24.
Rich
I don’t make it too far down the beach before I can’t take it anymore and have to turn around. It’s a struggle even to make it as far as I do. The first two or three times the urge strikes me to go running back to Becca’s villa, it takes everything in me to force myself to keep walking. One more step, I keep telling myself. Just one more step. All I’m trying to do now is kill time, desperate as I am to avoid returning to my room. How could I go back to a place where I’d be so close to Becca and yet so very far away?
As I walk, I try my best to think of other things, though of course it’s no good. No matter what I focus on, it’s never more than a minute or two before my thoughts return to Becca. What is she doing right this moment? Is she in bed? Is she taking a shower? Is there someone else? A guy back home that she never told me about? Rob? Is he Becca’s boyfriend and it’s only now that the guilt of being with me is taking hold—
Nonsense. That wasn’t the Becca I knew and loved. She would nev—
Loved. Pshh. Ironic how the only person you’re sure you ever loved is the one who’s pulling away.
When I finally do turn around, the resort is just out of sight beyond the curve of the beach. I’ve been walking for about an hour. I’m in front of a new resort now, the beach around me teeming with happy, smiling couples splashing through the shallows or lounging beneath umbrellas, not a sad, lonely face to be seen. Ahh, Hawaii. The paradise of lovers. Well, it sure as hell didn’t feel that way at the moment!
Though I’m only an hour down the beach, it takes almost two to get back, this due to me stopping every so often to take a seat in the sand. But even the immense beauty of this place can’t seem to penetrate the fog covering my brain, not an ounce of the natural wonders around me seeping in as I sit there and do my best to hold back tears.
Ugh, what was wrong with me? A big man like me, a man who made his living getting hit by even larger men, and here I was crying over a girl. If the guys back home could see me now, they would laugh me right off of the beach.
By the time I finally do get back, my stomach is cramping with hunger. Despite these pangs, I go straight to my villa. As I follow the path up to my back veranda, my eyes stray over to Becca’s side of the bushes. As before, the curtain to the back door is closed, no signs of life to be seen.
When I’m safely ensconced in my room, for the first time all the confusion and the sadness that has been plaguing me begins to turn to anger. Thank goodness, I tell the walls as I pace back and forth. Anger is so much easier to handle!
And the more I think about things, the angrier I become. What sort of person just closed down like that without so much as a word of warning? Maybe Becca wasn’t so different from the other women I had dated after all. Maybe I had merely built her up in my head and, as it turned out, she was as petty as the rest of them. Well, forget her! I didn’t need her, did I? I was Rich Anderson, football superstar! What did Becca have that I couldn’t find in a million other girls?!
This anger lasts only a few minutes. Soon enough, it’s right back to confusion and sadness. I’m pacing back and forth across the room so vigorously that if I didn’t let up soon a rut was going to form in the carpet.
Why did women have to be so damned complicated? Why couldn’t they just tell a man what they were thinking, what they were feeling? Would I not have gladly addressed anything she had told me? Would I not have gladly laid myself before her? If only she had communicated!
All the time I’m pacing, there’s a part of me that’s focused on the front door. Any minute I’m expecting a knock. I would open the door and there she’d be, my same old Becca, a sheepish grin on her face. She’d jump into my arms, kiss me with those soft lips of hers, and beg me to forgive her for how silly she’d been acting. Oh, she’d say, I was just being dumb. Just some petty jealousy. I shouldn’t have been so foolish…
Naturally, no such knock is forthcoming.
Slowly but surely, the afternoon wanes; in no time at all, so it seems to me, dusk is upon the island. At one point, I stop pacing long enough to watch a large flock of birds swoop out over the ocean. One by one, they dive into the water, each reemerging seconds later with a small, silver fish in its bill. How easy to be a bird! One didn’t have to worry about dumb human intrigues—the hurts, the slights, the petty jealousies, the angers, the machinations. To switch places with one of these majestic creatures, if only for a moment!
A dumb thought. Sure, there was lots of pain in life. But could it really compare to the beauty and the joy to be found? Could it really compare to when everything good that existed was added up?
I sigh, half in understanding, half in annoyance. I really didn’t have to be so wise all the time, did I? Better sometimes to just get angry and stay angry. But no matter how I try, I can’t. Even if I were to never see Becca again, I knew I’d forever be grateful for the wonderful week we had spent together. Before meeting her, I had never known the depths of what a man could feel. In a way, it was only natural that such a high was now being followed by such a low.
As evening arrives, taking off its coat and settling into the room like an old, dear friend, I resume my back and forth argument with myself. Unable to sit still, I move from bed to couch to desk chair and back again. As soon as I’m in one place, my muscles begin to twitch and I’m forced to get up and find another. I do pushups to exhaust myself. I take a cold shower. Afterwards, I roll around in the bed, jump on the couch, unpack and repack my suitcase several times, all to no avail. No matter what I do, I can’t get these jitters out of my bones.
