Chloe Clark

Nobody believes in ghosts anymore. Or at least not the kind that I’m talking about. They don’t understand how they can follow you all your life. All those you’s who didn’t work out, didn’t take the right path, tripped on their way to stardom. I believe in them, though, see them all the time.

             It was coming up on my ten year anniversary working at the coffeeshop. Once in a while, my mother said something about how barista wasn’t a life-career, but usually my parents said nothing about it. They tried not to question my choices, I always thought, perhaps feeling that enough choices had been forced onto me without my voice in the matter. I was supposed to have been someone big.

                                                            ***

“I was talking to Rice and he thinks if the game goes how we know it will then you stand a very good chance of being early in the first round.” Tom told me. He wasn’t my agent but he wasn’t not my agent either—a gray area of college bball that I’d never really cared to understand. 

            “Early?” I said and tried to sound excited. I was about three months of hip-hip-hooraying every thirty minutes past when I still felt excitement. I wanted to just focus on the games at hand, the next shot, the feeling of the crowd coming alive.

            “Ear—ly,” he said. I could practically hear him nodding vigorously over the phoneline.

            “Awesome. Look I’ve gotta go. I have an exam—”

            “Won’t be worrying about that shit soon! See you in the Allstars!” 

            The phone clicked off and I breathed a sigh of relief. Over the course of my freshman year of high school, I’d shot up ten inches and suddenly my love of basketball seemed less far-fetched. The speed and long shots I’d practiced over and over were now an extra scoop of cherries on the sundae of height. Tom had seen me at a high school championship game, my Sophomore year, and found my parents the next day. 

            “You son is an allstar in the making,” he’d said, then, and it had become his permanent sign-off, the blessing he kept repeating as he waited for it to come true.

                                                            ***

It was the same café I used to hang out in during undergrad. It had seemed familiar enough to feel alright in and then it just felt like the only place I could imagine myself working at. A woman came up to the counter and ordered a drink that had more syllables than sense. A half-caf soy latte with one pump sugar-free vanilla syrup and one pump not-sugar free hazelnut syrup. No foam but extra whipped cream. I made the drink with the skill of years, tamping down on the espresso with just enough pressure and snapping it into the espresso machine. I steamed the milk to 130 degrees, twirling the cup slightly to get the milk evenly heated, before swooping off the foam in one practiced stroke, and spraying the whipped cream onto the top with a careful swirled movement. The motions reminded me of playing basketball, the almost balletic movements I’d once done with such ease. It was nice to feel like a movement was easy.

            I handed the woman her drink and she stared at me for a second longer than was normal. “You look super familiar.”

            I shrugged. “I work a lot of shifts here.”

            She shook her head. “No, from somewhere else.”

            She peered at me with apt consideration, seeking my face in her Rolodex of memories. I could guess what she was remembering me from. It used to happen a lot more, but as the years passed and student populations changed, it happened less and less. The shooting guard who got the team to the Final Four for the first time in three decades. A campus hero. If someone Googled my name, the first thing to pop up was almost always a photo of me jogging backwards down the court, one arm raised in victory. The second thing to come up was usually an article about the beating that left me with a limp I’d carry for the rest of his life. The end of a promising career. I had only ever Googled my name once.

            The woman, finally, gave up, shrugging. She thanked me for the coffee drink and left. My phone buzzed and I took the momentary absence of customers as a chance to check it. The name that popped up was Lee Barrons. My best friend from college and someone I hadn’t talked to, for more than a handful of text birthday messages and one line catch-up e-mails, at all since. It was the fourth text that week. Hey, is this still your number? In town the next few days. Be great to catch up!

            I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I hadn’t seen Lee since the summer after graduation. 

                                                                        ***

            “Why don’t you come with me?” Lee asked. He was headed to the East Coast for law school and it seemed so far away that I could barely picture the cities anymore—all those places I’d been at Away games.

            “What would I do?” I said, avoiding his eyes.  Avoiding the fact that it was the third time he’d asked. The third time I’d avoided giving him an answer.

            “Be my roommate! Keep me company! You can get a job and consider grad school.”

            I was still walking with a limp that was severe enough to cause the side of one of my shoes to become scuffed from how much I was dragging my foot. My physical therapist tried to tell me that there were ways to correct my walking. She’d patiently showed them to me over and over. Learn to compensate she said.

            “Consider grad school?” I’d come to hate the sound of the word “consider.” I’d never had to consider alternatives before. Life had stretched out before me as a series of things that’d welcome me in. 

