Infected

15.

Coming home to apartment B-203 always generated mixed feelings. The place wasn’t much, one meaningless apartment in a massive cluster of identical buildings. Windywood was the kind of complex where even flawless directions would have people guessing; there were enough buildings to necessitate a little network of roads with smarmy names like Evergreen Drive, Shady Lane and Poplar Street. After one or two wrong turns, the plain-looking, three-story, twelve-unit complexes were all you could see.

His building was only two down from the complex entrance, right across the street from the Washtenaw Party Store. Made things quite convenient. Meijer’s grocery store was only a couple of miles away; he hit that for the big grocery runs. For everything else the party store did the trick. It was a low-rent part of town, and the party store wasn’t exactly a high-class operation-there was always some welfare reject on the pay phone just outside the door, working a “deal” or having a far-too-loud argument with a significant other.

Perry didn’t have jack squat to eat at home. The party store had a great little deli, so he stopped for a ham sandwich with Texas mustard, and grabbed a six-pack of Newcastle beer. Sure enough, some chick was screaming into the phone. She held the receiver in one hand, a well-bundled baby in the other. Perry tried to ignore her as he walked in and tried to ignore her again as he walked out, but the girl was loud. He didn’t feel any sympathy for her-if he could rise above his background and upbringing, anyone could. People who lived that way wanted to live that way.

He pulled into the apartment complex and into his carport, which was less than an eighth of a mile from the entrance. The girl bothered him-if he’d made it to the NFL, he’d live in a big house somewhere, far from the rabble of Ypsilanti. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a failure. He should have more than this. The apartment was nice in its way, and he hated to feel ungrateful for the things that he had, but there was no denying the place was low-rent.

Seven years ago no one thought he’d wind up in anything less than a mansion. “Scary” Perry Dawsey, then a sophomore at the University of Michigan, had been named All-Big Ten linebacker along with senior Cory Crypewicz of Ohio State. Crypewicz went in the first round to Chicago. He pulled down $2.1 million a year, not counting the $12 million signing bonus. It was a far cry from Perry’s meager tech-support salary.

But Crypewicz hadn’t been as good as Perry, and all the country knew it. Perry had been a monster, the kind of defensive player who could dominate a game with his sheer ferocity. The press had tagged him with several nicknames, “Beast,” “Cro-Mag” and “Fang” among them. Of course, ESPN’s Chris Berman always seemed to have the last word on nicknames, and the first time he used the “Scary” tag, it stuck.

My, but how a cheap-ass cut block could change things.

The knee injury had been awful, a complete blowout damaging the ACL, the medial collateral, every frigging ligament in the area. It even caused bone damage, fracturing the fibula and chipping his patella. A year’s worth of reconstructive surgeries and rehabilitation didn’t bring him back to full speed. The fact was, he just couldn’t cut it anymore. Where he’d once raged across the football field, inflicting his savage authority on anyone foolish enough to cross his path, now he could do little better than hobble along, chasing running backs he could never catch, taking hits from blockers he could never avoid.

Without the release provided by football’s physical play, Perry’s violent streak threatened to eat him up from the inside. Thank God for Bill, who’d helped him adjust. Bill had been there for the next two years, acting as Perry’s conscience, making him aware of his ever-present temper.

Perry yanked up the Ford’s parking brake and hopped out. He was Michigan born and bred, and he loved the cold months, but winter made the complex look desolate, barren and hopeless. Everything seemed pale-gray and lifeless, as if some fairy-tale force had sucked the color from the landscape.

He put his hand in his pocket. The crinkly white Walgreens bag was still there. The itching was just too intense. He’d stopped at a drugstore just a few blocks from his apartment complex and bought a tube of Cortaid. It was silly to feel like he’d given in, like he was weak just for buying a tube of anti-itch medicine, but he felt that way regardless.

He wondered what priceless piece of wisdom his father would have regarding the medicine. Probably something along the lines of, You can’t tough it out from a rash? Jee-zus, boy, you piss me off. Somebody’s going to have to teach you some discipline. He’d have followed up that comment with the belt, or a backhand, or his fist.

Dear ol’ Dad. Humanitarian and all-around great guy. Perry shook the thoughts away. Dad was long dead, the victim of well-deserved cancer. Perry didn’t need to concern himself with that man anymore.

Sliding over the parking-lot snow, that thin film no shovel could seem to finish off, he reached the apartment building’s dented green front door and keyed in. He grabbed his mail, mostly junk mail and coupons, then trudged up the two flights to his apartment. Walking up the steps dragged his jeans against the welts on his leg, amplifying the itching-it was as if someone had jammed a burning coal in his skin. He forced himself to ignore it, to show at least a modicum of discipline, as he unlocked the door to his apartment.

The layout was simple: facing out the door to the hall, the kitchen nook was to the left and the living room was to the right. Just past the kitchen nook was the “dining area.” The spot was tiny to begin with; cluttered by both the computer desk that held his Macintosh and a small round table with four chairs, the place had barely enough room to maneuver.

The living room was decent-size, comfortable and sparsely furnished with his big old couch, in front of which sat a hand-me-down coffee table. An end table with a lamp tucked up against the couch. A small recliner-too small for Perry’s body-was the habitual territory for Bill on football Sundays. Directly across from the couch and to the right of the door was the entertainment center with a thirty-two-inch flat-screen and a Panasonic stereo system, the only expensive items Perry owned. No need for a landline phone: work provided his cell, and cable modem provided his Internet connection.

