When I’m inside the gym, EJ in town still doing some dinner shopping, the first song on my playlist just happens to be the Buck Pets singing “A Little Murder.” I start to skip past the song, just because of the title, but before I do I hear this lyric, and the air comes right out of me again:
Now it’s gonna stay dark forever…
I do three sets of everything, more than I usually do, hardly any breaks except for water, lost in the work and the grind, feeling all the predictable aches and pains in the predictable places, the right shoulder and both knees especially. I power through almost grimly, sweat soaking through a faded blue UNC T-shirt, unable to unsee the dead girl being loaded into the ambulance…
Occasionally I stop to make the music even louder, wanting to drown out the world and shake the walls down here so much it will start to feel as if the whole place is about to come down on top of me.
Now I’m back to the Buck Pets singing “Hammer Valentine.”
Seems like a sacrifice
Some kind of self-destruction…
Tell me about it,I think, barely able to hear my own thoughts above the music.
When the Texas alt rock finally stops, I hear this:
“Did you miss me?”
I look up and see my agent, Laurance Most, standing in the doorway, and have no idea how long he’s been there. It’s the first time I’ve set eyes on him since he last visited me in the hospital.
“I come bearing gifts,” he says.
There’s a shopping bag in one hand. His cell phone, of course, is in the other.
“If we’re talking gifts,” I say, “I’m guessing the Bobcat you still owe me can’t fit inside that bag.”
He just stays where he is, not moving, just staring at me, as if any fun just walked right past him and out of the room.
“I’m so sorry, Silas.”
“That you stiffed me on the Bobcat?”
“About everything,” he says.
Then: “I was at the stadium.”
FORTY-NINE
LAURANCE MOST GRABS a bottle of water out of the small refrigerator next to the door and walks over and hands it to me.
“If it’s all the same to you,” I say, “I’d rather not talk about the things you’re sorry about. Or that I’m even more sorry about.”
“Hey, you’re the client,” he says, as if wanting to flip a switch and change the mood back to what it was when I first saw him standing there.
“That’s a pretty generous definition ofclient.”
“From what I observed, you still look like an athlete to me,” he says. “In training for something?”
“Nope. Just because I can’t throw doesn’t mean I can’t keep myself in decent shape.”
“Have you tried? To throw, I mean?”
“I have,” I say. “My grandmother has more arm than I do these days.”
“Had to ask.”
“Hey,” I say, grinning at him. “You’re the agent.”
