The Throwback Special

5. RITES

IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO OVERSTATE THE men’s enthusiasm for continental breakfast. To be clear, their zeal had little or nothing to do with this particular hotel’s version of the standard spread. As petulant online reviewers made very clear, the hotel’s breakfast was not in any way exceptional or distinctive. It was a completely average continental breakfast, and this was why the men loved it. The breakfast involved no surprises and no risks. It involved no deliberation and no ordering, no indecision or regret. With plastic tongs they heaped large quantities of known sweet rations onto their Styrofoam plates. Everything tasted like it looked. There were no interesting spices or herbs, no local flavors, no subtle variations on classics. It was a bounty of carbohydrates, and the items never ran out. There was always more, and it was always free. Continental breakfast made them feel — made many of them feel — as if they were getting away with something. And at the same time they felt it was a form of recognition, and at the same time they felt it was but a tiny portion of what they were owed. And so it was that the long table of processed food and crop-dusted fruit was for the men simultaneously gift, reward, and restitution. Their appetites were severe.

Wearing their jerseys, the men arrived in the dining area early, but they discovered that the buffet had been set upon by dozens of employees of Prestige Vista Solutions. The men lurked at the boundaries of the dining area, anxious about resources. They watched the employees scoop and tong and toast. The female employees decimated the fruit. The male employees leaned close to inspect the plates of pastries, their ties grazing the glaze. There was good-natured joking about PowerPoint, about the taking of minutes. Those in line for the waffle maker shared wedding photos, baby photos, house photos, injury photos. Someone had adopted three more dogs. Everyone was eager to talk to Jim — Cyber Jim, not Khakis Jim — about their computer problems. When the employees of Prestige Vista Solutions had filled their plates and cups, they filed out of the dining area, and disappeared into the conference room like a line of ants. The men in their jerseys watched, and when they turned back to the continental banquet, the serving platters had been replenished, the yogurt pyramids reconstructed. They descended on the simple sugars, ravenous but with a clear and disheartening sense that there was no real connection between breakfast and merit.

•

FAT MICHAEL stirred gray powder into each of the three plastic cups in front of him. The powder did not dissolve. In wet, floating clumps it spun inside the rims of the cups, suggesting, somehow, the passage of time. Fat Michael drank all of the cups rapidly, one after another, his eyes pinched shut. He did not look good. He looked incredible, but he did not look good. Also, he was itchy, and he raked his legs with his fingernails. Myron and Tommy sat across from Fat Michael, eating silently. It was the one time during the year they used flavored coffee creamer. Their presence at the table somehow made Fat Michael seem more alone than he would have seemed if he had actually been alone.

“This muffin is all right,” Myron said in a low voice. Tommy’s face looked weird because he was doing exercises to strengthen his pelvic floor.

A hotel employee named Nick walked into the dining area wearing Chad’s shoes. The shoes were too small, and very wet, but he liked them. They made him feel like a lucky person, though he knew himself to be an unlucky person. He wrapped a bagel in a napkin, filled a cup with orange juice. He remembered the time when Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s leg on Monday Night Football. He remembered exactly where he was, and what he was doing. He clearly remembered Howard Cosell’s anguished reaction, though he remembered it incorrectly because Cosell’s last season on Monday Night Football had been 1983. He moved toward the men in the jerseys. He had a burden he was eager to set down.

From across the room Charles saw Nick approaching the defensive backs’ breakfast table with an expression of fullness, and he stood quickly, placing his napkin on the table. “Excuse me, guys,” he said. He walked through the dining area, into the lobby. For a moment he stood before the fountain, which was once again dry. Each year in this hotel lobby he was forced to recall that as a child he had stolen quarters from a mall fountain (soaking the cuffs of his sweatshirt) so that he could purchase, in the filthy bathroom of a gas station near his house, an erotic puzzle entitled Boobs Galore. The small puzzle box contained nine cardboard squares that could be arranged, on a floor behind a locked bedroom door, to form a picture of a sad, shirtless woman with enormous breasts. Charles remembered that the woman, when reconstituted, was sitting on what he now knew to be a Windsor chair, and that any adolescent lust he could gin up at the sight of her demoralizingly large breasts was almost immediately dowsed by the way she looked back at Charles. The puzzle piece with her face (top row, middle column) countervailed all of the other eight pieces. That face was more nude by far than her body. The look on her face implicated Charles. It suggested that she was forced to share Charles’s shame and disappointment, and she was resentful. Or perhaps Charles was forced to share her shame and disappointment, and he was resentful. In either case, Charles and this nine-piece shirtless woman in a Windsor chair had been trapped together in a sticky web of shame, disappointment, and resentment. Charles had stolen coins for this experience. In his backyard he had dug a small hole. He had put the puzzle in the hole, and then lit it with a long wooden match. It burned in blues and greens.

The young woman at the front desk was likely not aware of Charles’s memory of the puzzle, though she had grown up with two older brothers. She smiled and nodded at Charles — or at a spot just above his shoulder — as he walked past the desk. “Good morning, sir,” she said. Charles walked outside to verify briefly the wetness and coldness of the rain. He walked back through the automatic doors into the lobby, into the men’s restroom. The restroom was empty and glistening. A stalactiform mass depended from the ceiling, dripping slowly. Charles selected a corner stall beneath a flickering fluorescent light, and he saw at once the work of the diligent vandal. Someone (Carl) had traced his left hand dozens of times. The hands filled the wall. Charles placed his left hand inside the outline of the vandal’s hand. He reached high for another. The effect of the multiplicity of hands was not of many people, but of a single person amplified by trouble. Charles worked with adolescents with eating disorders, and so he knew very well the forms of desperate assertion.

THROUGH THE WINDOWS of the dining area, the hotel parking lot shone darkly in the cold rain. The lights above the lot were on, casting a weak yellow glow in the mist. At the offensive linemen’s table, Gil spoke of the tiny hinges of a dollhouse roof. His Mark May jersey was radiant against the dun breads of breakfast. At a nearby table, the conversation drifted inevitably toward vasectomy and time share. Wesley said they could now cauterize the vas deferens in a scalpel-free procedure. Gary was adamant about an A-frame chalet in the Smokies. Vince heard the men out, nodding, but he said he was just not ready. “Suit yourself,” Gary said, leaving the table for more instant oatmeal.