It’s nearing 9 p.m now. The hunger that’s been plaguing me for hours has marshalled its troops and is now making a full frontal assault on my stomach. Still, I don’t feel like eating. I contemplate going for another walk but am no sooner out the door than my feet turn me right back around and carry me back into the villa.
What was going to make this better? There was only one answer, and it was the one thing I couldn’t have: Becca.
Eventually, after allowing my wallowing to get so out of control that I find myself lying face down on the floor, my nose pressed into the carpet, my brain decides enough is enough. I was being absolutely pathetic and I knew it. When one got like this, one had to force oneself to do what he knew he should do whether he wanted to or not. So up I get, to pick out clothes from my bag. Despite feeling itchy to the touch, I pull them on, along with a pair of sandals. Sufficiently suited up, out the door I go. At the end of my front walkway where it connects to the path leading to the main part of the resort, I hesitate. If I turned right, I could go over to Becca’s and…
I take a deep breath and set off towards the dining area. She doesn’t want to see you, Rich. You’re going to have to come to terms with the idea of that sooner or later. If she wants to talk, she knows where to find you.
The moment I enter the dining garden, I can’t stop myself from glancing towards our table. It’s empty. I heave a sigh of relief, or of disappointment. At this point, it was hard to tell. Across the garden, standing near the buffet, is Cal. Spotting me, he waves.
“Hey Rich,” he says when I near him. He’s as in good of a mood as ever. Immediately, it makes me want to strangle him. What right did he have to be so happy?
“Hey,” I mumble. Reading my disposition immediately, he frowns.
“What is it?” he asks, his hand on my forearm. “Is it Charlotte?”
I shake my head. His concern was making me want to cry. Again, I envision the guys back home laughing their asses off at me. Well, forget them! They wouldn’t know what love was if it bit them on the ass.
“Becca?” Cal ventures.
I don’t say anything, though I can tell from the look that crosses Cal face he knows he’s right on the money. Hand on my shoulder, he leads me over to the far corner of the dining area where our empty table awaits, waving over a waiter with a bottle of wine as he does.
“Leave the bottle,” he tells his coworker. “Thanks, James.”
Cal pours me a big glass of wine.
“Drink,” he says, handing it to me.
I do as he says, in two gulps downing it. As soon as I set it down, Cal refills it.
“What is it?” he asks. “What happened?”
I have to finish the second glass before I finally find the courage to tell him. “I don’t know.” My voice is quivering. “It’s just…different.”
“How do you mean ‘different’?”
“I don’t know. She won’t talk to me. I came to breakfast this morning—she came here before me because I was sleeping in—and when I got here I could just tell everything had changed.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No. I tried to but she ran away. I went to her room but she wouldn’t answer. I don’t know what to do, Cal. I’m going crazy.”
“Well, listen, buddy. Honestly, it’s probably nothing. Maybe she just had something else going on. Some bad news or something. You never can tell with women. One minute they’re right there with you, the next they disappear. They’re like cats. You have to let them come to you.”
“I really loved her, Cal.”
The wine, thanks to my empty belly, has gone straight to my head. Already, I’m halfway through my third glass. Waving down the same waiter, Cal grabs a fresh bottle off his tray. James, the waiter, rolls his eyes.
“I know that’s dumb to say,” I continue. “I know I’ve only known her for a week, after all—but I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. There’s something different about her, something special. I want to spend the rest of forever with her.”
Cal is nodding along. “I totally understand,” he says, patting my hand tenderly. “You were in love. Doesn’t matter how long you know a person. Sometimes you just know. Listen…you don’t think she knows, do you?”
“I don’t know. She might. How though?”
“Nah, you’re right. She doesn’t. As I said, it’s probably something else. Didn’t you say her mom just died? That’s gotta be hard. Grief can be impossible to handle. Sometimes you think you’re doing okay and then all of a sudden—WHAM!—out of nowhere it appears again. My advice? Give her some time. She’ll come back.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Now, have you eaten?”
I shake my head. “Don’t really feel like it.”
“Well, you gotta eat, big man. A guy like you passes out if he doesn’t eat every few hours. Here. Finish off your wine and I’ll be back in a sec with some food. It’s time for my break anyways, so I’ll just join you if you don’t mind.”
“Thanks, Cal. I really appreciate it.”
“Anytime, buddy. For a friend like you, I’m here for whatever you need.”
As promised, Cal is back in a flash with two overflowing plates of food. By the time he returns, I’ve ditched the wine glass and am sipping straight from the bottle.
“Here you go,” he says, sliding a plate in front of me. “You’re not leaving until it’s licked clean.”
