B Read online

  1.

  I sat down in front of my computer with the idea of getting the imagined world into motion again, a new story or perhaps another chapter for my memoir if that was how it shook out. Aside from completing my Christmas shopping, and reading nine books for the literature course I had unthinkingly agreed to teach in the spring, my life was momentarily clear of the usual distractions. What do I mean by the usual distractions? My aged parents, my children, my former wives, my students, the Knicks, international crises, local crime (I recently had a car stolen), dreams of love.

  I was raring to go except for one minor though critical element. I was uninspired, had no ideas, merely will and desire and the grace of unexpected time. The blank screen in front of me pleaded for attention. I ventured an opening sentence, not a real one necessarily, more a claiming of territory. —The poet B left his house one morning in jacket and tie, shaved and showered, beard brushed, hair combed, at the top of his game, with the sense that he would never return. I studied the sentence a moment with burgeoning disappointment. Where could such a story go. I then effaced it word by word, leaving the initial ‘B’ so as not to have lost everything at once. The last thing I wanted was to find myself back at the beginning, that inhospitable, unnourishing, unfathomable place. That first violation of the page’s blankness, no matter how minimal, made me feel I was on my way. I warned myself against unearned exhilaration.

  It might be useful to have a subject, I thought, or an action, or an interesting attitude toward whatever material (though I had no material as yet). All I had was a character named B, the poet and fiction writer who represented me in my not yet fully conceived faux memoir. In virtually all of the chapters, some of which I thought of as stories in themselves, my stand-in, B, showed a sometimes amusing, often humiliating tendency to form obsessive attachments with inappropriate women. How many times could you go to that well without running dry? B’s romantic pursuit of women who were, in some not easily defined way, bad news, was gradually, I imagined, losing its charm.

  Well, I thought, who said that all fictional memoirs had to be charming? Involving might be sufficient, or affecting, or educational, or troubling, or inspiring, or violating. And even at his worst, and when was he otherwise, you couldn’t say that B was totally charmless. There was something winning about his feckless passions. All he wanted was human contact and love and some small degree of happiness and as he was getting older he pursued these ordinary goals with a doomed-to-fail urgency. Impatience was his undoing, had always been—B had a childish, volatile nature. Well, yes, but he tended to hide his childish longings except from people who were close to him for extended periods of time. He passed in the eyes of the world—didn’t he?—as an adult. It was a difficult disguise to pull off, but he managed it almost as well as most.

  Since he never quite understood how the world worked, the most negligible of chores were an adventure for him. Air travel, which he suffered for the sake of his career (you couldn’t give readings unless you were willing to fly), was invariably for B a wrenching transaction with the demons of the unknown. Most air passengers concerned themselves with take off and landing. B felt endangered any time he was off the ground. Not so anyone noticed of course, or not so he noticed anyone noticing. In the disguise of being an adult, B toughed out the ordinary. He thought superstitiously that if he worried enough about a potential disaster, he might escape unscathed. The worrying would assuage the gods of disaster perhaps. Or since it was the nature of disaster to happen unexpectedly, to worry about unhappy consequences was an almost sure way of avoiding them.

  Since B was an exaggerated version of the author, I knew more about B than I knew what to do with, which was my problem at the moment as I faced the almost blank screen of my computer. I was ready to set B in motion—that was the point wasn’t it?—but where, in what context? What could B do this time around that he hadn’t already done?

  I threw to the wind another chancy opening sentence. –It was not what B expected or imagined, not even one of the featured attractions of his idle hopes, which is what he said after the fact to anyone who would listen in defense of his behavior.

  That was a little better than the first one, but still it opened into nothing or worse, into anything or everything. I had no idea at this point what B had done or where I intended to send him. B could be going to a sporting event, where he was to tie up with one of his sons. That might be an interesting possibility, a basketball game or baseball game, the tickets given to him by his publisher, say. The story dealing with the son’s ambivalent feelings toward B which would reveal themselves through the dynamic of the game they were watching.