            “Yeah, man. I know you love you some English Lit!”

            People had asked, not me directly but my friends, and even my sister, whether the attack had been directed at me or whether it was random. He’s so well known around campus, it had to have been him specifically, right? But, it had been a series of random attacks around town. Some gang initiation or something like that, the police said. Almost a dozen college-aged men jumped by a group, mugged, and beaten. It was only my case that made the front page of the papers and only because I brought name recognition to something horrible that had been quietly happening. One of the other men ended up with permanent brain damage. You’re lucky, man, people said to me afterwards. Another word I’d end up hating.

                                                                        ***

            My shift ended and phone rang as soon as I stepped out the door. I answered without checking caller ID. “Hello?”

            “Hey, man.”  The voice was recognizable to me even after years of not hearing it. Lee Barrons. 

            “Whoa, hey, Lee?”

            “The one. The only. How are you?” Lee’s voice never sounded anything less than bombastic. It was a word I never had particularly liked, bombastic, with that loaded beginning, but it was the first one that popped into my head whenever I thought of ways to describe Lee.

            “Good man, good. I got your text, I was at work. I was gonna text you back. So you’re in town, huh?”

            “Yeah, just got in. There’s a client who’s here, long story. But, I’d love to get together, catch up, see if you’re still you, etc.”

            “I’m still me.” And I wondered if he heard the question in my answer. “That sounds great, though.” I could think of a thousand things I’d rather do. 

            “Well, I’m booked tonight with a meeting. But, how about tomorrow night? O’Laughlins for old times’ sake? 8 PM?”

            “Sure, great. That sounds great. I’ll see you then.” O’Laughlins had been the bar that we spent the most time in. I only remembered after hanging up that O’Laughlins’s kept pictures hanging up of great moments in the sports history of the city. There was a signed picture of me in there somewhere. That arm forever pumped in victory. I thought about calling back and changing places, but he knew that Lee would guess the reasons why he didn’t want to go back there. I thought about calling back and saying I didn’t live in the city anymore, I’d never lived in the city, I’d be free in a hundred years.

                                                                        ***

“One week to go!” Someone shouted when we walked into the bar. Everyone there always knew my face. The city was counting down to the Final Four game and liked to remind me every shot that it got.

            I pumped a fist in the air, in acknowledgment, and everyone clapped. 

            “It’s like your salute,” Lee muttered. “I feel like I’m with royalty.”

            I shrugged, as I weaved towards the bar. Manny held up two fingers at me, and I nodded. He turned away for an instant and then back with two stouts. It was the only thing I ever drank and Lee had gotten in the habit of doing the same. The Irish half is strong with this one, pointing at me, he’d say, whenever I ordered it.

            We found our usual corner booth, and hunkered down. 

            “How are you feeling about the game?”

            “You know how I’m feeling. Everyone knows how I’m feeling. I’m excited. Ready.”

            Lee took a long swallow of beer. He looked over at the door, watching people coming in. It was a favorite of his: to make up stories about the people’s nights as they entered. A girl walked in, in a bright red dress and too much makeup. “She has a date in an hour but needs a drink first to steel herself.”

            “Why?” I asked, playing along. 

            “The last man she dated she nearly married. He was a millionaire. But he had secrets.”

            The girl saw us looking at her and smiled. I looked away, but Lee raised his drink at her and smiled back. “She definitely ended up murdering the fiancé.”

            I choked on the sip of my drink. “She’s gonna need more than one drink to steel her nerves.”

            “Speaking of nerve-steeling, how is Sandy?”

            Lee had never liked Sandy, in any of the years we’d been dating. We’d met after a game, she had come up to compliment me and Lee had wondered if she was just a Locker Leech. There were always girls hanging around after games, hoping to get some of the spotlight filtered down to them. 

            “She’s good. Not a fan of the lead up to big games, but she makes do.” Her making-do lately had been long sighs and irritated glances every time Tom called. Do you even really like basketball, she’d asked me. I wanted to tell her how much I loved the game and how much I hated the spectacle, but I’d just shrugged and let it turn in to a nod.

                                                            ***

            At my apartment, I laid down on the bed to stare at the ceiling. His phone rang and he answered. It was my sister Molly. “Hey, Liam, did you get my text?”

            “Something about the wedding?”

            “Yes, I—.”

            “I don’t know anything about wedding planning, Mol. Sandy did all that shit.” I said, tasting her name in my mouth—sharp.

