This One Time With Julia (11 page)

“You knew that.”

“I did?”

“Why else would the job be suddenly available?” He bent his knees and bounced a little higher. “Can’t say I ever got the hang of it though. Not like you have.”

“So you’re the one that Houston hated.”

“He mentioned that?”

“What did you do?”

“Well, he’s your friend, isn’t he? You should ask him.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Does she still get a cramp in her foot sometimes, when she’s in bed?” he asked. “Does she have to get up and hop all around?”

“Maybe.”

“Does she still turn the TV off when the movie gets too scary?”

“Why do we have to talk about her?”

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

“But I just gave you my blessing. I told you. I’m out of the picture.” Alvin bounced one more time and then jumped high off the board, turned in midair, dove into the pool, and disappeared.

The wind was less comforting now, and I was starting to get cold. I didn’t feel like practicing my swimming anymore. I went up to my room and took a shower. While I was drying off, my cell phone rang. I’d been leaving it on in case Alvin called me from a sailboat somewhere. I guess I should have known by now it couldn’t possibly be him, but I answered anyway. It turned out to be Marcus. I had no idea that he had my number. He didn’t even bother to say hello.

“I don’t care where you are,” he said, “and I’m certainly not worried about you. My life has improved dramatically since you left. The extra free time has made me twice as productive; I’m already feeling the effects of the new gym in my power and explosiveness. So the last thing I would do is try to convince you to come back here.”

“How are you, Marcus?”

“Don’t try to turn this into a friendly call. I’m only contacting you to give you a very specific piece of information. The dog you so irresponsibly left here has unfortunately been killed running across a busy highway. He was chasing a helicopter flying three hundred feet above him. I’ll admit the loss affected me more than I expected. But I certainly can’t take any responsibility, given that the care of this dog was never my choice. Anyway, I’m sorry, Joe.”

I remembered Alvin’s dog a little bit: that neat little poop he had done in the motel bathroom, how cold his nose was, and how he’d licked the manager’s hand.

“He was a good dog,” I said.

“I’d been calling him Augustus,” said Marcus. “That’s the name I always wished I had. Well, I don’t expect that we’ll talk anytime soon.”

“I have a job now.”

“That seems hard to believe. Good-bye, Joe.”

“I have some news about Alvin.”

There was a pause. I heard the blender in the background, and I could picture Marcus perfectly, mixing up a drink in the kitchen with his basketball shoes on.

“Why do you think I should care?”

“It’s pretty important news.”

“Then go ahead.”

“I’ll give you three guesses,” I said.

“If you’re going to tell me, tell me.”

“Just guess.”

“Did he take off with your bank card?”

“No.” I already hated this game. I wished I’d never made it up. “Just think of the worst thing that could have happened to him.”

I could tell Marcus was getting really annoyed. “Just forget it. Good luck, Joe, wherever you are. Where did you say you were?” I started to tell him, but then he interrupted me. “Never mind. I don’t care.” And then he hung up.

I was just about to go to sleep when Julia finally came home from dinner in this long green car I’d never seen before. Houston was driving. The man in the passenger seat I’d never met, but I knew this was Julia’s father. He looked older and weaker than he did in her photographs. He was all hunched over in this tattered coat that looked like it was made for a much bigger guy. I knew he’d broken his back falling off a horse one time, and as he climbed out of the car I could see that his spine was crooked. All the way from the window, Mr. Manning seemed sad. I wanted to help him fix whatever was bothering him so much; but even though I’d heard a little about his trial, I had no idea, really, what his problems were.

After Julia kissed him good-bye, she went inside, and Mr. Manning stuck around to help Houston feed the turkeys. The woods around the hotel were full of turkeys, and Houston liked to feed them on quiet nights when he happened to be around. I’d helped him a couple of times, though I didn’t really like it. The turkeys ate the food right out of my hand, and I was always sure their beaks were going to cut my palm.

Houston came out with the feedbag and this other little suitcase, and I watched them shuffling across the lawn right underneath my window. They stood at the edge of the lawn, peering into the trees. The moon was very bright, and the forest was so quiet that every turkey in there must have heard Houston rattling his feedbag from a mile away.

Soon I saw the first big turkey come waddling out of the woods, bobbing his head. “Look how he comes to you,” said Mr. Manning.

A couple of even more colorful turkeys had already appeared. They had the same loose, disgusting chins. Soon they were fighting over the food in Houston’s hand. It was hard to believe they weren’t cutting up his hand with their beaks, but they obviously weren’t, because he just kept chatting with his father while they ate. Those turkeys couldn’t get enough. Houston refilled his hand a couple of times, and then Mr. Manning gave out a couple of handfuls of his own. Then he took the suitcase from Houston, put it in his car, and drove off. Houston went inside to put away the feedbag before he left in his own car.