  —

  B could be waiting on a corner just down the street from Madison Square Garden for his son to arrive, this would be the first son of his third marriage. The son is already ten minutes late. B is wearing a gray, hooded full length down coat, an Italian coat purchased on sale at a now defunct Soho shop called Mano à Mano. His coat of course is of no importance to the story.

  B is almost always on time, hates to wait, hates it when others are late. His son, the one he is waiting to meet, tends to be late for their appointments, is always armed with an almost acceptable excuse when he arrives.

  One of the reasons B hates to wait is that he hates to waste time, hates to do nothing which is how it suits him to perceive waiting. So he walks up and back, walking a positive activity in his view, even if his pacing about is just a more energized version of staying in the same place. Occasionally, he glances at his watch to note his son’s duration of lateness.

  He wonders if his son is late with everyone or just with him. They have never talked much about it, his son an admirable person in almost all other ways, and B has gone out of his way not to make an issue of it. It concerns him that his son’s lateness has to do with an unexpressed anger toward him. It has shown itself in other ways too, in off the cuff remarks his son has made, in things his son has written. B has dealt with it by looking the other way.

  B muses on his own anger toward his own father—that’s never gone away—and it strikes him that his son is behaving toward him as he’s behaved toward his father. B has been a good father, he believes, but he has set a bad example as a son. It’s not that B wants to be angry with his father—he’s tried in his way to give it up—it’s just that it’s not in him not to be. He loves his father, but can hardly stand to be in the same room with him. B’s son loves him, but is sometimes grudging about spending time with him, is chronically late for their appointments.

  That his son is late (and getting later) gives B time to muse on this disappointing aspect of their relationship. At that moment, he notices a figure much like his son walking in his direction from some not easily determined distance, coming toward him while seeming—one of those odd city illusions—farther and farther away. He raises his arm to wave or thinks of raising it, not yet sure that the approaching figure is definitely his son. He experiences briefly (in a subliminal flash) the disappointment of thwarted expectation.

  Is this really the story I wanted to tell when I knocked out my intentionally vague opening sentence?

  The approaching figure in the distance is not his son, not even someone who much resembles him and B glances at his watch again, taking cognizance of fleeting time. His life is rushing by.

  B, angry at being kept in suspension, feels a hand on his shoulder. –Dad, sorry, the son says. They embrace.

  Or: his daughter arrives in his son’s place, explaining that the son had to do something else, an unavoidable commitment, at the last minute.

  Or: a young woman he doesn’t know, has never seen before, has never heard his son mention, arrives, bearing his son’s regrets. —Would you like to use his ticket? B asks.

  –I can’t she says. I have a prior commitment.

  Or: a former wife, the mother of the son, arrives with a message from the son who blah blah blah, the wife willing, if he doesn’t mind, to join him at the game. He does mind but is too
polite or too cowardly or too much the gentleman to say so.

  Or: A woman, a stranger, comes over to him and asks him (his son a half hour late) if he has an extra ticket to sell. He says he is waiting for someone but if that someone doesn’t arrive in the next...20 minutes, she is welcome to the ticket. Twenty minutes is a long time to stand around on a snowy December night and the woman says she’ll give twice the face value of the ticket. –Money is not the issue, B says. I’m waiting for my son. The notion outrages her and she gives B a skeptical look before straggling away.

  There is no story unless the son arrives, at least not the story about father and son he had assigned himself to tell.

  What’s happened to the son, what’s holding him up? Has the train broken down? Has he fallen asleep after staying up all night? Has he forgotten that this is the night of the game? Or maybe the son has forgotten that they arranged to meet at six o’clock in order to have dinner together and is planning to show up a few minutes before game time.

  B starts to move into the Garden complex to find a phone when he feels a hand on his shoulder stopping his movement. –Hey, Dad, his son says, sorry. The trains were impossible.

  So the story is back to its original premise. The son has shown up after all, hasn’t forgotten the date, has only been, hardly a surprise given their recent history together, characteristically delayed.

