Shots on Goal (3 page)

My brother’s standing on the sideline when we walk off, hands in the pockets of a yellow windbreaker with the hood up. He’s fifteen months older than I am, fifteen pounds lighter, two inches shorter, and three times as strong. I don’t run in the same circles he does.

“Nice,” he says, taking out one hand to shake mine. “Tough one.”

“Sucked,” I say, but I know we didn’t. It makes me feel better that Tommy knows it, too. Coach is calling us over, huddling us up.

Turning point, the coach is saying. The first real test and we held up like champions. We’re not doormats any longer. We’ll see these guys again.

There’s steam rising from my hands. Everybody looks like they’ve crawled through a swamp. I wipe my nose with my sleeve and chew on the side of my lip.

Coach reminds us that Greenfield’s a perennial power. We’ve got seven sophomores starting, three juniors, and a senior. There’s a lot of glory ahead.

Everybody’s quiet. We wanted this game bad. We almost had it, too. When is the rematch?

I get dressed in a hurry and yell to Joey to move his butt. We’ll get dinner at work. It’s slow on Tuesday nights; I might even get my homework done if Carlos isn’t around. Kenny doesn’t care.

Work is the kitchen of the Sturbridge Inn: scrubbing pots, running the dishwasher, making the coffee. Six till we get done (they stop serving at ten) Sunday and Tuesday. Sometimes on Saturday if there’s a reception or something.

My brother worked here all summer and he got me and Joey these jobs last month when some guys left for college. Tommy waits on tables for weddings and banquets.

Carlos is in his office when we punch in, but he’s getting ready to leave. “Hello, boys,” he says. “It will be slow tonight, so you will have time to straighten up the walk-in and the storage closet.”

We head for the back of the kitchen and Joey tries to imitate Carlos’s accent. “You run the deeswasher, I’ll scrub the pots.”

“Real funny,” I say.

We check the walk-in refrigerator. Kenny’s in there drinking a can of beer. He hides them behind the crates of celery and stuff, but he usually waits until Carlos goes home before he pops one open.

“Hey,” he says real slow when we walk in. Kenny’s about thirty-eight, and he’s been working in this kitchen for
twenty years. He had the same job we have until a year ago, when they decided he’d learned enough to cook on slow nights. It’s an easy menu; I could handle just about everything on it—steaks and pork chops and fried shrimp. The toughest item is veal cordon bleu, and that’s no big deal once you’ve seen it a few times.

“Starting early, huh?” Joey says to Kenny, meaning the beer.

“Just the one,” Kenny says. “He still out there?”

“Was when we came in,” I say. I start picking through a crate of lettuce on the floor, looking for rotten ones. Two of them are getting slimy, so I peel off the bad leaves and toss the heads back in the box. Kenny watches me. He’s got slick brown hair combed over to cover a high forehead, and dark-rimmed glasses. He’s short, thin except for his gut, and always wears a plain white T-shirt. “You boys win today?” he asks.

“Just about,” Joey says. He’s taking tomato wrappings out of a box on the shelf. The tomatoes come individually wrapped in blue tissue paper, and most people leave the paper behind when they need tomatoes. So sometimes you have to dig through six dozen tomato wrappings minus one to find the last tomato in the box.

It’s one of our duties on Tuesday nights to keep the salad bar full, so we know what it’s like to have to find the last tomatoes.

“We’re gonna eat as soon as Carlos leaves,” Joey says to Kenny. Then he steps out into the kitchen and I follow. You don’t want to be alone in the walk-in with Kenny.

We start with a load of lunch dishes that the day shift walked out on. You put them on trays and they run along a
conveyer belt through the dishwasher. But you have to scrape all the crusts and uneaten cole slaw and other glop into the garbage first or it will gum things up. And the silverware has to soak in this blue stuff or it won’t come clean. You wind up doing some of the silverware by hand anyway if it’s got pancake syrup or dried ketchup on it.

