The Throwback Special Read online

  “People sometimes ask me if it was a good marriage,” the pizza guy said. “And I’m like, compared to what? It was fine. We lived in the same house. We grilled on the patio. We selected paint colors. We bought stuff from the neighborhood kids who came to the door. Fine. So then last January we get a letter in the mail. It’s a check for one hundred and seventy dollars, made out to both of us, along with a letter explaining that the check is a payout from a class action suit that we didn’t even know we were a part of. Turns out that the guy who ran Firestarters had gone to jail for fraud. He hadn’t actually matched people together based on their profiles, using what they’d called sophisticated algorithms of affection. There were no algorithms. There wasn’t even a computer. In the Firestarters office? You know what they found? Twenty cases of diet soda and a color printer and a big bulletin board full of headshots. This guy and his staff just matched people together based on their pictures, without any consideration of other information about pet allergies or ideal vacations or religious affiliation, et cetera. And even though his success rate was as good as any of the other top dating sites, he went to jail, and there was a class action suit, and all of the defrauded couples got a check.”

  “That’s a sweet deal,” Jeff said.

  “When I first found out, I was excited. It was a jolt. Like, okay, you and me, honey, we’re outside of science here. We’re off the grid. This isn’t about being a city mouse or a night owl or a neat freak. It was like a new start. It was like we could start over, almost like we were strangers. The thought that we had not been united by a computer I found exciting, and even kind of sexy. It was exhilarating to think that we may or may not be well suited for each other in terms of temperament or retirement goals. It’s like I suddenly had a mistress, but the mistress was my wife. It really spun my head around. No algorithm! But listen, guys, my wife had completely the opposite reaction. She said she suddenly felt that she did not know me at all, and she said that made her frightened. Wow, I didn’t think anyone actually used that garlic dipping sauce. She said she was scared of me, this big stranger in her home. My big boots, my big parka. And she said that this news just validated certain suspicions that she had had over the years about how truly incompatible we are.”

  Trent was saying something. Andy, George, Chad, and Jeff leaned perceptibly toward the pizza guy. None of the men would have necessarily considered the pizza guy big.

  “She said she had never truly been happy, but she always thought the problem must be with her. She said the science, the computer, had intimidated her. She said she knew it sounded silly, but she believed if she had left me she would have been leaving reason and common sense. And so while I’m excited by all this, she starts flinching around me, and pressing her back against the wall every time I walk by. She starts sleeping in the guest room, and when I go there to smell her clothes and sheets, I find a kitchen knife under the bed. She was acting crazy, which was attractive to me because one of the things that had always bothered me about her was how completely measured and reasonable she always was. So now she was unreasonable, and I loved it, but when I moved toward her, she got even more scared and unreasonable, which I found almost irresistible. And we fought all the time, which was exciting, but it became clear that she in some way considered me—and not the convicted founder of Firestarters—the fraudulent and deceitful party. The whole marriage just disintegrated in a really exciting way immediately after that crappy little check arrived. In April—early April—she asked me to move out. So I moved out.”

  “That is some story,” Andy said. He patted the pizza guy on the shoulder, and made his way toward the keg. Chad chewed on the inside of his lip, considering whether or not to tell the story about the nest of mice in his dishwasher.

  “Late June, she calls me one day, out of the blue, completely frantic about a noise in our chimney. Her chimney. It’s loud and it’s low down, directly above the damper. She said it was a loud chittering sound, and she thought it was a squirrel or a raccoon or a bat. She held the phone to the fireplace, but I couldn’t really hear anything. She said she was sorry to bother me, but she didn’t have anyone else to call. So I went over there to the house we used to live in together. I didn’t mind. I was happy to see her. She had a weird new haircut, but she looked nice. After a few minutes by the fireplace, I heard the noise, a very agitated chirping sound. Really loud. My first thought was squirrel. My wife sat on the love seat behind me with her laptop.”

  “Guys?” Trent said.