  –It’s probably too late to find a restaurant, B says. We’ll grab a bite inside.

  On his way through the doors, his son ahead of him, B reaches into his coat pocket for the tickets and comes up empty. He distinctly remembers taking the ticket envelope out of his wallet and transferring it to his right-hand coat pocket. He tries the left side pocket, but it is no surprise not to find it there.

  –Can’t find the tickets, Dad? his son asks.

  B admits to nothing, tries his pants pockets and then the interior breast pocket of his jacket.

  He remembers when he was talking to the woman, the one who wanted to buy a ticket from him, reaching into his coat pocket and feeling the envelope. It strikes him that she may have had a confederate come up behind him while they were talking—she had stayed around chatting him up—and the confederate had taken the ticket envelope from his pocket. In fact, he remembers, or thinks he does, a slight brush from behind during his conversation with the woman.

  Out of the side of his eye, he notices the woman standing with her back to one of the ticket-takers, a man next to her talking to someone else. He pulls at his son’s arm and without a word of explanation hurries toward the woman. She notices him and smiles in a friendly, slightly mocking way.

  –You’ve found your son, she says to him, and I’ve found my ticket.

  Her friendliness puts B at a disadvantage and he is embarrassed to accuse her of what may be a wholly unfounded suspicion. –Where did you get your ticket? he asks as if a casual question.

  –This nice man here, she says, pointing to the expensively dressed thug next to her, had an extra that he’s graciously let me have. The son looks from the woman to his father to the thug and has an immediate take on the situation. –Don’t Dad, he whispers to B. Meaning don’t make a scene please. B is fuming, though conflicted. His son is like his former wife in that it embarrasses him to be associated with someone behaving badly in public.

  B can’t be sure of course, and feels he has no right to make accusations on circumstantial evidence, but his gut feeling (not always reliable in the past) advises him that these people have taken advantage of him, have stolen his tickets, have ripped him off, and what is he going to do about it?

  –Nice to meet you, the woman says to his son as she and the thug go through the gate together, the man holding the tickets in such a way as to make it difficult for B to determine their color.

  –What was that about? the son asks.

  B shrugs. –What do you think it was about? he says.

  The son laughs. –Is it multiple choice? he asks. You imagine, probably wrongly, that the woman you spoke to had something to do with your lost tickets. Is that close?

  B shrugs, a partial acknowledgment.

  He hates more than anything to be taken advantage of, or (which is the same and different) to feel he has been taken advantage of. His obsession is to call the editor who gave him the tickets, find out the seat numbers and have the thieves dragged from their ill-gotten seats. —What we could do, he says, is get a good dinner somewhere and pass up the game or go to a sports bar and have dinner, such as it might be, and watch the game while we stuff our faces.

  –Well, I could just go home and watch the game on my own set, the son says with undisguised irritation. Dad, how could you have possibly lost the tickets?

  –I didn’t lose them, B says. They were stolen from my pocket.

  –By those people you were talking to before?

  B nods. –That’s my best guess, he says.

  –Dad, the son says, aggrieved with his father, you shouldn’t have let them get away with it.

  —

  Scrolling the text backward, I reread what I have written, changing a phrase here and there, grumbling to myself at the paucity of the imagining. Then I turn off the screen, shutting out B and his son who are still (and will remain) standing around in the cavernous lobby of Madison Square Garden, in one of those temporary states of inertia and disappointment that have been known to last a lifetime.

  2.

  It is only when B goes into his wallet for his gold Visa Card to pay for their overpriced retro-gourmet dinner does he discover that the game tickets are in his billfold in the very place he stashed them earlier. How strange that he had looked everywhere else for the tickets but hadn’t taken the trouble to check his wallet. So certain he had been that the tickets had been stolen. If they can find a taxi right away and the traffic isn’t too bad, they can get back to the Garden in time to see most of the second half.

  It takes a few harried minutes to find an unoccupied cab in the mood to stop for them. The son does not berate B for what must seem impossibly foolish to semi-crazy behavior on his father’s part, but wears a muted ironic smile.

