The Book of Joe

to show his face around here again. It’s not your decision to make.”
    I turned back to face him. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll tell him about your offer, and I hope he takes you up on it.”
    “That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said since you got here,” he said, sitting back down slowly.
    I looked at him with contempt. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s just a fucking game?”
    “Sure,” he said, leaning into the pressed wood of his desk with a nasty grin. “That’s the universal slogan of losers. I’m surprised they haven’t given it to you on a T-shirt yet.”
    Cougars games were always well attended, but that night it was standing room only at the Bush Falls High gymnasium.
    It appeared as if the entire school had turned out to see if Wayne would play. The air was charged with excitement as the crowd chanted for their team to emerge from the locker rooms. When the Cougars came sprinting out onto the court, Wayne was the second-to-last one in line, and he seemed to falter for a second when he took in the size of the crowd, but he put his head down and jogged resolutely out to the half-court line, and someone threw him a ball. He sank his first warm-up shot, a jumper from the top of the key, and there were scattered cheers. I tried to catch his eye from where I sat with Carly in the bleachers, but he was determinedly not looking around at the spectators, his face grimly expressionless.
    That night, Wayne scored fifty-two points, a new league record, in a performance that no one in the capacity crowd would ever forget. He ran the floor like a demon, weaving through the defense as if they were moving in slow motion.
    Like a wild beast suddenly freed from its cage, he tore up and down the court with a passion and fury that left even his own teammates in the dust, shaking their heads in wonder.
    Carly and I screamed until we were hoarse, laughing and hugging each other every time Wayne made another incredible move on his way to the basket. The cheers grew with each additional basket, but if Wayne heard them, he gave no outward sign.
    With less than a minute left to play and the game safely won, Wayne signaled to Dugan that he needed to come out.
    He walked over to the bench to a rousing round of applause and grabbed a towel to wipe his face. Then, while the final minute was played out, Wayne turned his back on the court and finally looked up into the bleachers, where, after a few seconds, our eyes met. We grinned at each other for a moment, and then he gave a quick nod and a short wave and disappeared through the locker room door just before the final buzzer sounded and the gym erupted into a wild cacophony of cheers and applause. I didn’t know it right then, but that brief wave was Wayne saying good-bye. It would be many years before he was seen in Bush Falls again.
    Later that night, someone jumped Sean Tallon in the parking lot of the Duchess Diner, where the team had gone to celebrate their victory. Sean showed up to school a few days later with a broken arm and the right side of his face still mangled and swollen. He never said a word about the incident, but I could tell by the way he looked at me that Wayne had taken a short detour on his way out of town, to leave a last, parting gift for Sammy.
    About four weeks later, Sammy went over the falls.

Twenty
    For the last two days, the scattered fragments of my past have been popping up like Starbucks franchises, so I shouldn’t be surprised to come home and find Lucy Haber waiting for me on my father’s front porch. Still, it throws me for a moment.
    She’s wearing sandals with platform soles, a long, clinging skirt with a daringly high slit, and a silk blouse with a scoop neck. From where I stand in the street beside my car, it appears as if she hasn’t aged at all, and only as I get closer do I notice the faint worry lines beneath her eyes and at the corners of her apprehensive smile. The lawn has acquired a few more copies of Bush Falls since morning, and I almost trip over one of them as I make my way up the walk, unable to take my eyes off Lucy. “Hello, Joe,” she says, her voice lower than I remember it.
    “Hi, Lucy.” I come up the stairs, and we maneuver awkwardly from aborted handshakes to a clumsy, poorly timed hug. She feels firm and lithe in my embrace, not at all like a fifty-year-old woman should feel, and in her hair I smell the same intoxicating lilac-scented shampoo that overwhelmed me as a