Later, full, the men pulled their chairs away from their breakfast tables. They had nowhere to be until ten o’clock. They sat, leaned back, crossed their legs at the ankles, at the knees. They drank coffee, picked at pastries. They talked, read complimentary newspapers, played games on phones, took photographs of themselves, stared at the mute television. One man worked a crossword, another put new laces in his cleats, another used the sharp edge of a business card to remove food from his teeth. Another performed a magic trick with a quarter and upside-down cups. George did chair yoga. Like the dog that licks its testicles, they refilled their coffee cups because they could. The coffee was bad, but its poor quality served to strengthen the community. The day was in front of them. The dining area, seen as a whole, appeared to be a site both of great torpor and great vitality, as the sheer variety of indolence manifested as an energetic bustle.

If asked to specify the best part of the weekend, not one of the men would think to name this languorous interlude in the dining area, and yet there was no time better than this. This was the best time, this brief span of Saturday morning. It was not an event, could not be named or considered. Consequently, the men could enjoy it without pressure, anxiety, or self-consciousness. Indeed, without awareness. They could enjoy it without enjoying it. If they were aware of it as a potentially enjoyable event — Post-Breakfast Relaxation, 9:15–10:00, Dining Area — then it would almost certainly cease to be such an enjoyable event. Disappointment was the freight of expectation. Unbeknownst to the men, this was what they came here for, every year. They were enjoying their morning, but they did not realize it. The good moments, it is true, were always this way, interstitial and unacknowledged. They craved occasion, but did not understand it. Halfway through their lives — considerably more than halfway, in several cases — the men knew nothing of their own vast contentment.

A woman entered the dining area with a boy. She paid no attention to the men in their jerseys. She briefly surveyed the continental breakfast. Then she filled two cups with orange juice, and put lids on the cups. She wrapped food in napkins, and began to arrange the food in her large purse. The boy, eight or nine, shuffled away from her, peered into the fruit bowl. He withdrew two apples and an orange. “Don’t touch anything,” his mother said, without looking up from the buffet. The boy turned toward the dining area, and he began to juggle the fruit. The men tapped each other on the shoulders, shifted in their chairs to watch with amusement and anxiety. They knew too well how it would end, the bruised fruit rolling beneath tables, the boy scolded once more. His face glowed with concentration. He had taught himself to juggle in his bedroom, and he was good. He would not drop the fruit. The men began to relax. They began to miss their own children. It was the best kind of missing, without pang or ache. They did not actually want to be with their children. They had fond thoughts, and were grateful for the distance that generated those thoughts. “Let’s go, Brian,” the woman said. “Right now.” She zipped her bulging purse, and walked toward the lobby. As abruptly as he had begun, the boy stopped juggling. He gently caught an apple with a hand that held an apple. He wiped each piece of fruit with a napkin, placed them into the bowl, and then jogged after the woman. “We’re late,” the woman said. Gary, tugging at the neck of his Lawrence Taylor jersey, muttered an unkind word about the woman, and Jeff laughed. The more thoughtful among the men considered the ways in which they, too, may have become inured to the remarkable.

“JUST IMAGINE THAT,” Bald Michael said. “Imagine that you’re seventy-eight years old, living in Florida, reading your military history books, doing physical therapy, minding your own business. And then your daughter shows up with her new boyfriend. She’s so excited for you to meet him. This guy is fifty years old. He walks with a limp. Just imagine that. It’s humiliating for everyone. It’s like putting a sweater on a dog.”

Peter nodded, though at the mention of Florida his mind wandered to his worries about retirement income, and then to his irritation about the rapidly increasing annual dues.

The men were convened again in 324, waiting for film study. On the back of the door Carl had taped a sign-up sheet for optional afternoon haircuts, and a half dozen men clustered there with a dull pencil. Another six or seven men had gathered by the television. There was some trouble connecting the laptop to the television. What was needed, apparently, was an HDMI cable. None of the men had one, but several of the men thought simultaneously of Cyber Jim, the computer maven at Prestige Vista Solutions. According to the schedule posted outside of the conference room, Jim would be in meetings until noon.

Really, any container would have worked just fine. By holding the ends of a damp towel, Trent made a kind of sack, into which he poured all of the ping-pong balls from a green duffel bag. He shook the balls ceremoniously, and the sad and merry sound of their jostling quieted the room. Trent reached into the damp towel, and removed a ball. He squinted to ascertain Randy’s name. There was no way Trent was sending Randy into that conference room. The job required some charisma. “Derek!” Trent shouted, tossing the ball quickly back into the sack.

The men clapped and cheered, chanting the name. Derek was the right guy for this. Those who were close enough to Derek reached out to touch him, slapping him on the back or punching him not forcefully on the arms. Derek was not happy to be chosen. He sat on the edge of a queen bed, jiggling his legs. Not fair, he thought.

“What’s it called again?” he said.

“HDMI cable.”

“And who’s the guy?”

“Cyber Jim. There’s a Khakis Jim, too, but it’s not him.”

“Careful, Derek, though, because Cyber Jim is wearing khakis.”

“You really think he’ll have it?” Derek said.

“Definitely.”

Derek made his way through the men toward the door. The journey across the room was long and complicated.

“With your shield or on it, Derek,” Gary yelled, and Steven moved in close to mitigate the historical damage.

Derek took the elevator from the third floor to the fourth floor. In Room 440 he replaced his Clint Didier jersey with a crew-neck sweater from L.L.Bean. He washed his hands and face. He stared out the window at a wet dumpster. He rode the elevator down toward the lobby. Derek thought the ball that Trent had selected from the wet towel had not looked like his ball. Of course, it was difficult to see, but Derek felt pretty sure that his ball was not as yellow as the ball Trent held aloft. Why would Trent single him out for this unpleasant task? What had he done to Trent?

