Bad Call Read online

  Grahame pounds the steering wheel. “Well, sheet, mon. Who’s gonna pay hees share uv da gas, because me don’t wanna be doin’ dat, don’t cha know.”

  “Q,” Ceo says. “Translate whatever the hell your roommate just said.”

  Ceo knows exactly what Grahame said, but I play along anyway. It’s the path of least resistance. I say, “He wants to know who’s going to pay Rhody’s share of the gas.”

  Ceo opens his wallet, peels a fifty off a thick wad of bills, slaps it on the center armrest next to Grahame. “I’ll cover his gas.”

  “Ah don’t know, mon,” Grahame says, eyes on the crisp bill. “We be three people instead of dah four. Dees blows da whole fookin’ deal, don’t cha know.”

  Ceo leans back, tilts his Dodgers ball cap low over his eyes. “I’m working on a new fookin’ deal.”

  Grahame gives me a querying look, says, “What do you think?”

  As if I have a clue about what goes on in Ceo’s head. If Grahame had asked me fifteen days ago, then yeah, I would have shared my opinion. But that was before the challenge match. Before Ceo scorch-earthed our friendship and left me and my future swinging in the breeze. Now it’s a struggle to muster up the will to care. I say, “Your car. Your call.”

  He takes a moment, slips the fifty into his pocket.

  Steps on da fookin’ gas.

  Operation Cannabis Cove requires one stop before we leave town—Big O Donuts for breakfast. They have the undisputed best donuts on the planet, and you can buy a dozen for $2.99 between four and four thirty. We make the cutoff with two minutes to spare. Grahame loses the three-way coin flip and gets the honors. While he’s inside, Ceo asks me if there were any problems with Mr. Chet.

  “None,” I say. “You?”

  “All good.”

  “Except Rhody.”

  “Except him.” The backseat goes quiet, probably because he’s checking his phone. He mutters, Shit, then asks, “Did Mr. Chet like the package?”

  “He did.”

  “The Jordan versus LeBron thing worked?”

  “As advertised. But I thought you were only doing two tickets.”

  “I figured a little extra insurance wouldn’t hurt.”

  I wonder about the cost of that extra insurance, do the mental math, and come up with a number exceeding what I make in three months folding towels. Then I wonder how Ceo scored the tickets in the first place. I could ask him. But I don’t bother because he’d just say something evasive like Craigslist is a gift from God, or cryptic like I know a guy that knows a guy. We watch Grahame pay the cashier, then head for the door with a box of pastries in hand.

  Ceo asks, “Are you curious about my new plan?”

  “Not especially.”

  “I think you should ask me about it.”

  I’m really not in the mood, but I say, “Okay, what’s the new plan?”

  “It’s still forming. But you’re going to like it more than the old plan.”

  “What about Grahame?”

  “That wheel’s going to need some extra grease.”

  Somehow he manages to be evasive and cryptic.

  Grahame opens the door, digs out a donut, hands the box back to Ceo. Just as the Cherokee is turning right onto Nelson Ave., heading for the highway out of town, an irritated voice out of the dark behind us says, “Dude, what the hell?”

  “What’s wrong?” Grahame asks.

  “They’re all maple bars!”

  “You wanted a dozen donuts, I got a dozen donuts.”

  “This isn’t a dozen donuts. This is the same freaking donut twelve times.”

  Ceo has a lot of secrets. More than anyone I know. One of those secrets is not his open disgust for any food with maple in or on it. On the day we met he told me he would never go to Vermont just because of all the maple trees.

  Grahame takes a shark-size bite out of his pastry and asks, “How’s da new plan workin’ for ya now, chief?”

  Ceo doesn’t talk for thirty minutes. I think he’s asleep back there with his hat so low it rests on his nose. Grahame consumes three maple bars while asking me sample questions from the ASVAB, which he’ll be taking in two weeks and expects to pass with scores that will qualify him for a signing bonus big enough to retire this piece of shit Cherokee. Then out of the blue Ceo, with the hat still down low, says, “I need someone to answer a question for me.”

  “What question?” Grahame asks.

  “Why is there an ax in the trunk?”

  “I thought it might be useful.”