            “Like I’d want the ideas of a guy who thinks that neon orange is a nice color.” Molly chuckled. “No, what I wanted to do was see what you’d say to this. I want to invite Sandy. She and I are still friends. Would that be cool?”

            “Yeah, I don’t care. The past is past and all that.” I said, though I could feel something creeping up my spine, like centipedes on my skin.

            “Are you sure? I don’t want you to be all awkward.”

            “Molly, it’s your wedding. And I’m fine with Sandy being there. We still talk. It’s not like we grow fangs and attack when we see one another.” I thought of Sandy, when she’d finally asked for a divorce. Don’t you want to move on, yet, Liam? We had been together since sophomore year of college. She’d once sat next to me as I soaked in a bath and talked about how the body was miraculous, how it could heal itself in so many different ways.

                                                            ***

“Liam? What are you thinking about?” Sandy asked. She had walked into the room at some point and caught me staring at my hands, again. I often got lost in studying them. All those calluses built up from years of slapping them against a ball. The crooked pinkies and index finger from breaks when I’d slammed against the ground, against a ball, against a hoop. The fingernails chewed down low from the nervous habit I had of tearing at them when I was benched, I could see my life mapped out in the damage I had done.

            “Just basketball.”

            She sighed. “I thought you were supposed to be working on a paper for your lit class?”

            “Yeah, I need to think about it. I don’t have an argument.” It was a paper on the trench warfare poets of WWI. I wanted to write about how destruction waited around every poem, how the power came from knowing that everything would fall apart.

            “You could talk through it with me?” She offered, hesitantly sitting at the edge of the couch, a space still between us.

            “Uh, I think I’ll take a walk and figure it out? I need to move.”

            She opened her mouth, about to say something, maybe ask if she could join me. But then she closed her mouth again. “Okay, whatever.”

            Outside the air was crisp and I could see my breath hovering in front of me. My grandmother used to call it “seeing your soul.” I walked longer than I meant to, back and forth around the city. Feeling the ache creeping up my legs. 

            I heard someone laugh, the echo bouncing down the alley to my side. It sounded colder than a laugh should. I figured it was just the dark.

                                                            ***

After turning off my phone, I fell into sleep without wanting or trying to. It happened that way more often than not since the attack. I dreamed often of being back on the court. In my dreams, though, I was always the only one on his team. I’d be dribbling, ball pounding up into my palm, and look up to see the other team. They were all tall and circling me. In my dreams, the other players never had faces. There was smooth skin instead of mouths and noses. They had eyes, but they were milky and glazed. I’d try to duck and spin around them– feel the twists in my leg muscles, anticipate the movements. I’d take a jump-shot, feet rising from the floor of the court, but I’d always, every damn time, wake up before the ball met the net. 

            I woke up with the sheets twisted around my legs. For years, I’d tossed and turned in his sleep. Sandy had complained about it and I’d worked hard to quell the habit. Since she’d moved out, I found it returning. My body taking over the entirety of the bed, sometimes I’d wake half-falling onto the floor.

            It was morning, somehow. So, I got ready for work. I went into the café, trying not to think of seeing Lee that night. I still had trouble not thinking of Lee as his best friend. We had met at freshman orientation and then been roommates. Lee would record all of my games and we’d go through them later. Lee picking out areas where I could improve. We even took dance classes together—helpful in my case as it improved athletic grace, a good quality in a basketball player, and hilarious in Lee’s case, who could barely turn in one spot with both feet on the ground. I wondered which was sadder—if Lee was still my closest friend even though they barely spoke anymore or if Lee was no longer my closest friend and I just didn’t have anyone in that space. Everyone from college had simply fallen away—all my teammates drifting off to other cities and prospects while I stayed in place. People at the café tended to be undergrads and so the work crew turned over every few years. It was just me, there, always a constant.

                                                                        ***

            The thing about pain is you forget it once it’s gone. It’s the bodies natural response so that we have more babies, we go outside and hunt again, we pick ourselves up. A kinesiologist once told me this—as if it was the easiest fact to understand in the world. What they didn’t say, what defeated the body’s response, is that trauma isn’t something you forget. You don’t forget lying on the ground in a fetal position, feeling the wrong angle of your leg. You still speed up when you go past alleys, jump when you hear people laughing at night. 

            I must have laid there for an hour or two, before a drunken couple stumbling home after last call at the bar, found me. The woman’s sharp “oh” of surprise when she realized what she was seeing startled me out of a daze I’d drifted into. The guy stumbled up to me, and I was never sure if it was the alcohol or his fear that made his walk so stuttered, crouching to see if I was breathing.

