Playmates

11

"THE kid can't read," I said to Susan. "He's a senior in college, carrying a C + average, and he can't read."

We were having dinner in Rocco's in the Transportation Building and I was halfway through a vodka martini on the rocks with a twist.

"You mentioned that," Susan said. "Twice on the ride over."

"It is outrageous," I said. "Nobody ever noticed?"

"Nobody ever cared," Susan said.

The waiter came to take our order. Susan decided on sweet and sour Thai soup and roast pheasant. I ordered black bean cake and Peking Duck.

"Isn't this the most spectacular room you've seen?" Susan said.

I nodded. "There's an academic adviser. Just for the team. Lot of major college teams have them. Try to keep the kids on time to graduate and such."

Susan nodded encouragingly as she gazed around the high-ceilinged trompe l'oeil faux art decor.

"Academic adviser says Dwayne's intellectually gifted despite an impoverished childhood."

"Could be," Susan said.

"Sure, but the kid can't goddamn read. Don't you think someone might someplace make mention of that? He's twenty-one years old and in his senior year in college and he can't read."

"You mentioned that. Who are you mad at?" I took a pleasing swallow of my martini. More than two and I got a headache, but one before dinner was just right, sometimes.

"I'm mad at his teachers, his academic counselor, him."

"Yes," Susan said. "Him too. He knows he can't read and hasn't corrected it."

"Hard for a kid like Dwayne to admit," I said.

"Yes," Susan said. "Maybe too hard. He needs help."

"There's a girlfriend, Chantel."

"Excuse me?"

"Chantel, she says she's trying to teach him."

Susan said, "Way back, first grade, second grade, when he was trying to learn to read, he got passed over. He never broke the code."

"Meaning? "

The waiter brought the first course. "Meaning that most of us learned to read phonetically. You can probably remember a teacher telling you to sound it out."

I nodded. The black bean cake had a slice of cob smoked ham on it, and a fried egg.

"For whatever reason, people who never learned to read never quite got the sound it out part. They know letters have sounds. Most can read a little. Words like men, stop, rest room, beer, words that they've seen so often they have become kind of pictographs. But they come to a word like, oh, transportation, and they are stuck. They try to make sense of the sounds a little," Susan did a halting imitation, "and then give up. They never learned the code and they never learned the rules. There are lots of rules, many of which we don't even think of."

"Like two vowels, separated by a consonant the first vowel is usually long ... sale, gale, pale," I said.

"Very good," Susan said. "Or the business that ph is normally pronounced like f. If you didn't know that you'd have an awful time. Of course he could be dyslexic."

"Can you be dyslexic and be the best basketball player in the country?" I said.

"Probably not," Susan said. "Frequently, though not always, dyslexia affects your balance. A standard dyslexia diagnostic test for kids is to ask them to walk a balance beam."

"Soup good?" I said.

"Yes, taste it," Susan said. She held out a spoonful and I slurped it in. I gestured at my bean cake. Susan smiled and shook her head.

"I haven't the heart," she said.

"No wonder I love you."

The waiter came by to ask if I wished another martini. I said no.

"So," Susan said, "what are you going to do, sweet cakes?"

"Eat all my Peking Duck as soon as it arrives," I said.

"What are you going to do about Dwayne and the point stuff and the fact that he can't read?"

"I was planning on consulting you for advice," I said.

The waiter took away our plates and brought the entrees.

"What's the girlfriend like?" Susan said. "Chanteuse."

"Chantel," I said. "Hard to say. I only saw her that once and most of the time I was seeing her, Dwayne was breathing fire on my neck."

"He is, I understand, six feet nine inches tall?"

"Yes."

"And he weighs in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds?"

I nodded.

"How's your neck?" Susan said.

"I was wearing my collar stylishly up, at the time, " I said.

"Fashionable," Susan murmured, "yet practical."

I put a slice of duck on a pancake, brushed on the hoisin sauce with the scallion brush, put the scallion on top of the duck, folded the pancake over and took a bite. Not too big a bite. If I ate normally I always had my plate cleaned while Susan was still getting her knife and fork in position. Susan carefully cut a small piece of pheasant and moved it to her mouth and chewed slowly. She swallowed. I started a second pancake.

"I don't know what you should do about Dwayne," Susan said. "One option would be to do what you were hired to do."

"Report to the President that a viewing of the game films tells me that he shaved points in the following games?"

Susan nodded.

"Won't help the kid much."

"You weren't hired to help the kid."

"Kid grew up in one of the meanest ghettos in the world. He's gotten through almost four years at a major eastern university. He's going to have a pro career, unless he gets hurt, that will make him maybe a million dollars a year. Along the way he's acquired a nice girlfriend."

"And if you do what you're hired to do that all goes to hell," Susan said.

"Except maybe the girlfriend."

Susan smiled at me slowly. "That's what it really is, isn't it?" she said. "You are one of the three or four most romantic diddles in the world, and because this guy has a young woman who you think will stand by her man, you want to adopt them both."

"There's no such thing as a bad boy," I said.

"Sure," Susan said. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother." Her eyes were full of laughter, and something else, as she looked at me over the rim of her brandy alexander.

"A romantic diddle?"

"It's the first word that came to mind," she said.

"And yet you find me physically compelling."

"I find you compelling in every way," Susan said. And I knew what the something else was in her eyes.

"Even though I'm a romantic diddle?"

"Especially," Susan said, "because of that."

"So you agree that I should look into things a little more before I toot the whistle on the kid."

"I agree, I approve and, more than that, I knew before the conversation began that you weren't going to 'toot the whistle.' "

"Nobody likes a know-it-all," I said.

Susan put her hand out and laid it on top of mine.

"Somebody does," she said.