Though it’s hard to get the food down, every bite a struggle, I’m so hungry that soon enough I’ve packed it all away. As we eat, Cal keeps the wine steadily flowing. Before long, I’m as drunk as a skunk, looking around at all the happy couples eating with their happy faces and their happy forks and their happy hands their happy food while they said happy things and felt happy feelings and thought happy th—Argh! I wanted to slap the plates right out of their hands. I hated every single last one of them!
“Alright, Rich,” Cal says. “I gotta get back to work. Feel free to just stay right here and hang out. I’ll come check on you every once in a while.”
“Thank Shcal,” I mumble. Whew boy. Though the words are as clear and as sharp as diamonds in my head, I can hear how heavily and haphazardly they’re falling from my mouth. “But I gotta get ow here. I can sand see all shese happy heepul.”
Cal chuckles. “Maybe you’re right, kid. Why don’t you head back to your room? I’ll come check on you when I get off. Just leave the door unlocked.”
“I love you, Shcal.”
“Love you too, buddy.”
I watch Cal cross the garden, the other features of the garden swimming around him. For a while yet, I sit there sipping wine. On the stage across the way next to me, several hula dancers are setting up for a performance. It’s the same group that Becca and I had performed with our first night here. When they begin, the leader of the group introducing the dancers to the crowd with the same speech as we’d gotten, I get up and, grabbing what’s left of the bottle of wine, wobble my way out of the garden. Cal catches my eye just as I’m about to enter the path to the villas and gives me a wink.
What a good guy. I wave clumsily. With one eye open, I turn my attentions back to the path and on putting one foot carefully in front of the other.
It takes what feels like half an hour to get back to my villa despite it being only a two-minute walk on any other night. Halfway there, I come upon a bench in a secluded alcove. Leaning my head back against a pillar, I look up at the moon, the few bright stars around it dancing. Sitting there, my drunk mind begins to think of all the other people across the world watching this very same moon at this very same moment. There was probably some young kid in Japan right now, as heartsick and as lonely as I was, sitting on his roof with his head tilted back, his soul crying as he tried to figure out what it all meant. “Well, here’s to shoe, kid,” I mumble, taking a big gulp from the wine bottle clutched tightly in my hand.
Before returning to my villa, I go to Becca’s, my drunk mind suggesting that perhaps she hadn’t heard me this morning when I’d stopped by. Maybe she had been waiting for me all this time. It was her that had been wondering where I was. Only when my hand is raised and I’m about to knock do I come to my senses. No, Rich, I remind myself gently. She doesn’t want to see you.
Back in my room, I set to pacing again, though the path I carve out this time is not quite as straight as before. About an hour after I return (at least I think it’s an hour…hard to tell when one could barely read the bedside clock), a knock sounds on the front door. Practically leaping across the room, I rip it open, my heart thumping in my chest.
“Becca?”
“Nope. Just me, buddy,” Cal says, a tray of food in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other. “Just coming to check on you. How are you?”
“I’m right,” I mutter. Grabbing the wine bottle from Cal’s hand, I uncork it and take a swig. “Heart hurts itsal.”
“Yeah. I figured.”
“Wuzza tray for?”
“Ah. So, your girl ordered some room service. I thought maybe I’d scope it out for you, see if I could find out anything. Unless you want to take it over yourself?”
“Prolly not a gud idea.”
“Yeah, you might be right. Okay, then. I’ll be right back. You just hang tight.”
Cal disappears down the walk; I watch him go. When he’s disappeared around the corner, I leave the door cracked and resume my pacing. Strange, I think as I take another sip of wine. I could have sworn he’d brought me a full bottle. How was it already half-empty?
Cal’s back less than two minutes later. As he pushes open the door, I spin around, the wine sloshing in its bottle.
“And?”
Flashing me a hangdog smile, he runs a hand through his hair. “Well, she was definitely alone. Just came out of the shower. But she certainly didn’t look happy. Looked like she’d been crying. A lot. Before I could say anything she grabbed the food and shut the door on me.”
“Hmph.”
“Maybe you should just go over there.”
“Think is gud idea while dunk?”
“Ehh, come to think of it, probably not.” He sighs. “Well, buddy, unfortunately I’ve gotta get back to work. I’ve been gone long enough as is. Drink some water before you finish all that wine, you hear me? You’re already going to have a pretty wicked hangover as is.”
“Okay.”
“And as always, come find me if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Shcal.”
“Of course, buddy.”
Alone again and armed with Cal’s new information, I set to thinking. Maybe you should go over there. Maybe if you went to her balcony and shouted out your love for her, she’d open the door. If only you had a boom box! Isn’t that what John Cusack would do?
Nonsense, the small part of my brain not completely inebriated argues back. Do you honestly think she’s forgotten that you’re staying right next door? Come on, dum-dum. Just leave her be. If it’s meant to be, she’ll come to you.