  “Useful how?”

  “You think we might want to cut some firewood?”

  “You think it might be a little heavy?”

  Grahame turns up the music.

  Ceo raises the hat a quarter inch, says over the noise, “Dude. You’re joking, right?”

  No response from Grahame.

  Ceo says, “Tell me you’re not seriously thinking about hauling a freaking fifteen-pound ax on a twenty-mile hike?”

  Grahame grins into the rearview, says, “I wasn’t.”

  Ceo insists we take a pee break at the Quick-Stop in Caruthers. He says he saw an image on Google Earth, and this may be the coolest roadside convenience store we’ll ever see. He may be right. It has an actual crashed plane sticking tail-up from the canopy over the pumps. While Grahame tops off the tank, Ceo asks me to snap a picture with his phone of him pretending to balance the plane in his palm. Then Ceo and I cruise the Quick-Stop, searching out Mike and Ikes for me and Red Bulls for him and Grahame. We’re in the process of doing all that and thinking the JoJos just out of the fryer smell pretty damn good when the door chimes.

  And a girl walks in.

  She’s tanned and fit in a personal trainer kind of way. I’d put her in college or just out, wearing a blue dress with flowers on the front, not quite reaching midthigh, and shoes with heels, like she’s on her way to a real job. Definitely well within Ceo range, who claims to have scored all the way up to his Spanish tutor, who is forty-one. She pushes her sunglasses up onto shimmering black hair and surveys the aisles. Probably stopped here for coffee, or maybe a new key chain for the white Lexus sedan she parked next to the door. Her gaze inevitably lands on Ceo, who was in the process of buying the Red Bulls, but now he’s not.

  It’s like watching reruns on the nature channel. Instead of the Quick-Stop, we’re at a dusty watering hole in the African savanna. The narrator whispers: “The male wildebeest sniffs the air, stomps his foot, and snorts. The female wildebeest responds by turning slightly away before twitching her tail, then tentatively steps closer….”

  Ceo laughs whenever I tell him this. Says I’m overestimating the Ceo Effect. The sad truth is there could be a party full of males and females talking and having fun. Enter one chisel-chinned Ceo with that sun-kissed surfer hair, fitness-model abs, and carefully groomed stubble making him look three years older than he really is, and all the other males turn into slobbering warthogs. I know this as a fact because I’ve turned into a warthog so many times I’m growing tusks.

  And that is exactly what happens now. In fact, she almost bumps into me and my box of candy on her way to the refrigerator, suddenly remembering she needs a pint of half-and-half to go with the coffee she forgot to buy. She opens the cooler door next to Ceo. Says something to him that rewards her with an easy Ceo smile. He holds the door while she reaches up and up to get a carton of something—I don’t know what because her legs are distracting me, and I’ve witnessed Ceo in this dance too many times.

  I head for the register, hoping that I don’t impale any customers on my tusks.

  Grahame and I are leaning back against the Cherokee, chewing Mike and Ikes under that crashed plane when Ceo and the girl walk out of the Quick-Stop laughing and bumping shoulders. Ceo holds the driver’s door while she folds her legs into the Lexus. He lingers on the view before closing the door. The tinted window glides down and a hand floats out with a piece of paper. Ceo pockets it as she drives away.

  With th
e sated wildebeest walking toward us, Grahame says to me, “Dude’s a freak of nature.”

  “He does possess special powers.”

  “But at a Quick-Stop? In freaking Caruthers?”

  “There is no immunity on planet Ceo.”

  Grahame shakes his head. “You know. Sometimes. Sometimes I just wish…”

  I wait for him to finish that thought. Part of me hopes he doesn’t because there’s a layer of darkness underneath it that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear. On the other hand, maybe I do.

  Ceo stops. Checks his phone. Smiles, thumbs a text.

  Grahame, back on to that other thing, says, “Why’d you let him win?”

  Here we go again. Ceo is walking toward us now. I have ten seconds to respond to a question that would take three hours to answer and still get wrong.

  All I say is, “We’ve addressed this topic.”

  “And your answer still sucks.”

  “For the last time. And I mean the last time. I didn’t let him win.”