Derek walked slowly through the lobby to the conference room. Here he was, looking for handouts. Hey, brother, can you spare an A/V interface? He passed by the conference room, but did not stop. He walked a circle through the lobby, then another. Television, clock, fountain, pineapple, arbor. It was possible — yes, it was entirely possible — that Derek just did not need this anymore.

The door of the conference room had a small window. Derek peered in, but there was a presentation under way, and the overhead lights were out. He could not see well, and he did not, he realized, even know how to identify Cyber Jim. His khakis, even if visible, would not very well set him apart. A man in khakis stood at a lectern in the front of the large room. The lectern had a reading light, and the man was lit from beneath like a political aspirant or an archfiend. Derek missed the hallowed space of the conference room. Behind the man at the lectern, projected on a screen, was a picture of a water mill. Derek could knock, or he could simply enter. The next projected picture was a suspension bridge. The next projected picture was a searing desert landscape. Derek thought he heard people laughing inside the room. The next projected picture was a colorful hot air balloon.

“Can I help you?”

Startled, Derek turned to see a young hotel employee in an ill-fitting uniform. A large ring of keys clipped to his belt loop threatened to pull down his overlarge pants. He held a brown paper bag dotted with oil spots. His left eye twitched. Or rather, his right eye twitched. He could have been eighteen, saving money for college, or thirty-five, with an ankle monitor. His name tag read Robbie.

“Sorry,” Derek said. “Wrong room.”

“There’s only one conference room,” Robbie said.

“And it’s wrong,” Derek said. “Sorry. Have a good day.” He began walking toward the elevator.

“Are you a corporate spy?” Robbie said.

“What?”

“Should I call security?”

“There’s really no need,” Derek said.

Robbie laughed. “We don’t have security.”

“I’m moving on,” Derek said. “I’m minding my own business.”

“No, really,” Robbie said, taking a step toward Derek. “What do you need?”

“Nothing at all.”

“No, really. I’m here to help.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Derek said. “I was just looking for a guy who might help me get a computer cable.”

“VGA?”

“No, his name is Jim.”

“No — you need a VGA cable?”

“Oh. No. HDMI.”

“Right,” Robbie said. “Follow me.”

Derek stood outside of the elevator. The bell rung, the doors slid open. He watched Robbie walk toward the front desk, his ring of keys jangling with each step. The next projected image in the conference center, which Derek could not see, was a lion bringing down a sable antelope. The elevator doors slid closed. Derek walked toward the front desk, following Robbie against his better judgment. Robbie unlatched a swinging gate at the edge of the desk, and held it open for Derek.

Behind the front desk was an office. In the office Derek saw a desk, a chair, a bulletin board, a computer, and a large framed poster of a vibrant rose resting in two hands (cupped, Caucasian). Even in the frame, the poster was wrinkled and warped, and Derek was forced to consider that the poster concealed an escape tunnel in the wall. Robbie placed his oily paper bag on the desk, then removed his key ring from his belt loop.

“Who are you this year?” Robbie said, flipping through his keys.

“Excuse me?” Derek said.

“Which player?”

“Oh,” Derek said. “This year? This year I’m L.T.”

Robbie looked up from his keys, peering at Derek through his stringy bangs. Derek felt the urge to confess his lie, but he remained quiet, and Robbie resumed his search for the key.

The closet was three times larger than the office. Floor-to-ceiling shelves ran across all four walls. On the shelves were clear plastic containers of various sizes. In the containers Derek could see phones, keys, watches, dentures, hearing aids, jewelry, laptops, MP3 players, CDs, DVDs, electric toothbrushes, vibrators, gloves, mittens, dog collars, scarves, video games, GPS devices, chargers, mouthguards, neckties, shoes, shirts, pants, blouses, skirts, sweaters, knives, toys, games, headphones, hand weights, jump ropes, prescription medications, shaving kits, cosmetic bags, purses, clutches, handbags, duffel bags, garment bags, knapsacks, backpacks, satchels, wallets, hats, visors, socks, photographs, retainers, heating pads, massagers, wigs, stuffed animals, noise machines, dehumidifiers, humidifiers, sleep apnea devices, blood sugar monitors, blood pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, ear wax vacuums, dolls, Charles’s brown canvas bag, sewing kits, knitting needles, thimbles, riding crops, thermometers, fingernail clippers, scissors, tweezers, books, notebooks, canes, lighters, pillows, maps, umbrellas, glasses, sunglasses, contact lens cases, porcelain figurines, travel mugs, pet food bowls, eyeshades, tennis rackets, harmonicas. In a corner there was an antique wooden crib, and wedged snugly inside the crib was Fancy Drum.

“So this is the lost and found?” Derek said.

“We just call it the lost,” Robbie said, searching a low shelf. He pulled out a container full of HDMI cables, intertwined like snakes in a mating ball. “We got two-foot, four-foot, six-foot, or eight-foot,” he said, pulling out cables from the container. “Whatever you want.”

“I don’t know,” Derek said. “I guess I’ll take a six-foot.”

“Good choice,” Robbie said. “Here, take two, just in case.” He handed Derek the HDMI cables. The twitch in his eye made it difficult to tell if he had winked.

Derek nodded.

“You want anything else while we’re here?” Robbie said. “You want some thumb drives?”

Derek shrugged.

Robbie scooped out a handful of thumb drives from a bottom-shelf container, and offered them to Derek.

“Thank you,” Derek said, dropping the thumb drives into the front pocket of his corduroys.

Robbie looked around. “Headphones? Viagra?”

Derek moved a footstool to the corner. On the stool, on tiptoes, he reached into a container on the top shelf. Gently he pulled one end of a lavender scarf out of the container. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He read the tag to confirm it was silk.

“You like that scarf?” Robbie said.

Derek nodded.

“That’s been here longer than I have,” Robbie said.

“It’s nice.”

“You want to see other scarves? We’ve got boxes of scarves. I’ll get them down for you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Derek said.

“You like that purple one.”

“I like this one.”

“It’s all yours,” Robbie said.

Derek pulled the long scarf from the container like a magician.

“Good choice,” Robbie said.

“She’ll love it,” Robbie said.