After a while I make a club sandwich the way Carlos taught me: take three slices of bacon from the pile (if you get breakfast here you could be eating reheated bacon that was cooked twenty-four hours before) and put it under the broiler for a few seconds. Make three slices of medium-brown toast, spreading the bottom one with a thin layer of mayonnaise. Put the bacon, three slices of tomato, and two lettuce leaves on the bottom piece of toast, add the second piece of toast, then spread some mayonnaise on that one. Put on about a half-inch layer of thin-sliced (THIN!) turkey breast, and cover with the third piece of toast. Put four of those toothpicks with the swirly plastic things on the ends through the whole thing (to hold the pieces together when you slice it), then take a big knife and trim off any lettuce that’s overhanging the bread. Gently support the sandwich with the fingers of your left hand, and carefully cut it into four triangles by slicing from corner to corner.

I offer to make one for Joey. He says no. He takes two pieces of bread, spreads one with mustard, throws on a clump of turkey, puts on the other slice, and mashes it all down with the heel of his hand. Then we go to the storage room to eat.

We sit on cardboard boxes on the floor and talk about soccer. We’ve got another game in two days.

Joey’s got short dark hair and is solid all over, but he’s not very big. My mother says he’s handsome. She says he’s like her third son, since he’s spent so much time at our house, playing one-on-one basketball in the driveway or playing video games or just hanging out in my room. She’s always asking me if he’s got a girlfriend, but what she really wants to know is whether I have a girlfriend yet. If I did I wouldn’t tell her.

Joey claims he had no idea Shannon was going to ask him out at the football game. I told him he sucks anyway, because he didn’t have to accept. He knows damn well I was after her. And I would have helped him out if the situation was reversed.

At least I think I would have. Maybe not.

Joey’s parents pressure him to excel; his mother insists on honor-roll report cards, and his father absolutely lives to see Joey’s name in the sports section. He used to do things like have their last name printed on the back of Joey’s Little League jersey, or call the newspaper when his son scored a goal in a YMCA game. Like anybody cared what a nine-year-old did.

The result is that Joey can’t ever relax when the subject is sports. As talented as he is, I feel sorry for him because he can’t totally appreciate it when he does something good—his father robbed that from him. So I turn the conversation to music or girls or television whenever I can. Joey needs a break from the intensity.

“We’ve gotta work on our ball control in the box,” he says. “We get the ball in there, but there’s no coordination. It’s like every man for himself.”

Strange that he would say that, since he’s the worst offender. But at least he’s aware of how out of sync we can be.

“I mean, I can pull it off, but some of our guys don’t have a clue.”

That sounds more like Joey: arrogant and selfish. Even though it’s true.

I’d say there are at least five guys on the team with more natural ability than Joey has. They’re faster or stronger or more agile, or all of those things. But Joey would kick anybody’s butt one-on-one. I wouldn’t tell him so, but I have to admire that.

Kenny comes into the storage room and looks around. He reaches for a can of olives and turns it over in his hand. Then he sets it back on the shelf. “Got dishes piling up out there,” he says.

Joey rolls his eyes at me. “We’ll get to ’em,” he says.

Kenny just sort of grunts. “We ain’t paying you to sit on your ass,” he says, turning to leave.

Joey scrunches up his face and sneers. He raises one eyebrow at me and gives a laugh. “Big shot,” he says quietly.

“Hey, he’s earned it,” I say.

“Yeah, I guess I’m just jealous,” Joey says. “I want his job, you know. That’s my career objective.”

“You and me both,” I say.

“Gotta admit, you work your butt off every day washing dishes for twenty years, you deserve a lot of respect.”

“No question about it,” I say.

“I only hope I have the tenacity to stay with it that long,” he says. “Someday, boy, someday. I’ll be the guy who gets to fry hamburgers, the man who can maintain this place’s fine reputation for baked potatoes.”

“And I’ll be there with you,” I say. “You and me.”

“We’ll be heroes.”

“Like Kenny is to us.”

“God bless him.”