I flop onto the bed, the wine gripped tightly in my hand. Taking another swig, I flip over onto my back. Probably I should just go to sleep. Cal was right, I was going to have a terrible enough hangover as it were.
I close my eyes. Despite the alcohol sloshing around inside of me, I’m not sleepy at all. Even so, I lie there for several minutes unmoving. But it’s no good; my mind just won’t shut off. Giving up, I grab the remote from the bedside table. The curtains to the back door are pulled back; moonlight sparkles on the ocean. It’s both devastatingly and annoyingly beautiful.
I click on the TV, for whatever reason the tuner set to the sports channel. Immediately, my face greets me. I have to chuckle. Of course. The universe always kept one more joke in its back pocket.
Curious as to how the newscasters are going to spin my story, rather than change the channel, I up the volume. At least they weren’t presenting it as negatively as before. It seemed that now everyone was merely wondering where I had gone. No one, one news anchor says, has been able to reach Mr. Anderson. The image cuts to a pretty blonde reporter. She’s interviewing my closest friend, Jim. Jim, smiling glibly at the camera, responds to every question with a noncommittal answer.
The reporter, frustrated by Jim’s responses, thanks him. Back to the anchor we go. He resumes talking about the latest rumors regarding me, my career, and what everyone thinks is going to happen next. People are saying, he surmises, that Rich Anderson is not coming back. A shame since most consider him in the prime of his career. It would be one of the biggest stories in football history, another anchor offers. Never before has someone walked away with so much left to give. This anchor then suggests I’m running to escape Charlotte’s charges. Amazing, I think, my fingertips tapping out a beat on my belly, how one woman’s false accusations can ruin a man’s life!
I’m enthralled by what I’m seeing. It doesn’t feel like I’m watching a story about myself but rather about some other poor schmuck’s life. The anchor cuts to another interview with my head coach. The same blond reporter is asking him if the rumors are true that I’m getting cut. My coach denies this outright, turning to the camera and addressing it as if he’s talking to directly to me. It’s up to Rich, he says. If you want to return, you’ll always have the top spot. Turning back to the reporter, he tells her that he knows me very well and just can’t believe the stories going around. A gentle man, as he puts it. It’s so sweet that it brings a tear to my eye.
The news switches. Now the anchors are discussing some big, upcoming triathlon. A certain European soccer star was going to be competing. I hit the remote. A lion appears. He’s watching a herd of gazelles, calculating his attack. Click. Some terrible sitcom about two annoyingly unaware girls, their every line backed by a laugh track. Click. A fat chef is telling the camera how to make a cake taste amazing. Butter, he says. Lots and lots of butter.
I end up settling on a sci-fi movie about a spider chasing some dumb college kids through the jungle. It’s laughably bad but is entertaining enough. One by one, the spider picks off the college kids, the kids evermore unsure as to what to do as their numbers dwindle.
I stretch out on the bed, my eyes turned to the ceiling. What was Becca doing right this moment? On the television screen, one of the kids is fighting his way out of a cocoon. Lifting the wine bottle, I suck in a mouthful.
Maybe you should be asking what you are doing right this moment.
What do you mean? I offer innocently.
Come on. You know what I mean. What are you doing? Are you really living the life you want to live? Who are you really? Rich the football star? Or something more, something else? Where exactly are you headed? And is it where you want to go?
So many questions and yet so few answers. I had been avoiding it all for too long. Well, now was as good a time as any to figure it out. Didn’t have much else to do.
So what, then, did I want? Obviously I didn’t want to spend the rest of my good adult years throwing a ball around. How much dumber could one’s life get? I wanted…well, what I wanted was to do good. That was exactly it. Good. But what did that mean?
I take a moment to think about it.
Okay, well, it means I want to make people’s lives better, to do whatever I can to stem the flow of human suffering. To feed the hungry, to clothe the poor, to protect the weak and weary.
How could I do this? And where to start? There was so much that needed fixing and I was just one man, one man with only so much time. At least I had money. But what good could money do if the hearts of men didn’t change?
Around and around I go, the wine slowly draining towards the bottom of the bottle. So many possibilities, so many different paths my life could take! I was only twenty-eight. That meant I had only just started! There was a lot of time yet to make a difference. All I needed to do was figure out where to start.
My eyelids are growing heavier and heavier. The clock next to me reads somewhere past two in the morning. The TV and the lights still on, I slip into the sheets and pull them up to my chin. The wine bottle is empty on the bed beside me. I close my eyes and try to envision the future, to picture myself standing somewhere doing whatever it was I was supposed to be doing.
And that was? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t this. As sleep pulls me down to her bosom, this question echoes again and again inside my head: What do I want to do? What does Rich Anderson truly want?