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Rick turned into the Notre Dame parking lot. “Since I gave up smoking, I notice it all the time. This health kick's really made a difference. I'm down two notches on my belt, my clothes don't fit, and I want to screw all the time now.” He switched off the ignition. “How's that for a side benefit?”
Mickey said, “You smile a lot, you know that?”
It was just an okay game, nothing spectacular as far as Rick was concerned. In fact, if you conked him on the head, he might even have said it was boring. Where was the teamwork? Where was the give-and-take? A couple of black guys were out there throwing up junk shots, making the white guys look like clowns, propelling themselves up toward the hoop like they were taking stairs three at a time. It went back and forth like that all night, and except for the spine-tingling Note Dame songs, except for the perky cheerleaders and the silver flask of brandy Mickey passed up and down the row, Rick caught himself wishing he was in a motel room somewhere eating cheese slices on crackers.
At the final buzzer the three guys filed out with the crowd, giving the nod to other old buddies and asking them how tricks were. The Oldsmobile engine turned slowly with cold before it caught, and as Rick eyed the oil pressure gauge Mickey removed the Captain and Tenille from the tape deck. Mr. Sophisticated.
Rick took the crosstown and shoved in a tape of Tony Orlando. Walter was paging through one of the catalogs for Doctor's Service Supply Company, Indianapolis, when he noticed a pizza parlor was still open, how did that sound? Rick admitted it didn't blow the top of his head off, but he guessed he could give it a whirl. Mickey just sat there like wax.
Rick swerved in next to a souped-up Ford with big rear wheels and an air scoop on the hood, SECRET STORM was printed in maroon on the fender. As the three walked up to the pizza parlor's entrance, Rick saw them mirrored by the big windows, in blue shirts and rep ties and cashmere topcoats, with scowls in their eyes and gray threads in their hair and gruesome mortgages on their houses, and not one of them yet living up to his full potential.
Walter stood with Rick at the counter as he ordered a twelve-inch combination pizza. An overhead blower gave them pompadours. “Hey,” said Rick, “that was fun.”
Walter showed three fingers to a girl at the beer taps. He said, “My wife encourages me to go out with you boys. She thinks it'll keep me from chasing tail.”
Rick wished he had been somewhere else when Walter said that. It said everything about the guy.
Mickey walked to the cigarette machine and pressed every button, then, deep in his private Weltschmerz, he wandered past a sign that read, THIS SECTION CLOSED. Rick backed away from the counter with the beers, sloshing some on his coat, and made his way to the dark and forbidden tables where Mickey was moodily sitting.
Mickey frowned. “How long are we going to dawdle here?”
“You got something you wanted to do?”
“There's always something to do, Rick.”
A girl in a chef's hat seated an elderly couple in the adjoin- ing area. She had pizza menus that she crushed to her breast as she sidestepped around benches toward the drinking b
uddies, bumping the sign that read THIS SECTION CLOSED, schoolmarm disapproval in her eyes.
Mickey rocked back in his chair. “Can I just sit here for a while? Would it ruin your day if I just sat here?”
The girl stopped and threw everything she had into the question and then shrugged and walked back to the cash register.
Rick almost smacked his forehead, he was that impressed. Mickey could get away with stuff that would land Rick in jail or small-claims court.
Soon he and Walter tore into a combination pizza, achieving at once a glossy burn on the roofs of their mouths. Mickey must not have wanted any. He seemed to have lost the power of speech. After a while Walter asked if either of them had read a magazine article about a recent psychological study of stress.
Rick asked, “How do you find time to read?”
“I can't,” Walter said. “Karen gets piles of magazines in the mail, though, and she gives me digests of them at dinner.”
Mickey looked elsewhere as Walter explained that this particular study showed that whenever a person shifted the furniture of his life in any significant way at all, he or she was increasing the chances of serious illness. Change for the better? Change for the worse? Doesn't matter. If your spouse dies, you get a hundred points against you. You get fired, that's fifty. You accomplish something outstanding, really excellent, still you get something in the neighborhood of thirty points tacked on to your score. The list went on and on. Mortgages counted, salary bonuses, shifts in eating habits. “You collect more than three hundred of these puppies in a year,” Walter said, “and it's time to consult a shrink.”
Neither Walter nor Rick could finish the pizza, so Rick asked the kitchen help for a sack to take the remains home in. Then the three men walked out into the night, gripping their collars at their necks, their ears crimped by the cold. It was getting close to zero. Rick could hear it in the snow.
There were three boys in Secret Storm, each dangling pizza over his mouth and getting cheese on his chin.
Rick opened the car door on his side and bumped the trim on the souped-up Ford. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders at the kid on the passenger's side.
The kid called him a son of a bitch.
Mickey immediately walked around the car. “What'd he call you?”
“Nothing, Mickey. He was kidding.”
But Mickey was already thumping the kid's car door with his knee. “I want to hear what you called him!”
The door bolted open against Mickey's cashmere coat, soiling it, and a kid bent out, unsnapping a Catholic high school letterman's jacket. Before he had the last snap undone, Mickey punched him in the neck. The kid grabbed his throat and coughed. Mickey held his fists like cocktail glasses.