            “Hey, man, shit, we’re gonna get help,” he’d said. The woman was already on her phone, dialing 911, darting her gaze to me every few seconds as if to make sure I was still there. As if I could have gone anywhere.

            “Shit,” the guy said. A strange look spreading across his face, part wonder and part sadness. “You’re Liam Jones, aren’t you? Shit, the game.”

                                                ***

            The shift was a busy one. It was edging up on Midterms and students seemed to need to be constantly caffeinated. One girl came in at three different points to order a large Red Eye with two extra shots of espresso each time. As a barista, did I have the responsibility to cut people off at a certain point? I remembered my own finals, the stress I’d put on myself to finish term papers, to study passages in thick novels as if they might give me clues. Another player had once asked me why I studied so much. All you need is a C to keep your spot, man. I hadn’t been able to explain how much the pressure, the push at the end of the semester, made me feel like I was doing something I was meant to be doing. How I could fall into an argument about a writer’s intent and it felt like coming home.

             At the end of the day, I made a hot chocolate to walk with. I wasn’t a fan of hot chocolates unless if I made them myself. Almost entirely frothed milk with just enough chocolate syrup to lightly color the milk. I had always liked the hint of sweetness, the promise that it was in there somewhere, more than I liked the sweet taste, the sugary reward, itself. 

            I walked over to O’Laughlins. It was a only a mile away and I liked to stretch my legs at night. The therapists told me that I’d probably never walk without a slight limp but that the more I strengthened my leg, the less noticeable it would be. Years after the incident and there were occasional days where I could imagine that my leg was perfectly fine. Then I’d go running too far and too fast, or swivel the wrong way to reach for something, and pain would come shooting up my tendons and muscles. 

            I saw Lee right away. He looked basically the same: his hair still a shade of blonde that bordered on being white in the summer and his frame gawky and long. He was wearing a charcoal-colored suit, that made him blend into the shadows a bit more than was comfortable to the eye, and drinking a G&T. 

            “Lee Barrons in a suit. Never thought I’d see the day,” I said, in lieu of hello.

            “I’m coming from a meeting, plus I look amazing in this suit.” Lee said as he stood up. He was tall but still a good five inches shorter than me. Lee pulled me into a hug. “Man, it’s good to see you!”

            “Yeah, you, too. It’s been an age.” I sat down at the tiny table across from Lee, who had signaled a waitress with a quick wave. “So, you’re in town about a client? How’s the firm?”

            It was his father’s firm. A place Lee had sworn he would never go. “It’s good. I drank my dad’s Kool-aid, I know. But gotta make a living. Where are you working?”

            “Uh, The Café Crown.”

            “That place the English majors always went?”

            “I was an English major.” I said. I’d picked the major haphazardly, assuming I’d never have to use a degree. Then, I’d found I’d enjoyed it. Diving into texts. Sometimes, I still went back and read the anthologies of poetry that I’d once used in classes. 

            “Oh, god, you were, weren’t you. So do you get free coffee?” Lee asked. There wasn’t any judgment in his tone, no pity to the question. He asked as if it was a perk that he’d have liked in his own job.

            “Yeah, yeah, I do.” I tried to keep my gaze on the immediate surroundings. I didn’t want to accidentally see my photo up on the wall. That fucking fist pump. I tried to think of subjects to shift to and remembered, with a twinge of guilt, Lee’s wedding which he had been invited to but hadn’t attended. “How’s your husband?”

            Lee took a sip of his drink. “We divorced.”

            “Oh, shit, man, I’m sorry. Sandy and I separated as well.”

            “You did? I have to admit I was never a huge fan of her.”

            I didn’t say it, but I knew that Sandy had never been a fan of Lee, either. His bombastic nature. His alliterative insults for the girls who dated the players. We’d had a fight before Lee’s wedding. She asked me why I was even considering going since I hadn’t seen Lee in years. I had responded that Lee’d always been there for me, that he was the person who I could rely on, who visited me every day when I was in the hospital. Sandy had looked into the corner of the room for a moment before responding, quietly, that she had visited me every day, too. That had been one of the first fights in a series that often felt like it was repeating itself. If our marriage had been a television show, it would have been cancelled early. “We did, yeah. What happened with you and…”

            “Louis. You know, we just ended up having different life goals. Something we should have talked about sooner, but does anyone ever do that? Like actually sit down and talk about everything you want out of life to see where your paths align…or don’t?”