  “She was trying to find audio recordings of different animals stuck in chimneys. She played them. She apologized again for calling me. I said it wasn’t a problem. I put on my big work gloves, and maybe she had that scared look again. She said, Hold on, does it sound like this? She played another recording of an animal stuck in a chimney. All the recordings of stuck animals sounded like the animal stuck in our chimney. Every one. I got a cardboard box from the basement and I put it inside the fireplace. She said to hold on, she wanted to look up a few more things. I squatted down, and I used the poker to open the damper. When the damper opened, I threw down the poker and got ready to close the flaps on the cardboard box when the squirrel fell out. Wait, my wife said. Don’t do that. At first nothing happened, but then all of a sudden—plop plop plop—three baby birds fell into the box, squawking and cheeping. And then I could hear the mother bird up in the chimney, making all kinds of noise. Now of course the mother bird sounded exactly like the recording of birds that my wife had played on her computer. It’s birds, I said. My wife said, I told you to wait. She read to me from her computer. She said they were chimney swifts. She said they’re common in our area. She said they would have flown the nest in another two to three weeks, all of them, mother and young. There had been no need to do anything. I could have left them alone and they would have been fine, but now what? We both looked down into the box. The baby birds were wet-looking, and covered in black dust. Their eyes weren’t even open. Christ, Henry, she said, they’re federally protected! I took the birds outside in the box, I don’t know why, and then a while later I brought them back in, so at least they could be close to their mother. My wife paced around the room, and then she got back on the love seat with her laptop. She was leaning way over, her hair nearly touching the screen. She said, Please don’t do anything. Just don’t do anything at all. She found something online. Plenty of other people have had baby birds fall out of their chimneys into a box. The thing to do, she said, is place them gently back where they came from. They will try to clutch you with their claws, but they will not hurt you. Try, she said, to reach above the damper and place them on the wall of the chimney. They like to be on a vertical surface. I thought you weren’t supposed to touch baby birds, I said. She said, Just put them back! They’re federally protected. I took off my gloves and one by one I picked up the baby birds and placed them back into the chimney, above the damper. They did grip my fingers with their claws, which made it difficult to let them go. But I did it, and then I closed the damper. The mother and the babies made a terrible racket for a while, but then they all got quiet. Everything seemed to be okay. My wife closed her laptop. She stood up from the love seat, and thanked me for coming, though she wouldn’t look at me. My hands were black from the soot in the chimney.” The pizza guy looked down at his hands. “I told her I thought we made a good team. We saved those birds, I said. She said, We saved those birds from the danger that you created for those birds. Which, she said, feels pretty familiar. Then I left.”

  “What happened with your consulting job?” Chad said.

  “Long story short,” the pizza guy said, “the next weekend I was down in the basement. I would come in through the bulkhead, sit in the old rocking chair that used to be in the nursery, and just listen to my wife and kids upstairs. I liked to hear them. This night they were playing Yahtzee—my son, my daughter, my wife, and some man named Kent I had heard a few times before. It’s my Yahtzee game, by the way. I’ve had it since I was a kid. They were playi
ng in the living room, and every time they shook the dice in that cup, the birds in the chimney went nuts. They clearly were thriving. They chirped like crazy at the dice, and then my family and Kent all laughed and laughed like it was the funniest thing. I could hear my daughter say, They like it! And then Kent said, Or they don’t! Laugh, laugh, laugh. Now who’s the fraud? Now who? And that’s why I went upstairs, and that’s how this whole thing got started.”

  “Guys?” Trent said.

  “Chad? George?” Trent said.

  “Jeff?” Trent said.

  “Take it easy,” the pizza guy said, and he left. He had another delivery.

  “Guys, let’s do this,” Trent said.

  •

  FANCY DRUM lay capsized in the hallway, but really, any container would have worked just fine. With mock altruism several men simultaneously offered up the use of their capacious jockstraps, while Gary suggested Vince’s purse.

  “It’s not a purse,” Vince said.

  Someone stripped a pillowcase off a pillow, and the case was passed hand to hand up to Trent, who stood in front of the television. Trent began to transfer ping-pong balls from a large freezer bag into the pillowcase. Some of the balls were yellowed like teeth. Four or five of the men tried quickly to formulate a joke about Trent’s weight, and Gary got there first. “Don’t eat them, Trent!” Gary yelled, just as Bald Michael was about to do his Cookie Monster voice. Trent smiled mirthlessly, patting his stomach. The weight had simply come with his third marriage. His habits had not changed. He hadn’t stopped going to the gym, hadn’t altered his eating or drinking. This was just who he was in this marriage. With his first wife he had been an outdoorsman; with his second wife he had been really into live music, and he had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day; with his third wife, apparently, he would be overweight. From what Trent could gather online, his first wife still enjoyed the outdoors, as did her current husband.