Seth the blond busboy brings in the last load of dishes at about quarter to ten, so we run them through the dishwasher and go in the back to start on the pots. There aren’t many, but we’re bored and want to get out of there. I dump some liquid soap into the sink and run the hot water on full, and Joey starts scraping out a giant roasting pan with a spatula. Carlos made meatballs in there this afternoon, and there’s a crust of baked-on grease and tomato paste.

“Why the hell didn’t they at least let this soak?” Joey says, though he doesn’t say who “they” are.

“They is us,” I say. “It was sitting there when we came in.”

“Well, we suck then,” he says. “This shit is welded on there.”

“Dump some water in it until we finish these others,” I say. “It’ll soften up.”

But after we’ve scrubbed the other pots the giant one is not coming clean. We’ve gone through three heavy-duty Brillo pads on it, but there’s still a mound of tar in the corners.

“You dump the garbage yet?” Joey asks.

“Not the one by the dishwasher.”

“Get it.”

I carry it over and Joey picks up the roasting pan, and we go out the back door to the Dumpster. Joey sets down the pan. He opens the lid of the Dumpster and we get hit with the sweet smell of rotting garbage. It’s sort of nauseating, but
sort of pleasant, too. The rats like it, anyway. Joey gently sets the pan between two full plastic trash bags. Then he takes the garbage bag from my hands and lays it on top. He nods to me and breaks out in a big stupid grin.

We mop the floor real quick. Kenny’s asleep in Carlos’s chair in the office. He opens one eye when I punch my time card and mumbles, “See you, boys.” We get out of there in a hurry.

You can’t do much after a shift at work because you feel greasy from head to foot. So there’s no sense hanging out. But if you go home to shower you don’t get allowed back out, so we usually stop at the Turkey Hill store for some soda, then maybe spend ten minutes talking to Herbie and anybody else who’s still on Main Street.

But Joey stops on the sidewalk in front of the bakery and says, “You know Shannon?”

I look at him like I can’t believe he would ask such a stupid question. I don’t say anything.

“You know her friend Eileen?” he asks next.

“Yeah.” I know Eileen. She’s okay. She’s not Shannon.

“I need you to go out with her.”

“What?”

“Not go
out
go out, just go to the football game with her. With me and Shannon.”

“Why?”

“To keep the conversation up,” he says. “You know. I don’t have that much to say. You talk to her good.”

“To Eileen?”

“To Shannon. You set her up for me.”

I shove him on the shoulder, not real hard, and stare at him without knowing what to say. “You suck,” I finally tell him. I shake my head and start to walk. “You suck.”

“I’m not asking much,” he says, following me. “Just come with us to the game. Friday night. You can ditch her afterwards.”

I keep walking. “The game’s away this week,” I say.

“Next week, then.”

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

“I’ll tell Shannon to tell Eileen?” he calls.

“We’ll see.” I start jogging, to get away from him, to get home. I need a shower. I need sleep.

Herbie and I came up with this idea tonight, and we’re pretty excited about it. We figure it will be quite an honor when we finally bestow it.

The Hundredth Asshole (in fact, all one hundred of them) must meet our carefully selected criteria (which change according to the individual). And they must pass directly in front of or behind this bench (driving, walking, running, Rollerblading, skateboarding, or cycling—maybe by other means, but we can’t think of any) when both of us are present. So far we’ve counted seven (which includes Brendan Doherty only once, even though he cruises past in his car every six minutes or so). You can only be counted one time. Brendan Doherty, however deserving he may be, will never be known as the Hundredth Asshole.

Brendan, who’s a senior, qualifies for a whole lot of reasons. In particular because he constantly talks about how much sex he gets, but everybody knows it isn’t true.

Then there’s Mr. Brosnan, the banker, who got counted about an hour ago. When we were little, he coached his son Frank’s sports teams and was even worse than Joey’s father. He did everything in his power to make Frank the star (and also to make the kid miserable, since we all grew to hate his guts). Now Frank won’t go near a sports field. And he’s not a bad kid, either.

Mrs. Furman was number seven. She calls the newspaper’s
“Sound Off” column every other week to complain about kids hanging out on Main Street. You can tell she’s called because she starts every message with “I don’t mean to be a complainer, but …”