            I nodded. We both became caught up in the silence. Lee looked at me. “How are things otherwise? Do you ever play anymore?”

            While I was in the hospital, everyone had said that sure, I’d miss the Final Four game, but I’d bring us back there the next year. Just one more year.

            I’d watched the game on TV. Or I had watched the first half of the first half. Seen Tony and Devon and Shamar and all of them trying their bests to make up for a hole on the team. But there was something in them that I could see was missing. Tony scanned the court once as if looking for someone to pass to and even on a TV screen, even miles and miles away, I saw a flicker of loss on his face when there was no one waiting there.

            But then I didn’t get better. Shamar got drafted by the NBA. What had seemed so close was suddenly so much further away. Tony would shoot me emails and texts, asking if I wanted to catch up, but I managed to put it off. Homework one weekend, a test the next, or I’d say I was going out of town and then spend a weekend curled up in my apartment worried about going out and accidentally bumping in to him. I knew that he would have the same look on his face as he recognized me, as he realized I was avoiding him.

            There’d been the suggestion that I could have played, again, at a slower pace and just for fun, but that I could do it again. It won’t be professionally, but you can still enjoy the game. “Yeah, sure. At the gym sometimes.”

            “Awesome, man, awesome,” Lee said.

            “You know Molly’s getting married,” I said. Lee always treated Molly as if she were his own little sister. 

            “Yeah, I’m invited to the wedding.” 

            “You still talk to Molly?”

            “Of course, your family always treated me like family. I exchange cards with your mom, too. Usually we talk gardening tips.” Lee smiled.

            “I’m so out of the loop,” I laughed. “Well, what do you think of the guy?”

            “Give him a chance. Molly loves him and she has good taste. Remember that she had a crush on me at one point.” 

            I chuckled, remembering my sister always making excuses to come into whatever room we were hanging out in. We talked about our lives for a while. I was amazed at how easily we slipped back into the old cadences of our conversations. The in-jokes we’d always made, the words we abbreviated or didn’t even need to say.

            Leaving the bar, Lee convinced me to walk him back towards the hotel. We passed a basketball court on their way. A ball sat in the middle of the court. I tried not to glance at it even, as if by not acknowledging it I would erase it from existence. Lee saw it, though, and cackled with slightly drunken joy. “Remember how we used to come here after the bars?”

            How had I ever forgotten that? It had been an almost weekly ritual. I played against myself. Spinning and shooting. Lee sat on the park bench, calling out the plays in a mock sportscaster’s voice. I could hear it echoing in his head.

            “For old time’s sake?” Lee said. He dashed onto the court, shoes pounding on the concrete.

            I stared at the court, unwilling to step over the line and back into its embrace. I’d lied. I hadn’t so much as touched a basketball since the night of the beating. I used to think that the ball was part of me, an extension of my body. The tiny nubs on the surface felt like flesh. I’d sometimes hit my hand against a table and still feel the reverberations of a dribble. Lee picked up the ball and looked over at me. “Come on, man! Show me what you still got.”

            I heard voices, echoes of the yelling, a laugh that spun up and up in the darkness, and I could still feel feet kicking into my side, hear the crunch of my bones. I shook my head at Lee.

            Lee frowned. “One shot?”

            I didn’t answer and Lee passed the ball. I caught it without thinking, the old reflexes and instincts still always there waiting. The ball felt cool in my hands, fitting neatly as if it belonged there still. I stepped out onto the court. “Man, I can’t.”

            Lee stared at me, saying nothing. 

            I dribbled the ball once, the sound of it against concrete. I never even watched games on TV anymore. The sound of the games was too much, overwhelming everything. Watching it was like seeing video proof of someone you loved with another person, having long since moved on.

            “Liam Jones has the ball,” Lee’s voice imitating the announcers. There was a rhythm to it, a way he pitched his tone higher that made him sound exactly like the games we’d listened to on the radio—me trying to visualize the plays.

            I thought about throwing the ball at Lee’s face, of telling him to fuck off. Instead, I dribbled the ball again and took the shot. 

            “He shoots,” Lee yelled. The ball spun around the net and I imagined, if you listened close enough, really listened, it made a sound close to that made by running fingers over the rims of a wine glass. Then it went in. “He scores! Jones for three!”

            I stared at the ball as it fell, hit the concrete, rolling into the darkness. I wondered when it would end.