“Hey, take it,” Robbie said. “Just don’t hurt me.” He laughed. The keys on his belt tinkled. “Just don’t snap my leg.”

The ceiling light was clean and stark, as white as a ping-pong ball. The industrial dryers rumbled in the basement below. Derek folded the scarf carefully, and reached high to place it back in its container. He thanked Robbie for the cables, and set out for the lobby, wherever that might be.

THE RAIN TAPPED and streaked the windows of Room 324. With a white wand Bald Michael pulled the heavy curtains closed, darkening the room. The six-foot HDMI cable transmitted uncompressed video data from Trent’s laptop to the hotel’s digital television. The men settled on the beds, the chairs, the floor. They leaned forward, toward the transmitted data. They stopped talking about their parents, and grew silent. Those who chewed their nails chewed their nails. Others warmed their hands with cups of coffee. Those who had colds coughed and sneezed and sniffled and blew their noses into napkins taken from the dining area. Gary tugged at the neck of his Lawrence Taylor jersey. He plucked with agitation at the chest and shoulders. No one asked Gil to do his Frank Gifford impersonation, and he did not do it. A shower cap full of new wristbands, white and blue, was passed hand to hand across the room. Fat Michael held his helmet in his lap, absentmindedly rubbing the single bar of the face mask. His back itched in places he could not reach. There were many things George wanted to discuss, but he refrained from speaking.

Though everyone was quiet, Trent, as commissioner, called for everyone to be quiet. He placed the DVD in his laptop, and a menu materialized, whirring. Trent pressed play. The keyboard was hot to the touch. The television screen flickered for a moment, and then upon it appeared an aerial image of the Jefferson Memorial, stolid and columned, lit up from the inside at night. Far beyond the memorial there were headlights moving quickly across a dark highway, and more than one man thought to wonder who was driving those cars on that night, and what had become of them. A caption beneath the memorial read, “Live from Washington, D.C.” The font was blocky and guileless, naked in its pride and enthusiasm, and it worked upon the men in ways they did not comprehend. The volume was too low, but the men could hear Frank Gifford say that it was almost Indian summer weather here in mid-November. “Turn it up,” every man said, and Trent turned it up. The men could hear the bleat of the referee’s whistle, indicating that the ball was ready for play.

THE MEN WOULD WATCH the play repeatedly. For over an hour the men would watch the five-second play, remembering, for a moment, as always, exactly where they were. The men would see that a play is what happens when two plays meet. The men would study this choreography of chaos and ruin. They would see, some of them, that hair on a mammoth is not progressive in any cosmic sense. Each man would see exactly where he would line up in his huddle. Steven would see, as he had seen many times before, the white towel tucked into the left side of Art Monk’s waistband. He would see that Monk, lined up wide at the numbers to the left side of the formation, has his right leg forward in his stance. He would also see that Gary Clark, lined up at the numbers wide right, has his left foot forward, and he would whisper it loudly to Jeff, who would pretend not to hear him as he would see Clark disappear into the dark on a sprint route, or a seam route, or a skinny post, or a corner route. Jeff and others would be forced to assume that players who left the frame of the television camera continued to exist. Derek would see Didier doing what Didier does — that protracted series of ineffectual stutter steps against Giants linebacker Byron Hunt, whom George would see. The defensive backs would see nothing. The men would be reminded by play-by-play announcer Frank Gifford that language, always, is insufficient. “First and ten. . Riggins. . flea flicker. . back to Theismann.” The linemen would see the rout, the tattered pocket, blue overwhelming white. They would see the devastating pincer movement executed by Carson and Taylor. Gil would see, over and over, the majestic footwork of Redskins right tackle Mark May, who takes one step forward to sell the run, then slides back to seal the pocket and rebuff the hard outside rush of Curtis McGriff. Every time, over and over, knowing, as May must, that he cannot prevent the catastrophe, but doing his job simply because it’s his job, pushing that rock forever. Randy, the erstwhile optician, would see that as Donnie Warren he could die for all of their sins. Tommy would see but not understand that John Riggins, whatever his virtues, is not a cunning agent of dissimulation. A mechanical actor, Riggins fails to deceive the defense, fails to divert the advance of the linebackers upon the quarterback. He turns his shoulders back to Theismann immediately upon receiving the handoff. He is not stealthy, not persuasive. It is a clumsy sleight, this Throwback Special. (As Andy remarked one year in film study — either Andy or Adam — you can’t expect subtlety from a guy called the Diesel.) Nate would see that the fake run makes linebacker Harry Carson charge. Trent would see that right guard Ken Huff misses Carson as he charges. Fat Michael, the orphan, would see that the charging Carson, missed by Huff, misses Theismann, makes him step up into the pocket. Fat Michael would try to control his heart rate through deep, yogic breathing. The men would see once again that if Carson had just made the tackle, Theismann’s leg would have been spared. The men would hear Frank Gifford say that Theismann is in a lot of trouble. “Theismann’s in a lot of trouble,” Gifford says, would say, said. Gary would see that Taylor launches himself onto Theismann’s back, that he slides down Theismann’s body, that his right thigh. . Bald Michael would see that linebacker Gary Reasons jumps on Theismann after he is down, after his leg has and had been broken in two. Wesley would see that nose tackle Jim Burt jumps on Theismann after Gary Reasons jumps on Theismann. Gary (and Robert) would see that the circuit of Taylor’s anguish could not be completed. Bald Michael would see that Gary Reasons prays. He would see how it is done. The men would recall that this was Theismann’s 71st consecutive — and final — regular season start at quarterback. The men, excepting Steven, would not immediately recall that the Redskins won the game. The youngest of the men would recall that they were permitted to watch only the first half. The men would hear Frank Gifford say, “We’ll look at it with reverse angle one more time, and I suggest, if your stomach is weak, you just don’t watch.” The men, many of them, would have a weak stomach, and they just wouldn’t watch. A few still winced and moaned, even after all of these years. There was the year that Peter threw up a little. These men, to their great shame, had sent their wives into emergency rooms with their injured children because they could not stand the blood, the needles. The men would watch the slow-motion replay, the reverse angle replay, with their hands over their faces. The men would hear, over and over, O. J. Simpson’s groaning commentary.