  When Trent had finished dropping the ping-pong balls into the pillowcase, he gripped the opening as one would grip the neck of a large bird, and he gave a trial shake. The soft clacking of the balls in the case was pleasing, and several men closed their eyes to hear it better. It is true, however, that many men felt the absence of the lottery drum, though they knew it to be ridiculous and excessive. The drum, like the conference room, had become part of the way things were done, and its excess, it might be said, had become part of its necessity. It was, perhaps, after all, appropriate. Not just any container would have worked just fine. More than one man had the odd sensation that a lottery without the drum somehow wouldn’t count. Others felt exposed somehow, or denuded by the loss of ceremony. This anxiety caused them to be garrulously nonchalant about ceremony.

  “RIP, Fancy Drum!” Myron called out, raising his red cup of beer. “Let it never be said she shirked a fight.”

  “To Fancy Drum!” the men said, and drank. Several men slapped Steven on the back. This small tribute was composed of a complex alloy of sincerity and derision, the ratio of which was a dark mystery to every man present. Still, it was sufficient for Steven, who stopped pouting, and accepted the attention with a smile and a raised cup. It could be said of Steven, as it could be said of each man, that he was the plant manager of a sophisticated psychological refinery, capable of converting vast quantities of crude ridicule into tiny, glittering nuggets of sentiment. And vice versa, as necessary.

  “She’ll be back,” Steven said.

  “Yes, she’ll be back . . .” Gil said, raising his arms like a choral conductor.

  “But she won’t be back tonight!” the men shouted on cue.

  “Let’s keep it down,” Robert said.

  Indeed, the men were boisterous. Peter chewed his mouthguard, feeling the strain, poignantly familiar from a childhood spent salvaging curbside furniture, of making do.

  Traditionally, the commissioner said a few words before starting the lottery. Nothing formal, nothing prepared, just a welcome, maybe a joke. The men grew quiet. Trent slung the pillowcase of ping-pong balls over his shoulder. This posture, combined with Trent’s recent weight gain, and perhaps with the thin hotel towels beneath the keg, and possibly also with the experience of waiting anxiously for a special annual event that would be over all too quickly, necessitating a return to normal life, evoked for some men the image of Santa Claus. Trent shifted his weight from foot to foot. His face glistened with sweat and tomato sauce, and he unconsciously wiped his forehead with the pillowcase. He removed from his back pocket a wrinkled piece of paper, then used his mouth to unfold the paper. This was one of the worst things that could have happened, and a wave of agitation passed through the crowded room.

  “I’ve written an invocation,” Trent said. “A rhyming invocation.” He cleared his throat. “Now, if you would, please bow your heads.”

  The men, all of them, stared into their cups. They could hear the tap of the cold rain on the window. This was quite possibly going to be worse than the year George was commissioner, when he circled the conference table, speaking slowly about the freedom of assembly, the value of ritual, and the theory of play espoused by Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga. He had touched all of the men as he passed their chairs.

  “What a devout group of assholes,” Trent said, laughing. He balled up the sheet of paper and threw it at Myron. “Come on, let’s do this. Carl?”

  Carl, still wearing the Jim Burt jersey, turned off the sconce lights above the beds, and turned on the projector, which he had made from a shoe box, a magnifying glass, and his phone. In this way the men could see, projected onto the wall above the television, the “board,” or list of players available for selection, which Carl would update after each man’s turn. Although this jury-rigged projection system was resourceful, and not vastly inferior to the system in the conference room, it nevertheless caused some mild embarrassment.

  “Bravo, Carl,” Tommy said.

  “Focus!” Andy said.

  Trent lowered his hand into the pillowcase, first grazing the ping-pong balls gently with his fingertips, then plunging his fingers into the mass, scooping and mixing, rolling them across his moist palm. He pinched a ball (Chad’s) between his thumb and forefinger, then dropped it. He selected another ball, and gingerly lifted it from the sack like an egg of the endangered loggerhead turtle. Before looking at the name on the ball, he held it aloft, presenting it to the room.