CHAPTER FIVE

I think it was
just a few days later that Houston took me into the city for some pool supplies. We bought a bunch of chlorine and filters and some chair covers, and then Houston spent an hour at the dentist while I sat in the waiting room. Afterward we drove around downtown a little bit and stopped at McDonald’s for lunch. Their food wasn’t quite as hot as Francisco made it in Los Angeles, but it was pretty decent. I was finishing up my cheeseburger and starting in on the Big Mac when I remembered Alvin’s suggestion the night before, and I decided to ask Houston what was so bad about the last pool man he had hired. I tried to do it as casually as I could.

“I fired him for his incompetence,” explained Houston. “He couldn’t get to work on time. If he didn’t think I’d be around, he had a bad habit of dozing off and sleeping half the day. Just didn’t respect the job. I know for a fact that he robbed me at least once.”

“So you hated him.”

“Who said I hated him?”

“I can’t remember. I think maybe Julia did.”

I felt like I’d done too much talking already. I knew I needed to stay calm. Houston took a sip of Coke, and I could feel him looking at me pretty carefully. For a second I was sure I’d given everything away. The last thing I needed was for Houston to figure out that I was Alvin’s brother, now that everything was going so well for me at the hotel.

“It’s true that I disliked him personally as well,” said Houston finally. “I’ll tell you why, if you really want to know.”

“I was just wondering. It doesn’t even matter.”

“But can I trust you, Joe? Because Julia doesn’t really know a lot of this.”

“Of course.”

“You know they dated, I assume.”

I just nodded. I was afraid to say anything out loud now.

“But this guy was nothing like you, Joe. He was a weird person, a loner. He couldn’t quite fit in anywhere, and so he didn’t want Julia to fit in either. He was always whispering weird ideas in her ear, making her doubt herself and the people around her. He tried to turn her against her own family. Her own father.”

Talking about Alvin seemed to be making Houston angry. He’d ordered this chicken sandwich but he wasn’t touching it now, just stabbing it with his finger. His voice was quieter now but also more intense.

“As you probably know, my father had some legal problems last year. Bill Manning is a great businessman and he’s made a lot of money in this town, and so a lot of people are jealous of him. He had to waste a year fighting a bunch of trumped-up criminal charges. Extortion, money laundering, bribery—they were always changing because none of them had any real foundation. It was as if the prosecution couldn’t decide which lies to tell. You follow the news?”

“When I have time.”

“The whole thing was just a waste of good taxpayer money, but it was a rough year for my father. My mother left him in the scandal. His bank accounts were frozen. Many of his business contacts got scared off. The last thing he needs is for his own pool man trying to turn his daughter against him too. We’re talking about a kid with no respect for family or community. No sense of loyalty. It just made me very angry to see it. Because I know what kind of man my father is. Did Julia tell you how I came to be adopted?”

“What?”

I had no idea that Houston was adopted, and it was too late now to pretend that I did, because now he had seen it in my face and burst out laughing. “You’re amazing,” he said. “You just take everything the way it comes. You never wondered why I look different from my sisters?”

“I never thought about it.”

“My father was Cherokee. Or at least that’s what he told everyone. I always suspected that he came from somewhere in South America, maybe Peru, but thought claiming to be Cherokee made him more interesting. He was a con man and a compulsive liar and a gambler. He had no self-control and had to gamble higher and higher, and when I was five he lost me in a poker game. Not that he knew it at the time.”

The man sitting behind me bumped into my chair as he stood up. He threw away his paper as he left, and now Houston and I were alone in the McDonald’s. He made a fist and held it out in front of him, looking at it carefully. I could tell the story was important to him and so I listened as hard as I could.

“As the story goes, my real father sat down at a no-limit stud game with Bill Manning and lost three hundred thousand dollars in a single night. He’d backed the money with the house my mother left him, but never mentioned that he’d already lost that property, in another game, the week before. So the next day, when it was time to pay his debts, he went out and put a nice, expensive lobster dinner on his credit card, drove out to the Kennewick Bridge, took off his shoes, and jumped off.”

Houston took a bite out of his chicken sandwich. I had no idea what to say. I thought about telling Houston that I’d been orphaned too, but I couldn’t remember if I had already lied to him about it.

“What was the hand?”

“Mr. Manning had a set of kings.”

“And your father?”

“He was bluffing.”

“Wow.”

“That was the kind of man he was. I was five years old. When Mr. Manning heard what had happened, he felt so terrible that he adopted me. In the end, the only way he could get a male child was to win one in a poker game. That’s how the joke goes, anyway.”

I couldn’t stop imagining how crushed Houston’s father must have felt at the end of that hand. I’d made some terrible decisions myself at the poker table, but never more than a hundred dollars in one day.
I hope I never go on tilt that bad,
I thought.
And lose my kid in a poker game. And die.

“As I grew up I realized that I’d landed with the better man,” said Houston. “My father bet something that he didn’t have, and then found the cowardly way out. Mr. Manning took responsibility for what he couldn’t. Without Mr. Manning, my whole life would have been a crapshoot. The more I learn about the world, the more his generosity astounds me.”