But first — before that — they saw the Jefferson Memorial, which George, Nate, Jeff, Adam, Wesley, Carl, Randy, and Myron had each separately visited on class field trips in elementary school. Wesley’s teacher’s name had actually been Mrs. Fortune. They heard Frank Gifford say that it was unseasonably warm. They read the caption “Live from Washington, D.C.,” and saw that the periods were squares. The font, quaint and earnest, elicited a warm and formless memory of safety. The warm and formless memory of safety elicited by the quaint earnestness of the font made them feel mournful. The mournfulness caused by the formless memory of safety elicited by the quaint font made them feel like brimming vessels. They were alive, gloriously sad. Bald Michael had almost no hair remaining at all, just small patches above the ears, as neat as decals. The men heard the bleat of the referee’s whistle, and they saw the magic circle of the huddle, inside of which the play was chanted. When the huddle broke, the offensive players, even Theismann, jogged eagerly to the line, where the defense waited. It was a home game, nationally televised. It was first and ten, near midfield, early second quarter. Everything in the playbook was available. You could run anything here. If you had a trick up your sleeve, now was a time and a down and a field position you might try it. The men watched as the players jogged to the line of scrimmage. Theismann’s right leg was intact, as straight and strong as an Ionic column. Everything was early, everything was open. The things that had not happened yet were greater than the things that had happened.

THERE WAS A DEER next to the dumpster behind the hotel. It stood still in the rain, ears alert, waiting to be frightened. A grainy version of the deer occupied a small box in the third column of the fourth row of the surveillance grid of the sixteen-channel CCTV monitor at the front desk. Like anyone shown on a surveillance monitor, the deer appeared to be involved in a crime.

In another box of the surveillance grid, the parking lot glittered blackly.

In another box, four grown men threw a football in a hallway.

In another box, two employees from the AquaDoctor scrubbed the lobby fountain with soft brushes.

In another box of the surveillance grid, the stairwell was so profoundly deserted as to seem post-human.

In another box, an elevator passenger dropped into a three-point stance.

In another box, it was very difficult to tell what exactly was going on.

In another box, a man wearing an elbow pad ran an unsustainable pace on the treadmill in the workout center.

In another box, two grown men threw a Frisbee in a hallway.

In another box, the continental breakfast had long since ended.

In another box, was that a cat in a hallway?

In another box, inhabitants of the conference center applauded silently.

In another box of the surveillance monitor, the front desk clerk ignored the sixteen-channel surveillance monitor.

In another box, a man pacing and gesticulating alone in a hallway was either suffering from mental illness or using a phone with a hands-free headset.

In another box, an upside-down bird gnawed grainily on the knotted rope in its cage.

In the final box, an elderly man walked with purpose and a dignified limp through the lobby doors, into the hotel, vanishing from the box. He then reappeared in the front desk box, placing his elbows on the desk in a manner that seemed both inquisitive and assertive. He spoke with the front desk clerk — he appeared to speak with the front desk clerk — then walked briskly out of the box. The elderly man reappeared in the elevator box, pressing buttons, or more likely pressing a single button repeatedly. Here, in the elevator, you could see him well. He was perhaps seventy-five, with a full head of neatly trimmed gray hair. He was tall, with excellent posture. He wore a plaid shirt tucked into dark pants, but it was not difficult to imagine him wearing a uniform of some sort. The man did not, like almost all passengers, look at himself in the mirror on the back wall of the elevator. After a time, the elevator doors opened, and he exited the box. He reappeared in a different box of the sixteen-box surveillance grid, walking toward a group of grainy men throwing a football in a hallway. Most of the men dispersed immediately, though one of the men stood against the wall as if frozen. His face, which was not clearly visible on the surveillance monitor, had a startled expression. The abandoned football still spun on the hallway carpet like the altimeter dial of a rapidly descending aircraft. Midway down the hall, the elderly man stopped outside of a room, and knocked on the door. The vending alcove was neither visible nor audible. The man appeared to say something to the door. One is forced to assume that he was viewed through the peephole. Eventually, the door opened, and the elderly man entered the room, disappearing from the box in the fourth column of the second row of the surveillance grid. By this time the deer, too, was gone from the box with the deer in it.

IN THE LOBBY, Wesley walked circles around the fountain, where a quality control representative on break from the Prestige Vista Solutions retreat was talking to the workers from the AquaDoctor about ornamental carp. Wesley’s daughter was having trouble sleeping because someone at school had told her that Jesus got pinned to the arch for his belief system, but right now Wesley needed to concentrate on Giants nose tackle Jim Burt. What Wesley needed to keep in mind, according to Steven, was that Burt was undrafted out of the University of Miami. As Burt, Wesley had the not-insignificant role of pushing hard up the middle, then diving belatedly onto a screaming pile containing Theismann. The key was to wait for Gary Reasons, played by Bald Michael, to dive late onto Theismann, whose leg was already fractured by Taylor, before he commenced his own late dive onto Theismann’s fractured leg. There were two late hits — Reasons had the early late hit, and Burt had the late late hit. Burt had invented the Gatorade shower, Steven said. The rhythmic whisper of the soft brushes against the tiles of the fountain sounded like a mother putting her baby to sleep. Wesley, at any rate, had to remain patient. He had to have an internal clock, Steven said. He had to make certain he did not get too excited and dive prematurely late, as certain Burts had in previous years. (Gary’s Burt, four or five years ago, arrived at Theismann almost before Taylor.) Wesley’s uniform had pizza sauce on the shoulder stripes. “Do you mean nailed to the cross?” Wesley had said to his daughter, immediately regretting it. He had chosen to care about accuracy, correctness. Why? The child had seemed fragile ever since the squirrels had mutilated her jack-o’-lantern. “Hey, look, it just makes it spookier,” Wesley had said, holding up the mauled pumpkin, but the child was inconsolable. Her worry box was full. “This is not something that just started,” Wesley’s wife had said. “She’s always been like this.” “She’s just overly sensitive,” Wesley said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” his wife had said. Wesley missed his children, the gay son in college, the troubled girl at home. He wanted them not to suffer, even though he knew suffering was important. He wanted them not to have more than their fair share. He was helping to raise sensitive children. That was the worst kind of children, the most painful. “He came back to life, though, honey,” Wesley had said of Jesus, immediately regretting it. It was the early afternoon, Saturday, but as he walked around the fountain Wesley imagined his daughter sleeping. That was the time he loved her best. That was the only time she wasn’t running her mouth. That was the only time she wasn’t explaining the world, trying to make it safe with her words. The workers from the AquaDoctor and the quality control representative from Prestige Vista Solutions looked up to see the elderly man walking through the lobby, lightly gripping the arm of a nondescript Caucasian male, perhaps forty-five, with brown hair (streaked gray), receding hairline, pale and puffy and carelessly shaven face, rogue hair growth in ears and nostrils, bushy eyebrows, yellowed teeth, vitamin deficiency, wrinkles around eyes, some dark spots on face and hands, maybe six-feet-two in college but now shorter, about one ninety or one ninety-five with an incipient gut, a slight limp, no visible scars or tattoos, a slightly enlarged prostate, wearing ill-fitting jeans, a pilly sweater from Target, and a light jacket with a dry sheen. The two men were clearly father and son — you could see it in their walk — but the elderly man had aged far better than the younger man. The father’s grip on the son’s arm was less about support than custody. The younger man carried a duffel bag.