  “Dat’s de same answer, mon.”

  “So change the question.”

  “You totally tanked the match, Q. I saw the shot.”

  When Grahame gets onto something, it’s hard to get him off. He plays tennis that way, relentless and focused, like a pit bull on a leg bone. When he smells blood—forget about it. You may as well pack up your shit and go home. I know he won’t give up on this particular subject until he hears the truth. The problem is I can’t tell him what I don’t know. I keep reminding myself that it’s just a line call in a match that when compared to bigger deals like climate change and Ebola, doesn’t matter any more than the box of candy in my hand. So I shake out a piece. It’s cherry red. I show it to Grahame and ask, “Is this a Mike or an Ike? They don’t tell you which is which on the box. It’s a mystery. Why don’t you ask me that question?”

  Grahame frowns. “He don’t deserve it, mon.”

  “Doesn’t deserve what?”

  There’s no time for an answer because Ceo walks up to us, trying hard to contain a smile. “Let’s roll, dudes,” he says. “We have another stop to make.”

  “Where to now, chief?” Grahame asks.

  Ceo’s smile breaks loose. It outshines the sun.

  “The Fresno airport.”

  With the crashed plane fading in our rearview mirror and Ceo rapid-firing texts in the backseat, Grahame looks at me and says, “Eets your undying affection, mon. Dat’s what.”

  He studies his friend on the other side of the net. Stooped shoulders, T-shirt soaked, panting like a sled dog—Ceo is a broken man. It started when Ceo’s backhand, which is usually solid, went MIA late in the first set tiebreaker. Colin won the set, 7–6. Ever since then he’s picked on Ceo’s backhand like a crow on a carcass. He knew if the situation were reversed, as it was in the previous match, Ceo would do the same thing. Colin tosses the ball high into the LA sun and serves to Ceo’s backhand. Ceo shanks the return wide.

  Match point.

  Colin lines up for his next serve, checks on Ceo to make sure he’s ready. It’s a predator-prey moment, and this time Colin is not the prey. But in that moment he sees something that hasn’t been there before, an intensity in Ceo’s eyes that startles him even from seventy-eight feet away. Dark and threatening, like if Colin dares to win this point, this match—he will be crossing a new and different line. For reasons he still doesn’t understand, Colin backs off.

  He serves to Ceo’s forehand, his money shot, instead of his bleeding backhand. They have an exchange of crosscourt ground strokes. Even presented with opportunities to attack, Colin refuses to hit to Ceo’s backhand. After the tenth shot, Ceo hits a forehand short, and Colin approaches the net, forcing Ceo to hit a forehand passing shot that on a normal day he could make with his eyes closed. But today is not a normal day. It lands wide. The margin is a half inch at most. Colin sees it land clearly outside the line and makes the call.

  The match is over. Colin wins.

  Ceo storms the net, screaming like a banshee that Colin hooked him. That the shot was clearly in. He slams his racquet on the net, then the ground, shattering the frame. He turns and hurls the mangled racquet over the fence. It lands on top of the PE building. By this time all the players on the other courts have stopped their games. They watch this display of pure, unfiltered rage. As Colin stands at the net, stunned beyond speaking, he wonders if hatred is boiling in there, too. And if it is, where did it come from?

  He tells Ceo, I saw the shot out.

  Ceo says, So that’s your call?

  Colin says, Yes, that’s my call.

  Ceo says, Well, then you hooked me, Q. I can’t believe it. My best friend cheats me on match point.

  Shaking now, Colin says, I didn’t cheat. But if you want, we can replay the point.

  Ceo says, No, that was a bad call. What I want is for you to do the right thing and fucking change it.

  Colin blinks, says nothing.

  Ceo walks to the bench, hauls a new racquet out of his bag, and stomps back to receive serve. He shakes his head, muttering expletives all the way, as if this is the greatest injustice in the history of sports. Colin can’t believe what he’s seeing. All Ceo has riding on this match is a chance to play Grahame for the number one spot. For Colin it means he would drop out of the top two and probably lose his scholarship. But seeing his friend like this flips a switch in Colin’s will to win. He double-faults the next two points, loses the game and every game after that until his death spiral is complete. They meet at the net. Ceo offers his hand to shake; Colin doesn’t take it.

