter-of-factly and without
any gloss, but with enough emphasis that he equally understood that this was the end and
he ought not call again. He couldn't resist calling and leaving a series of messages, none
answered, and finally he drew the consequence necessary for a shred of self-respect.
He had felt for those few weeks to be above the fray regarding race politics in America;
he looked at his comment up and down and thought it barely "inappropriate," and thought
she was reacting all out of bounds. Okay, she chafed at the notion that she should feel
grateful. It wasn't like he treated her like his property or less than an equal. Nothing could
have been further from his mind, he told himself. It was all a giant mistake, and she
couldn't get past that. She was the racist, not him. That was a hard conclusion that he
finally found himself comforted with, and he generally did his best not to dwell on it for
the sake of the memory of their relationship, though it was now a relationship in negative
relief, a contrapositive image of itself.
Now, this evening, he stood across the street, and strolled across the street, up the
sidewalk, to the door. He rang the buzzer, perhaps a little too abruptly for a guest, rather
than a regular visitor. She didn't ask who it was, just buzzed him up. The hallway smelled
of cilantro and curry and a quarter century of dust, as it had always done. "The hall of a
thousand smells," she had called it, dryly. The front door to her apartment was open, and
he knocked briefly on the frame, called, then went in.
Alice replied from Andrew's bedroom -- Gary assumed that she was orchestrating this to
avoid falling into pleasantries and mistaken impressions. He found them looking at a
drawing that Andrew had made of the scratches and comparing it, from a distance, with
the screen itself.
"Hello, Gary, thanks for coming," Alice said without looking at him. Andrew looked over
his shoulder and said,