The front desk clerk looked down from the father and son to watch the father and son grainily traverse a small box on the sixteen-channel surveillance monitor. “We could carve the other side of the pumpkin,” Wesley had said to his daughter. “We could get another pumpkin,” he had said. “We could go eat the squirrels’ food,” he had said, pretending to dig up nuts with his paws. “Honey,” he had said to his daughter, “those Bible stories were translated.” Wesley, circling the fountain, preparing intently for his role as nose tackle Jim Burt, did not see Adam’s father leading Adam out of the hotel.

•

CARL WASN’T a particularly gifted barber, but he had all of the equipment — the cape, the dull scissors, the electric clippers with a cord that was too short. He had cut hair in college to make money, and for a dozen or so years now he had offered cuts to the men on the afternoon of the Throwback Special. The haircuts were optional, free, and private. Carl’s clippers glistened with golden oil. The men signed up for fifteen-minute appointments, but they all tended to arrive at Carl’s room at the time of the first appointment. The man with the first appointment went in alone, while the others waited in a line in the hallway, seated against the wall in the order of appointment. Some men in the hall had no appointment, and just came for the company. Thus, the ritual was communal, but only in the hallway, where the men laughed and talked, while the clippers buzzed faintly behind the door. Carl had nothing to do with this arrangement. He would have welcomed all of the men in the room together. He would in fact have preferred chatter and merriment and derision to solemnity and isolation, which he found exhausting. But the custom reflected the will of the men, for whom the haircut was as private as a urological exam. The custom arose spontaneously, and it was perpetuated without consideration. A haircut by an acquaintance required submission, and submission required privacy. The man sat, he wore a musty cape, heavy as a welcome mat. Carl sprayed his hair with a water bottle and combed it, humiliatingly, straight forward. There was no mirror. Drops of water ran down the man’s nose. His face itched, but he did not scratch it. His arms were trapped beneath the heavy cape. He was a child again, a boy. His thoughts drifted toward his mother. The standing barber circled his chair, carelessly bumped him, wiped water from his face, hair from his ears. The barber leaned down close, breathing heavily, smelling like a man. His forearms were hairy. The barber talked, or he didn’t. The barber cut the hair however he wanted to cut it, regardless of request or instruction. He moved the man’s head up, down. The barber nicked him — the neck, the tips of the ears — then dabbed the blood roughly with a towel. The man resented this optional experience that he craved. When a man came out of Carl’s room, the other men whistled and made loud noises at him. They made fun of his haircut, made fun of Carl. “What did he do to you?” Then it would grow quiet in the hallway, and the next man would stand and knock gravely on the locked door.

3:00: Peter

Peter’s hair was wavy and wiry. It was brittle and lifeless, like something partially buried in an ancient seabed. It was both thick and thinning. At the crown of his head a turbulent cowlick seemed to be churning toward landfall, forcing evacuation in low-lying areas. Carl had never given Peter the same cut twice, and the sight of the swirling cowlick made him nervous and angry. To cut hair was to love order, but Peter’s scalp was the site of radical turmoil. Not even a skilled barber could have done much with it. The hair, though, was only part of the issue. Peter was, as the ancient barbers whom Carl had worked with in college would have said, a leaker. Some people, almost as soon as you lay that heavy cape across their shoulders and put your hands to their heads, begin to lose the solid self. Peter removed his mouthguard, the emotional levee. He was trying to tell Carl about the children’s choir’s fall concert, and he could not finish. The sound from those rented risers. . Carl was annoyed, but he knew what to do. He had watched the old-timers. He tucked the scissors into his back pocket, and he picked up the spray bottle from the bedside table. He did not move quickly, but neither did he move slowly. With the spray bottle, he sprayed water onto Peter’s head. He sprayed and sprayed, combing forward. He doused Peter’s head until streams of water ran down Peter’s face. Peter knew to keep his hands beneath the cape. Carl sprayed. It was an old trick, a ruthless courtesy.

3:15: Gil

When Peter emerged into the hallway, Gil obligatorily made fun of his haircut, then knocked on the door of Carl’s room. Carl opened the door, and nodded hello. Gil sat down in the chair, located between the two beds. Beneath the chair Carl had spread out four white hotel towels. Both men were mildly embarrassed by the sudden realization that they would face each other that evening in a battle of strength and agility, albeit a ceremonial one with assumed identities and a predetermined outcome. Carl placed the heavy cape on Gil. They both looked straight forward, as if into a mirror. The heating and cooling unit ticked and clanked. Carl winced as he absentmindedly prodded the tender lump with the comb. He gave Gil an opportunity to say what he wanted, but Gil said nothing, so Carl tilted Gil’s head down and began to cut the hair on the back of his head with clippers. The cord of the clippers was a taut line, but it did not pull out of the wall socket. Gil closed his eyes, as if in prayer. The vibration of the clippers felt nice along his cranium. He could hear the men in the hallway, laughing and shouting, passing the long afternoon. Two voices rose above the others. To Gil it sounded as if George and Steven were hashing something out, though he could not discern the subject, nor did he wish to. Their tone and cadence — adversarial, intimate — carried much more meaning than their words, which were probably inane. The loud discussion through a wall, combined perhaps with the weather, made him sleepy and nostalgic. Gil had a long drive the next day. He loved his family, but he didn’t want to go home. He was having fun — though fun may not have been the right word. He was happy here — though happy may not have been the right word.