  Ceo says, You played tough, Q.

  Colin is too numb to speak.

  They walk to their separate benches, pack up their gear in silence.

  Colin leaves for the locker room first.

  Ceo calls out, Q, I’m sorry. I saw what I saw.

  Colin, because it’s the only response that comes to mind, raises an arm and extends his middle finger.

  Three Days Earlier

  They sit at their favorite table in the corner with poor lighting but an excellent view of the tattooed barista when he’s working the drive-thru. Ellie sipping green tea with organic honey from local bees, Nadia cradling a variant of coffee topped with caramel-striped foam. Ellie has big news to share but must wait because Nadia launches first, saying that AP Chem is way harder than she thought it would be. Dropping it may be her only choice if she wants to have a life, but Vanessa told her no way she’ll get into Berkeley or any UC school for that matter without at least three AP classes, so what to do, what to do? Ellie assures her that Ms. Callaway does this every year to scare off the poseurs. Just never ever skip the labs, when in doubt choose C, and laugh every time she says, “Hey, kiddos! Matter matters!” Ellie advises Nadia to drop Eric Westerman instead of AP Chem because then you will have a life and a future, and anyway he so richly deserves it. Then Nadia says, “How did you take AP Chem as a sophomore and still get a four-point? Who, like, does that anyway?”

  Ellie asks, “We’re on me now?”

  “Sure. But why am I getting that look?”

  “What look?”

  “The look mothers have when they think their teenage daughter is pregnant.”

  “Maybe you know that look, but I don’t.”

  “So why did you buy my drink? You never buy my drink.”

  “I have pictures to share.”

  Nadia puts down her coffee. Ellie calls up a website on her phone, swipes to the page, and gives her phone to Nadia, who stares in unrestrained admiration. Ellie can’t blame her. Whoever took the pic was very good. She would have adjusted the shutter speed up a little bit, and the framing could be better—the lifeguard tower in the background is unnecessary clutter and should have been photoshopped out. But the lighting is perfect. The contrast between sun and shadow, combined with a golden dusting of sand in just the right places, captured each straining muscle in rippled perfection. His tanned face, with high prominent cheekbones and angular
jawline, makes him look older than his seventeen years. And his eyes, a little on the narrow side, create a sense of burning intensity. It’s as if the camera lens clicking at seven frames per second didn’t exist and there was nothing more urgent than going horizontal to catch a yellow Frisbee.

  Nadia, eyes still on the screen, says, “Who is he?”

  “Ceo DeVrees.”

  “The guy you hung out with at the workshop?”

  “Theater arts workshop. But yes, he’s the one.”

  “The one with the famous father?”

  “That’s him.”

  “You said he played tennis at CGA. And that he did some modeling. But you never said he was this…”

  “This what?”

  “This good at catching Frisbees.” Nadia swipes to another picture, then another. Fans her face. “I mean, like, holy mother of freaking shit!” Her outburst earns an over-the-laptop raised eyebrow from the guy at the next table.

  Ellie says, “That’s enough stimulation for you,” and pries her phone from Nadia’s reluctant fingers.

  Nadia says, “But that was in June.”

  “One hundred and twenty-six days ago.”

  “Ooooh. Someone has secrets.”

  Ellie sips her tea, holds back a smile.

  “Someone is a sly little minx!”

  “We were texting but not that kind of texting. Four or five times a day at first—then four or five times a week. Then hardly any in August. I sent a couple texts after school started, but he didn’t reply. I figured he had moved on, so I did too. And then this morning”—Ellie calls up another screen on her phone and hands it back to Nadia—“I get this.”

  CEO

  Hey Cusey! Do you still like camping?

  Nadia looks up. “Cusey?”

  “Not relevant. Keep reading.”

  ELLIE

  Conditionally.

  CEO

  I will be in Yosemite this weekend with friends. Can u come?

  Pls say yes.

  Unconditionally.

  Nadia tries to scroll further, but the conversation ends. She returns the phone to Ellie. Sits back in her chair and says after a few moments, “Someone wants to play Frisbee with you.”