There were no plants and few decorations. On the wall above the entertainment center, however, were Perry’s numerous football accolades. A shelf held trophies for high-school MVP awards and his treasured Gator Bowl MVP trophy from his freshman year. Plaques dotted the walls: Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, Detroit Free Press Mr. Football award from his senior year in high school, a dozen others.

Two items hung side by side, obviously commanding a place of honor among the awards. The first was something he’d been stunned to see, even when he knew it was coming, something that had marked a turning point in his life: his acceptance letter from the University of Michigan. The other item he both loved and hated: his snarling, sweat-streaked, helmet-clad face on the cover of Sports Illustrated. In the picture he was tackling Ohio State’s Jervis McClatchy, who was completely wrapped up in Perry’s bulging, dirt-and grass-covered arms. The cover read, “So good it’s SCARY: Perry Dawsey and the Wolverine D lead Michigan to the Rose Bowl.”

He loved the cover for obvious reasons-what athlete doesn’t dream of making the cover of SI? He hated it because, like many football players, he was superstitious. The cover of SI was suspected by many to carry a curse. If you’re an unbeatable team and you make the cover, you’re going to lose the next game. Or, if you’re the best linebacker in a decade and you make the cover, your career will soon be over. Part of him couldn’t shake the stupid feeling that if he hadn’t made that cover, he’d still be playing football.

The place was small and admittedly a bit ghetto, but it was a veritable luxury condo compared to his childhood home. He treasured his privacy. It was a little lonely at times, but he could also do anything he wanted anytime he wanted. No one to track his schedule, no one to care if he brought home some girl he met at the bar, no one to bitch if he left his dirty socks on the kitchen table. No one to scream at him for reasons unknown. Sure, it wasn’t the mansion he should have had, it wasn’t the abode of an NFL star, but it was his.

At least he’d found a job in Ann Arbor, home of his alma mater. He’d fallen in love with the town during college. Hailing from a small town like Cheboygan, he distrusted cities, felt uncomfortable in some sprawling metropolis like Chicago or New York. At the same time, however, he was the proverbial farm boy who’d seen the bright lights of the bigger world, and he couldn’t go back to small-town life, which seemed devoid of culture and fun by comparison. Ann Arbor was a college town of 110,000 that retained a cozy, small-town warmth, giving him the best of both worlds.

He tossed his keys and cell phone onto the kitchen table, threw his briefcase and heavy coat on the beat-up old couch, pulled the Walgreens bag from his pocket and headed for the bathroom. The rashes felt like seven searing electrodes grafted to his skin and connected to a ten-thousand-watt current.

He’d deal with the rashes, but first thing first-that zit-thing above his eyebrow had to go. He set the bag down, opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out tweezers. He gave them a habitual flick, hearing them hum like a tuning fork, then leaned into the mirror. The weird zit-thing was still there, of course, and it still hurt. He’d seen Bill pop a zit once: the process took like twenty minutes. Bill was methodical and a bit of a pussy, so that was fine. Perry had a higher tolerance for pain and a lower tolerance for patience. He took one deep breath, fixed the tweezers on the small, gnarled red bump and yanked. The chunk tore free-the pain came hot and sweet. Blood trickled down his face. He took another deep breath as he grabbed a wad of toilet paper and pressed it to the new wound. He held up the tweezers with his free hand. Just a small dot of flesh. But in the middle there, was that a hair? It wasn’t black at all, it was blue, a deep, dark, iridescent blue.

“Friggin’ weird.” He ran the tweezers under hot water, washing away the odd zit. He grabbed the Band-Aids from the cabinet: only six left. He ripped the paper off one and put it over the small, bloody spot where the zit-thing had just been. That had been the easy part-any pansy could deal with pain. But itching, that was a different story.

Perry dropped his pants and plopped down on the toilet. He pulled the Cortaid from the white bag. Squirting a healthy portion into his hand, he plastered the goo on the yellowish welt atop his left thigh.

He immediately regretted it.

The direct contact made the welt rage with intense itching pain, a blowtorch burning white-hot, as if his skin had melted away in glowing, molten drips. He scooted on the seat and nearly cried out. Controlling himself after only a second or two, he took a long, slow breath and forced himself to relax.

Almost as soon as the pain started, it died down, then seemed to subside completely. Smiling at the small victory, Perry gently worked the salve into the welt and the surrounding skin.

He almost laughed with relief. Using far more caution, he worked the Cortaid into the other welts. When he finished, all seven of them fell quiet.

“The Magnificent Seven,” Perry mumbled. “You aren’t so magnificent now, are you?”

With all seven itches battled into submission, he felt giddy, he felt like howling with joy. But more than anything else, he felt tired. The maddening itches created constant stress; with that stress suddenly gone, he felt like a schooner with the wind dying out of its sails.

Perry stripped out of all but his underwear, left his clothes in the bathroom and walked to the small bedroom. His queen-size bed left little space for a single dresser and a nightstand. Less than eighteen inches separated the sides of the mattress from the wall.

He practically fell into the comfortable old bed. He pulled the loose blankets around himself, shivering as the cool cotton raised goose bumps on his skin. The blankets quickly warmed, and at 5:30 P.M . he was sound asleep, a small smile still tickling his face.