  –I guess it’s good that you didn’t accuse those people of stealing your tickets, Dad, he says as soon as they reenter the Garden complex.

  B lets his son’s remark echo in his head and wonders whether to take umbrage although in all probability he already has.

  They arrive at their seats almost five minutes into the third quarter with the Knicks behind by eleven points. Momentarily, Harper hits a three pointer and the deficit is cut to eight.

  –Maybe we’ll bring them luck, the son says. The two teams exchange wasted opportunities and B can see that his team is as flat as last week’s opened club soda.

  3.

  The Knicks are only one point behind Portland going into the fourth quarter, but B has a sinking feeling about the outcome, a sense that his team’s will is deficient tonight, which is what he says.

  –Don’t be so pessimistic, Dad, his son says. You always think the worst is going to happen.

  It’s true that he feels that way some of the time, perhaps much of the time, perhaps always in conjunction with sporting events in which he has a rooting interest. The thing is, he tends to be right in these dire intuitions more often than not, and what a pleasure it is when he happens to be wrong. The Knicks score the first basket of the fourth quarter on a breakaway layup by Starks off a steal by Oakley. B is encouraged, but doesn’t allow himself to dare to hope.

  —

  I have not yet decided on the outcome of the game. Either alternative, win or lose, provides a banal or unsurprising resolution. What if the story cuts away to something else—to B and his son walking to the subway after the game—the instant the potentially winning shot left the shooter’s hands. Unfair to the reader, of course, but more interesting than the more conventional alternatives.

  The Knicks move up by five with seven minutes to go, more an example of attrition than exceptional play.

&nbs
p; –You still think they’re going to lose, Dad? his son asks.

  Before he can answer, someone on Portland hits a three point shot and the lead is reduced to two.

  –This game is up for grabs, B says. Whoever wants it more is going to win.

  –Whoever’s going to win is going to win, the son says with a smile. That’s a paraphrase.

  –No it isn’t, B says. Portland and the Knicks exchange baskets and the lead remains at two with the Knicks in possession of the ball, moving tentatively down the floor. A familiar-looking woman sitting catty-cornered to B catches his eye and winks at him. He tries to remember where he knows her from and draws a blank. A moment later it strikes him that he had met her at a meeting of a 12-step group called Heartbreak Anonymous.

  While the two teams move back and forth in sometimes capricious, sometimes desperate haste before his eyes, B finds himself musing on his impatient wait for his son earlier in the evening. The pavement is icy and he can feel the damp through the soles of the gray New Balance running shoes he wears for all occasions. He remembers walking up and back to keep the blood flowing, hands stuffed in his pockets, taking stock of the folks that precede him through the Garden doors. By being late, his son has in some sense reversed roles with him (B’s father had been invariably late for their appointments particularly when he was small).

  Suddenly he is aware that the people around him have risen to their feet and are clapping their hands and shouting encouragement. B glances at the scoreboard and notices that the Knicks are up by six with two minutes and 20 seconds left to play. His son, standing next to him, puts his arm around B’s shoulders and gives him a proprietary hug. Portland misses a three-point attempt, but the Knicks eager for the rebound lose the ball out of bounds in an in-house dispute. B groans as if his own failed poise were responsible for the error.

  B remembers the time he played the game in college, a back-up point guard on a team that lost almost twice as many games as they won. There was this one game in particular he remembers when he got a chance to start against a local rival (the usual starter having come down with food poisoning or some such thing) and he had the game of his life. He had missed his first two shots embarrassingly and had decided to focus his attention on the passing game. The first shot he made was in the waning seconds of the first half, a buzzer beater from considerably beyond his range. He had made the shot after taking the ball away from someone who was trying to dribble around him. Encouraged by his teammates’ praise, he found himself “in the zone” in the second half, the ball doing whatever he asked of it. He made passes he had seen great point guards make on television, hit shots he had never even attempted in practices. With each success, he grew more daring and inspired. It was as if he had become someone else.