Today Jerry West will go to see a
doctor in Minneapolis. He will have to
say, Yes, I know who Jerry West is, and, No. No relation. He will also have to say, I played basketball
as a junior in high school, but I wasn’t any good, and, Actually, I always
preferred baseball to basketball anyway. Before all that happens, the CHECK
ENGINE light will illuminate on his dashboard.
Before that, he will throw the television remote against the floorboard
heaters with enough force that the back of the remote will fly off and the
batteries will be ejected.
In short, he will no longer be able
to convince Laura that going to see the doctor in Minneapolis is okay. But right now it is just past midnight and he
is trying to read Into Thin Air in bed without the light from the lamp
bothering Laura. He knows he is a decade
behind the curve with this one; his colleagues have all told him so. If he were to be terribly honest, he would
admit that he only purchased it because he was tired of feigning interest in
golf.
His boss and some other colleagues
were always talking about fades and slices, draws and eagles. Jerry knew nothing about these things. In fact, he had only swung a golf club a
handful of times. He hated the game, and
he had a set of unused women’s golf clubs in his home office to prove it. So when the topic of mountaineering came up
last week at lunch, he knew he had found his in. He could impress them all with various
minutia about the disaster on Everest; he could point out all the ways—in
hindsight—they went wrong. But the only
thing he could think about as he read about the hypothermia, the dizzying
effects of the high-altitude, and frost-bite that works its way through the
sturdiest boots and heartiest wind-proof jackets and mess tents—the only thing
at all, that came to his mind as he lay in his bed listening to Laura gently
snore beside him—was how fucking stupid an idea it was to try to climb a
mountain that juts five miles into the clouds.
In Nepal.
It began to piss him off, and he put
the book down. Turned out the light.
He knew tomorrow (he thought of it as tomorrow because he had yet to
fall asleep, but it was really today) would not go well. He didn’t know yet about the television
remote or the CHECK ENGINE light, but, of course, he knew about the doctor’s
appointment in Minneapolis, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. And it couldn’t be rescheduled. He turned on the fan and pulled the covers up
to his chin.
Jerry?
Huh?
I love you.
I love you, too.
Do you need to have the fan on?
It’s not blowing on you. Why does it matter?
I can’t find my earplugs. The fan makes too much noise and I can’t
sleep as it is. First with the
light. Now the fan.
You know I can’t sleep without the
fan on.
Fine. But now I’m not going to sleep
and I think I’m getting sick as it is.
It’s fine.
Silence. (In the silence, Jerry thought about the
schedule he needed to finish for work to make sure that there was adequate
coverage for the upcoming weeks. No
matter how he worked the schedule people were bound to bitch about having to
put in a few extra hours. Lying in bed,
he didn’t have to act like this didn’t bother him. He told himself he would take extra care to
think about which time slots fit worked best for each person. He would be proactive.
He thought about the chili he made
that evening. Even though he had ground
the dried chili peppers himself in the coffee grinder, the chili didn’t have
any kick. He wondered how he could get
the right balance of heat next time.
Then he remembered some of the recipes called for chocolate. That
wouldn’t provide the heat, but it was certainly something to try to deepen the
flavor.
He thought about the home run Rivera
gave up in the top of the eighth inning.
Grand slam. Only the second he
had given up in his career. And he had
already walked in a run, too. What was
he doing in that game anyway? They had
the lead and Joba had loaded the bases, but it was a game in mid-May. Why didn’t Girardi let Joba work out of the
jam he had created? Jerry thought about
the fact that he knew the ball was gone from the sound Kubel’s bat made when he
made contact. No doubt about it. Rivera knew, too.
He thought about his meeting with
the Faribo townspeople tomorrow [today].
What an inconvenience it was that he had to go all the way up to
Minneapolis for a 7:45 am appointment only to turn around and rush back. And for what?
So he could sit and listen to the businessmen and businesswomen of
Faribo heap praise on Harry Brown’s for selling x number of cars in the past 50
years? So he could eat warm potato salad
and drink warm lemonade in a banquet hall full of professional bullshitters?)
Jerry probably would have gone on
thinking a lot of other things, but he was interrupted by what Laura had been
thinking during the silence. He wasn’t a
mind-reader. Not even close. He would not have given a second thought
about what Laura was thinking during the silence had she not spoken. He wasn’t trying to be rude. He wasn’t ignoring her at all, really. He thought their conversation was over when
she said, It's fine.
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