The Book of Joe

useless as a disciplinarian and made it easy for someone like Dugan to manipulate him. So it was after a quick consultation with Dugan that Lyncroft suspended Sean and Mouse for two days and demanded a written apology to Sammy from each before they could return to school. Dugan also made sure it was understood that despite their suspension, Sean and Mouse would still be allowed to attend basketball practice after school. After all, the season was under way, and why should everyone else on the team be made to suffer?
    When I knocked on Sammy’s door that evening, Lucy opened it, looking uncharacteristically glum, her eyes slightly red from crying. When she saw that it was me, though, she smiled brightly, and I shivered with secret delight. “Hi, Mrs.
    Haber. I came over to see how Sammy’s doing,” I said, which was only partially true. Mostly, it was an excuse to see Lucy, whom I hadn’t seen since the school year began.
    “Please, Joe,” she said wearily. “I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Lucy.”
    I did, and it felt subversively intimate.
    “It’s sweet of you to come see him,” she said. “But I don’t think he’s really up for a visit right now.”
    “Is he in a lot of pain?”
    She looked at me, a deep hurt etched across her face.
    “He’s humiliated,” she said simply. “What those boys did to him ... ” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she turned away from me. “I need a smoke.” I followed her into the kitchen, where she sat down and shook a cigarette out of a package lying on the round pine table. “That boy has never bothered a living soul,” she said, absently curling her lower lip as she projected a stream of smoke upward. “And yet wherever he goes, something about him seems to inspire this cruelty.”
    She paused to take another drag on her cigarette and then rested her head on her palm. I was both alarmed and terribly excited to discover that she was crying. She looked up at me standing idiotically beside her, reached out to grab my hand, and pulled me into the seat next to her. “You have to help him, Joe,” she said, her eyes beseeching me. “You have to look out for him. There’s just no one else to do it.” I nodded mutely, feeling a powerful stirring in my loins. I was on a first-name basis with a beautiful older woman who was now holding on to me as she cried. What further intimacies lay ahead?
    “I’ll try,” I said to her, squeezing her hand. She leaned forward to hug me, and I brought up my hand awkwardly to her shoulder. Her smells were a combination of lilac shampoo, a soft perfume with a citrus scent, and the cigarette still burning in the hand behind my left ear. As she spoke, her lips inadvertently brushing my ear, I tried to inhale her entire essence. “Be my hero, Joe,” she whispered to me. “Take care of my boy.”
    She pulled back and smiled at me, her hands still on my shoulders, and I saw a flicker of something in her eyes, an amused recognition of my intense longing. I had a sudden, intuitive flash that maybe Lucy’s seductive touch was not accidental on her part, that she was offering something here. I felt my legs start to tremble, but then she let go and took another long pull on her cigarette.
    “I’ll try,” I said thoughtlessly. I’d pretty much forgotten about Sammy already. I walked back to the front door ahead of her, taking great pains to hide the shameless proboscis protruding under my jeans.

Thirteen
    The Halftime pub is all dark mahogany and weathered leather that practically glistens with testosterone in the dim glow of the alabaster light fixtures. The wood-paneled walls are covered with framed sports memorabilia, and the bar is a dark, hulking monolith that runs the full width of the room.
    The air is thick with the smell of things burned and burning yet: cigarettes, cigars, chickens being grilled, and steaks being broiled. Despite the strategic placement of ceiling fans, there is a hazy smokiness to the room, highlighted by the flickering blue-green light emanating from the numerous large-screen televisions mounted throughout the pub. The men who sit scattered in small groups are for the most part cast from the same mold, ex-Cougars coming together nightly to relive their glory days and revel in this fossilized fraternity that was once the defining core of their existence. Like veterans of a great war, they come together nightly to repeat exaggerated tales of triumphs on the battlefield.
    It’s hardly a