Part 17 (1/2)

She doesn't say anything on the intercom, just buzzes me in.

The drone in my ear, it's like the tornado drill in elementary school, the hand-cranked siren that rang mercilessly, all of us hunched over on ourselves, facing the bas.e.m.e.nt walls, heads tucked into our chests. Beth and me wedged tight, jeaned legs pressed against each other. The sounds of our own breathing. Before we all stopped believing a tornado, or anything, could touch us, ever.

In the elevator, the numbers glow and the funniest feeling starts up inside me. It's like before a game. Chest vaulting, bounding on my toes, everything ricocheting in my head (lift arm higher, no fear, count it out, pull it tight, and make it sing), my body so tight and ready I feel like a coiled spring: Let me free, let me free, I will show you my ferocity, my rapture. Let me free, let me free, I will show you my ferocity, my rapture.

”Addy,” Coach says, opening the door, startled, like she's almost forgotten she called me, as if I've shown up at her own home, unaccountably, in the middle of the night.

The apartment is dark, one floor lamp coning halogen up in the far corner. A hooded fish tank effervesces on a table by the wall, the clouded water seeming almost to smoke, a fluorescent cauldron with no fish I can see.

She looks tiny, her iron-rod back sinking into itself. Bare-footed, a nylon windbreaker zipped up so high it covers her neck and the tip of her chin. Her hair dankly tucked behind her ears.

”Coach,” I start.

”Take off your shoes,” she says, her mouth pinched. I think it's because of the parquet floors, though they don't look that nice, and I slip off my flip-flops and rest them by the door.

We're standing in the vestibule, which gives way to a small dining area with a thick black-lacquered table. Just past it is the living room, braced by the hard angles of a leather sectional.

Turning back to her, I see something's in her hands, her tennis shoes bundled there, soaking wet.

”I washed them in the sink,” she says, answering my unasked question. Suddenly, she hoists them into my hands.

”Hold them, okay? Because I need to think. I need to get my head in order.”

I nod, but my eyes keep darting to the back of the large sectional sofa sprawling across the room like a spreading stain.

Maybe it's the gloomy dark, the phosph.o.r.esce from the glubbing aquarium.

But mostly it's the way Coach's eyes seem to vibrate when she looks at me, pupils like nail heads.

”What's over there?” I say, angling my head toward the sofa. ”Coach, what's over there?”

She looks at me for a second, running a hand through her hair, which looks so dark.

Then she lets her eyes drift over to the sofa, and I let mine too.

I'm holding the shoes tight and inching toward the sofa.

I can hear her breathing behind me, in rasping gulps. Watching.

The parquet floors squeak and the sofa looms before me, crooking around the center of the room.

Walking slowly, the surging bleach from the sneakers nearly making me choke, I feel something skitter under my bare foot and spin across the floor. Something small, like a b.u.t.ton or a spool of thread.

As I creep closer, ten-then-five-feet away from the living room area, the sofa back seems larger, taller than the football goalpost, than the Eagles emblem on the field, wings spread.

My right foot dangles over the circular rug in the center of the room. To step on it feels like stepping into black water.

Zzzt! My phone like Mexican jumping beans in my pocket. My phone like Mexican jumping beans in my pocket. Zzzt! Zzzt!

I'm sure Coach heard the vibration, but if she did, she doesn't show it, so fixed is she on the sofa, what lies behind it.

Turning my body, I finger for, and press, the Off b.u.t.ton so hard I nearly knock the phone from my pocket.

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

Me, now only a few steps from the back of the snaking sofa, peeking around the sofa's sharp corner, around its scaly leather arm. I see something on the floor.

”I let myself in with the key he gave me,” Coach is saying, answering more unasked questions. ”I rang the doorbell first, but he didn't answer. I walked in and there he was. Ohhh, there he was.”

First, I see the glint of dark blond hair twining in the weave of the rug.

Then, stepping forward, I see more.

Coach's sneakers slip from my hands, shoe string tickling my leg as they drop to the carpet with a soft clunk.

There he is.

There he is.

There's Sarge. There's Will.

”Addy,” Coach whispers, far behind me. ”I don't think you want to...I don't think you need to...Addy...is it like I thought?”

His chest bare, wearing only a towel, his arms stretched out, he's like one of those laminated saint pictures the Catholic girls always brought from catechism. Saint Sebastian, his head always thrown back, body both luminous and tortured.

”Addy,” says Coach, almost a whimper. Like little Caitlin, just waking up and scared.

I just keep looking. At Will. On the floor.

In those saint pictures, their bodies are always torn, split, lacerated. But their faces so lovely, so tranquil.

But Will's face does not look righteous and exalted.

My eyes fix on the thing that was Will's mouth, but is now a red flower, its tendrils sprawling to all corners and, like a poppy, an inky whorl at the center.

In those saint pictures, their eyes, lovingly lashed, are always looking up.

And, for all the ruin of Will's handsome face, his eyes, they are gazing up too.

But it seems to me not to the Kingdom of G.o.d but to the tottering ceiling fan.

Looking up so he doesn't have to see the ruin of his face.