Body Surfing

shot!”
    Cheap maybe, but effective. Jasper’s mother had died when he was barely out of diapers. He couldn’t remember her face, let alone what she’d called him, and at the lowest points in the teenager’s tempestuous relationship with his dad—which is to say, about once a day—the elder Van Arsdale was not above throwing that fact in his son’s face. John Van Arsdale acted as though Jasper’s intelligence and eloquence were an indictment of his own failure to raise himself in the world, and all too often Jasper played into his dad’s inferiority complex by talking down to him like some smarmy district attorney grilling a country bumpkin on the witness stand. Why couldn’t he have said “Fuck you” like a normal teenager?
    But in another minute the boy’s anger had faded to its customary level, and he fished a pair of boxers out of the general disarray on his floor, did thirteen quick pushups (he had a thing for prime numbers), then hopped in the shower. As he washed, he searched his body for clues to what had gone down at last night’s party: hickies, love bites, bruises, maybe a phone number Magic Markered onto his palm or the shaft of his penis. But, physically at least, there was no evidence anything had happened. The most distinct memory Jasper had was of something warm and round and full in each hand. Whoever she was, she’d had good tits. Michaela had good tits. Please, Jasper thought, please let it have been Michaela.
    A good half hour after his dad woke him, the teenager shuffled into the kitchen dressed in a pair of green nylon mesh shorts and a wrinkled T-shirt that had seen cleaner days. A tattered Dearborn sweatshirt hung on a chair where he’d tossed it after practice yesterday, splotches of mud on the chest, a jaundiced stain prominently ringing the collar. As Jasper pulled the fragrant garment over his uncombed mop of brown hair he promised himself that he really would do laundry this weekend, or at least get Michaela to do it for him. Assuming she was still talking to him.
    Mincing across the cold linoleum on his bare feet, he made his way to the counter. He poured himself a cup of coffee, then offered the pot to his dad. The pot wobbled in his hand, and a few drops of coffee added themselves to the panoply of stains on the linoleum, but neither man noticed. Jasper was staring at his dad and his dad was staring at his paper. For a long moment the only sound in the room was the hum of the refrigerator.
    Jasper caved first.
    “Top you off?”
    Van Arsdale didn’t look up.
    “Why, thank you, son.”
    Jasper poured his dad’s coffee, then made himself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the table. A tall glass containing a single purple daylily sat in the center of the table—a slightly incongruous detail in what was obviously a bachelor pad, and a rough one at that. It made more sense, however, when you realized the elder Van Arsdale bred Hemerocallis varietals and sold them to the second-homers who made the two-and-a-half-hour trek up from New York City on the weekends. Jasper knew he was supposed to comment on the flower, which was not only the first of the season, but one of John Van Arsdale’s own creations besides. Hemerocallis “Amelia V.A.”
    Jasper stared resolutely at the purple, gold-fringed petals as his dad’s chair scraped back from the table. The rubber soles of Van Arsdale’s Bean boots squeaked on the linoleum, and then there was a clunk as his dad set his cup of coffee on the counter. He opened acabinet, pulled down a bottle, poured a finger of applejack into his Folger’s. Faint clinks as he stirred the liquor into his coffee as though it were milk.
    Jasper waited. A sip. A sigh. Then:
    “Cold out today. Wet. Need a little something to warm me up.”
    “There we go.” Jasper stood up so suddenly his chair tipped backwards and the flower wobbled in its glass. The glass didn’t fall but the chair did, and Jasper kicked it out of his way.
    “What the—” Van Arsdale almost spilled his coffee, but didn’t. “What the hell’re you shouting about?” He put one hand on the counter, shielding the unlabeled bottle filled with ruddy brown liquid.
    “‘ Cold out today .’ God, you don’t even try anymore.”
    “Jap?”
    “Don’t call me that!”
    Jasper kicked the back door open and grabbed the pair of mud-encrusted running shoes on the top step. The wet grass was cold and slick beneath his bare feet, and he slipped more than once as he made his way