  “God, I think that might be mine,” Bald Michael whispered from the open door of the bathroom.

  It was as one would expect: Some men in the room fervently wished to have the first selection. Gary was one of them. George. Wesley, strangely enough. Carl. Steven. These men wanted a full board, a large menu. They knew what they liked, and they were not frightened of options. And then there were other men who desperately did not want to choose first, who were at this moment, this and every year, filled with a sense of dread that their initials were on the ball in the commissioner’s hand. The prayer that they silently prayed was the same one they chanted as children beneath beds or behind woodpiles: Please, let me not be found. From the hallway came the sound of ice spilling violently into a bucket. Randy was one of these men. And Tommy. Robert, for whom choice was oppressive. Myron, like all Myrons. Bald Michael, who became paralyzed in the well-stocked aisles of supermarkets or home improvement stores. And perhaps especially for Derek, whose anxiety about the lottery, this and every year, was unique and complicated. Derek was concerned—nearly to the point of nausea, in fact—about the thorny psycho-

  racial thicket into which he, a mixed-race man, would be plunged if the commissioner called his name. He could, with the first pick, just choose Lawrence Taylor. Throughout the years, most men had chosen Taylor with the first pick, either because they genuinely wanted to be Taylor, the prime mover of the drama, or, in one or two cases, because they worried what the other men would think if they did not choose Taylor. (In those years the reenactment had been marred by a mincing and tentative antihero.) But Derek had always been vaguely trou
bled by the portrayal of Taylor as villain—or, more accurately, as monster, a kind of soulless, inexorable beast who laid waste to Caucasian linemen on his way to the wavy-haired former Notre Dame quarterback who was dating Cathy Lee Crosby. Who leaped almost supernaturally onto Theismann’s back—who jumped him, basically—surprising Theismann at home at night in the safety of his pocket. Not content merely to sack Theismann, but intent on destroying him, snapping his bones, ending his career. Taylor as black devil, as bogeyman. A noble savage, at best. For the men, Derek thought, Taylor offered the opportunity not only to sublimate their roiling, middle-class aggression, but also to take a transgressive racial thrill ride. Not an emphatic immersion but a ritualized, sanctioned projection of fear and disgust. In a helmet, in a jersey, their volatile subconscious had an outlet that seemed both safe and dangerous. Was Derek making this all up? Of course Taylor had truly been a ferocious and relentless player who scared the daylights out of offensive players and coaches, but Derek could not help but feel a twinge of distaste about the way that some of the men played Taylor, with a kind of wild-eyed, watch-your-daughters primitivism, licensed both by Taylor’s revolutionary abilities and, unfortunately, by his considerable off-the-field troubles. Granted, you could not portray Taylor with the workaday, gap-toothed brutality of the archetypical white linebacker (Butkus, Nitschke, Lambert, Ham, Urlacher), but one needn’t venture into minstrelsy, either. So Derek, were he to choose first, could choose to choose Taylor, seizing the role for himself, rejecting caricature and adding nuance. He could modify, adapt, and deepen the portrayal, providing a model for those who followed. He could play Taylor with ferocity, but also with dignity and humanity and intelligence, and in this way he could perhaps subtly instruct his peers. But seriously, even if he could somehow see his way toward some authentic vision of Taylor, both distinctive and emblematic, did he really believe that he, a lone man with a righteous cause, could enact change? What kind of fantasy was that? Derek noticed for the first time that George had cut off his ponytail. And if he were thinking in terms of exemplum or emblem, wasn’t he already far, far away from an authentic and idiosyncratic representation of Taylor? Unless of course being a symbol was integral to Taylor’s particularity. Unless, that is, Taylor himself was playing a role, and so to portray Taylor was to take on the role of a role, to act like an actor. That sounded right. That sounded like being black. Wasn’t it true that Derek, too, felt at all times like both a distinctive person and a representative, man and mannequin? What would more likely happen, Derek knew, was that the role would seize him, and not the other way around. By choosing Taylor, he would create—reveal? create? reveal?—a metadramatic racial tension. Though light-skinned, Derek was black, and here he would be, irreducibly, a black man choosing Lawrence Taylor.