3:30: Nate

“Is it true about Adam?” Nate asked.

A barber, even one isolated in a hotel room, was expected to know things.

“I don’t know,” Carl said.

From his wallet Nate produced a photograph of his children, posed in an artificial bower. The girl was skinny, with dark circles beneath her eyes, and she clung like a castaway to the gleaming trunk of a synthetic tree.

“Nice,” Carl said.

“Turns out she was allergic to that plastic bark,” Nate said. “She’s allergic to everything, though. When we were kids, Carl — do you remember? — there was one, maybe two allergies.”

“Bees,” Carl said, trimming the hair above Nate’s ear.

“That’s right,” Nate said. He seemed to be making a moral argument. “There was that kid who bragged that he would die if he got stung. Then there was pollen, and maybe cats. And that was it. That was all. And now I’ve got a kid who is allergic to crayons and dust.”

Carl stood and moved behind Nate’s chair. He nodded, though there was no mirror.

“Aren’t we supposed to become better adapted through generations?” Nate said. He sounded troubled. He seemed to be suggesting that children today did not share our values.

Out in the hallway, something or someone slammed hard against the door, and the men laughed and coughed. Then Nate told a story. The story began with a kind of rustling or scuttling sound in the basement. Carl gritted his teeth. God help me, he thought, this is going to be a story about an animal in the house. Carl had been at the hotel for a little more than twenty-four hours, and he had already heard six or seven stories about animals in houses, identical in dramatic contour — the strange noise or scat or smell, the mystery, the false hypothesis, the persistence, the breakthrough, the discovery, the grim and triumphant resolution. The unstated moral: It’s my house. But Carl tried to be patient, he did. He understood that each animal in each house felt unique to the home owner. A man with an animal in his house is an archetype. He joins a long narrative tradition, and yet for each particular man in each particular house the event is not allegory. It is an urgent and singular encounter, exceptional and unrepeatable. Carl remembered very clearly the bats in his own attic. Those terrible little fingers. He knew that each man was entitled to his story about an animal in the house, and he tried to pay attention, tried to nod and sound surprised when it turned out to be a raccoon. “Are you serious?” Carl said. “What did you do then?” Nate had good hair, and it was a pleasure to cut. He had, at least in the decade that Carl had known him, always parted his hair in the middle. It was time, Carl thought, for a change.

3:45: Adam

(Carl was worried that he was dying, though he was not. He stood in his room by the door. He could hear the men in the hallway — it must be nearly all of them, maybe more — but nobody knocked. He placed his clippers on top of the television. His hands were covered with graying hair and streaks of black marker. He walked to the window, and looked out at the parking lot. The sky had descended, and seemed now to rest upon the hotel, raining upon it. The day was growing dark, and Carl pulled the curtains together. The sign-up sheet was posted on the outside of the room’s door, and Carl did not know which men were waiting in line, or how many. He did not necessarily enjoy cutting hair anymore, if he ever did, but he continued out of a sense of obligation. He put three pills on his tongue, sprayed water into his mouth from the spray bottle. He lay on his bed and closed his eyes. He should not have attended his high school reunion last month. That had been a mistake. The best-case scenario was that Carl was halfway through his life. It was alternately a comfort and a terror to consider that you were halfway through your life, but at any rate it was not an accurate concept. You were never actually halfway through your life. Not really. Not in the sense that you were halfway though a cord of winter firewood, or a tank of gas, or a trip home from the beach, or the one cocktail you allowed yourself on a weeknight. Halfway through something, that is, whose wholeness is a given, preexistent. You were always, instant by instant, at the very edge of your life, at the end of it, in its entirety, and so never at any point, Carl considered, in the middle. Adam did not show up. Perhaps the rumor was true. It would certainly not be the first time that a man had been retrieved, though this time felt more grave, Carl thought. He imagined an automotive fleet in tight highway formation, steadily approaching the hotel. A wave of relations, each determined to find a man and bring him home.)

4:00: Randy

Randy sat in the chair between the beds. The chair was now encircled by a thick ring of cut hair. He felt as if he were in a nest. Carl sprayed Randy’s hair, and combed it straight forward. Water dripped from Randy’s nose. Carl leaned down in front of Randy to cut the bangs across Randy’s forehead. Randy confessed, as Carl knew he would. He told Carl the truth about the Jeff Bostic uniform. “It’s true that I sold it,” he said, telling the story from the beginning, or well before it. And in the six minutes he had remaining in his appointment, he had other things to tell Carl, as well. In forty-six years Randy had done any number of things of which he was ashamed. There was nothing interesting, nothing unusual. Carl had heard it all many times. Randy had lied, he had stolen, he had cheated, he had hurt people who loved him. He had once peed in a bottle of Mellow Yellow, knowing full well his older sister would ask him for a drink. . If he wanted, Randy, like everyone else, could tell his life story as an outright spree of wickedness and deceit.

4:15: Dennis

Dennis was a business traveler, staying alone on the second floor. He sat quietly for his trim. Out in the hallway, the men had dispersed, leaving behind some trash and a notable silence. Carl concentrated on the hair of Dennis, and he cut well, though it depleted him. Dennis’s cough drop gradually filled the room with its scent of medicine and childhood. The smell had not changed in decades. It must be the case that people did not actually want cough drops to taste like cherry, like lemon. In the absence of much ambient noise, the smell of the cough drop began nearly to drone. Suddenly, Dennis said something. He asked Carl if he would mind trimming his eyebrows. Carl could think of no reason to refuse, and he trimmed the eyebrows, holding his breath to steady his hands. When the appointment was over, Carl wiped Dennis’s neck and ears with a towel. He carefully removed the cape. “There you go,” he said, as barbers do. Dennis nodded, stood. For some time he stared at a watercolor of horses in a pasture, as if at a mirror. Carl sat on the bed. Dennis reached for his wallet, and Carl braced himself for more photographs of children. It was more than he could handle. Dennis removed fourteen dollars from his wallet, and placed the bills on the bedside table.

4:30: Michael

Fat Michael entered the room as Dennis left. He saw Carl sitting on the bed, shoulder against the headboard, eyes closed, mouth open, scissors dangling from his finger. He was either asleep or pretending to be asleep, and there was no real difference that Fat Michael could determine. The amount of cut hair on the floor was disconcerting, unseemly. The room was a scene of unpleasant fecundity, as one might discover beneath a rock or a rotting log. Fat Michael thought it distasteful that the men should have left so much of themselves here, as if they had molted. Slowly, Carl’s shoulder slid down the headboard. He lay on the bed on his back with his feet still on the floor. The scissors dropped to the carpet. Fat Michael’s hair really wasn’t that long, anyway. He didn’t need a cut, and he didn’t think much of Carl’s skills as a barber. He had just signed up to fill out the schedule, so that Carl wouldn’t feel bad. He picked up Carl’s scissors from the floor. They did not seem like good scissors. The blades rattled loosely, and small spots of rust dotted the handles. Fat Michael considered that the men should pitch in to buy Carl a new pair, or perhaps a whole new barber’s kit. When was Carl’s birthday? He glanced around for Carl’s wallet, but did not see it. Fat Michael’s birthday was today, but nobody knew it. He had never mentioned it, and he couldn’t very well mention it now, after so many years. He put the scissors on the chair, and left the room quietly. He knew the men would never buy Carl a new barber’s kit. It was enough to imagine the generosity.

THE YEAR Jeff brought his girlfriend; the year nobody brought a football; the year Trent slept in the lobby; the flu year; the food poisoning year; the year the conference room had just been painted; the year that George was Theismann; the year that George was commissioner; the year that George was Taylor; 2001; the year Myron forgot to make room reservations; the year Vince shocked himself with the toaster; the year the linebackers got stuck on the roof; the very first year; the year the smokers found that big box of fireworks by the dumpster; the year Wesley dropped his watch in the fountain; the year Steven got so drunk and stole a ladder; the year that Tommy disappeared for a good long while; the year of the flight attendants; the year that Adam called Gil in the middle of the night, pretending to be the real Theismann; the snow year; the lightning year; the year Charles lost his shit; the year Fat Michael lost his wedding ring; the year Randy broke his wrist; the year Nate dislocated his elbow; the year of Bald Michael’s toupee; the year Fancy Drum was vandalized; the year Derek’s car was vandalized; the years that guy Danny had to fill in as a substitute, and kept trying to sell the rest of the men those specialty candles; the year the newspaper reporter was supposed to come; the year the cops came and arrested the night desk clerk; the year of the hot wings contest; the year that Robert was not the first to arrive; the year Carl fumbled the snap; the year the hotel ran out of breakfast; the year the hotel ran out of hot water; the year Nate’s wife went into labor; the year of babies; the year Gary made his big announcement; the year of the carbon dioxide dragsters.

Myron, Gil, and Tommy sat on a couch in the lobby, waiting for others to come down for dinner. All three had heard birds flying smack into their glass patio doors. All three were just praying their kids would get scholarships. The fountain was half full, and gurgling unhealthily.

Jerry, the transportation director for Prestige Vista Solutions, walked past the men on the couch and wished them good luck this evening. The men nodded, thanked Jerry.

“Big night,” Jerry said.

The men concurred. Myron had a startled expression on his face.

“Last year, right?” Jerry said.

Gil took off his reading glasses, and cleaned them with his shirt. The elevator bell rang twice. Tommy stared down at his hands, folded in his lap. Myron said, “What?”

“This is the last year, right?” Jerry said.

“Who told you that?” Gil said.

“A guy yesterday,” Jerry said. “I don’t know his name. Guy with a chinstrap. Was it some kind of secret?”

The men shook their heads. “No,” Myron said. “Of course not.”

“Take it easy,” Jerry said, walking toward the automatic doors of the lobby. “Have fun.”

The fountain gurgled. The desk clerk read Dune. The bright, enormous clock bathed the entire lobby in time. Each of the three men on the couch assumed that the other two men had known, that he was the only one who had not. Each felt the sting of exclusion, the ancient wound, before anger rushed in like an antibody. Why had he not been told? Why had he been treated like a child? They sat in silence, staring up at the television, the muted anchors. Each man was indignant. Beneath the indignation there was an exotic and diverse world of feeling, as dark as an ocean trench.

BY CUSTOM the men ate dinner with positional mates. By custom they made their way in clusters down the dirt path along the service road, ducking under the heavy wet branches of evergreens. By custom they ate inexpensive food with sauce packets. By custom they ate in silence. There was, after all, no reason to say that Theismann’s right leg remains to this day shorter than his left, or that the sound by his own account was like two muzzled gunshots or that the surgeons at Arlington Hospital had to wash the wound dozens of times with saline solution in an attempt to prevent infection. (“You start with a gallon,” one of the surgeons said, and the men did not.) There was no need to say that Theismann described the injury as a kind of death, followed by rebirth. Straws squeaked inside the lids of fountain drinks. Boys within the plastic tunnels of the restaurant’s Play Zone taunted other boys, and then injured themselves attempting to flee. By tradition the man playing Theismann and the man playing Taylor stayed away from each other, like a bride and groom before a wedding. Nobody ate all that much.

Back in their rooms, the men helped each other pull jerseys over shoulder pads. They helped each other tape fingers and wrists, tie shoelaces. By tradition, each man would drive to Warren G. Harding Middle School alone. Nobody would carpool. They left the hotel in full uniform, carrying their wallets and keys inside their helmets. That sound, vaguely martial, was their cleats across the parking lot.