Houston leaned in toward me now. I can remember that one of his eyelids was fluttering a little bit, and they were both so wide open that you could see how round his eyeballs were.

“So yes, it upset me to see some self-righteous high school dropout not only passing judgment on him but whispering in Julia’s ear and trying to poison her mind too. That punk wanted Julia to cut off contact with her own family—put off school—all to chase some crazy fantasy of sailing all around the world. I could see it happening as soon as he arrived, how he was isolating her—making her strange and distant. I’m not saying that’s why I fired him, but it certainly made it easier. And the second I wasn’t his boss anymore, I told him exactly what I thought of him, and that he wasn’t welcome around the hotel.”

It wasn’t hard for me to imagine Alvin trying to cut off Julia from everyone she knew, because that’s basically what he had done to me. Houston closed his eyes while he took a deep breath. Then he opened the fist in front of him and laid his hand softly on the table.

“Don’t worry, Joe. I know you’re nothing like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, please. You don’t think I know about your little crush?”

“You do?”

“I appreciate that you keep a professional attitude on the job. But I would have noticed even if Cecily hadn’t told me.” He laughed. “I guess Julia has a thing for pool men.”

“I guess so.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a different feeling about you. I’m totally in favor this time.”

“Because of my face?”

“Well, yes, your face, of course.” Houston cracked up again. “But that’s not all. You seem good for her. I don’t see you stressing her out.”

“Cecily thinks maybe I could be a summer fling, but that’s it.”

“Well, Cecily is fourteen. She’s probably wrong about a lot of things.”

“What do you think?”

“All I know is that I’m rooting for you. I’m just happy to see Julia moving in the right direction again.”

Houston smiled at me and for a second I had that sick feeling that I was betraying Alvin for agreeing with him, but I couldn’t help it. I knew that Julia was better off with me. I would take better care of her than Alvin could, and whatever else she needed I could learn.

“I decided the next thing I want you to teach me,” I said.

“Okay.”

“Actually a few things.”

“Maybe we’d better take them one at a time.”

“I want to learn to like the taste of different things again.”

I went on to explain to him my specific problem with food, and how I could only eat pizza and cheeseburgers and the worst, unhealthiest junk food. Houston listened carefully and decided to start attacking the problem then and there, right there in that McDonald’s. He cut out about a quarter of a chicken sandwich for me, and gave it to me folded in a napkin.

“Why don’t you try a bit of this?”

“I don’t usually like chicken.”

“Maybe so, but let’s put that aside for a second. Let’s pretend this is a food you’ve never even tried before.”

It really did look just like a commercial for a McDonald’s chicken sandwich, a little bit shiny and everything, with little drops of mayonnaise squeezing out under the bread. I took a little bite. I had no idea what to expect, because it had been a couple of years since I had tried to eat chicken. But maybe I had changed, or maybe chicken had changed, because it really didn’t turn out to be that bad. For the first couple of bites I tried not to breathe, but then I realized the taste wasn’t even bothering me. It was as if I’d always liked chicken sandwiches, but had just forgotten for about ten years.

“Look at you,” said Houston. “You’re doing it.”

“It’s probably easier for me to eat food from McDonald’s.”

“Maybe so. But it’s a start.”

That was the beginning for me. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and I knew it would take a long time. But if I could eat that chicken, I could eat anything. Being around Houston made a lot of things seem suddenly possible, and from that day on he always took an interest in the things I ate.

It was incredibly hot by the time we finished lunch. Driving home, we rolled down all the windows because the air conditioning in Houston’s car never worked. We were about halfway home when he said, “Julia tells me you play basketball.”

“Sometimes I do.”

“Well, there’s a court not far from here. How about a quick game right now?”

“Against each other? I don’t know.” Houston and I had been getting along so well, and I was thinking about Marcus and how angry basketball could make him. “I don’t like to get too intense when I play.”

“Oh, please, that’s never been my style. Besides, we’ll play on the same team.”

I was full of doubts, but Houston really seemed to want to play, so I finally agreed to play a couple of games, and he got off at the next exit, and took us to these courts he knew. Life is so full of impossible things that I don’t understand. It turned out that I had nothing to worry about, because Houston turned out to be a wonderful basketball player, the best point guard that I ever played with. He wasn’t very fast or strong, but he never tried too hard or dribbled all around like crazy for no reason. He didn’t shoot when he was angry, and he didn’t hog the ball like it belonged to him. Playing with a good passer is almost like cheating at basketball because almost nobody ever does it. It becomes impossible for the other team to beat you and they can’t even figure out why.

A basketball court might be the only place where I can really pay attention perfectly and understand what’s going on. If you’re playing really well, it’s like you’re dancing with the people that are trying to defend you. You can move them around and help them find out where to go. But if you get angry, or if you go on tilt and try too hard, the magical plays will never happen.

I felt right away like I’d been playing with Houston all my life, and I fell in love with the rim early on, and it loved me back. I tickled the net all afternoon and we won all our games, and stopped when we got tired. I was too excited and pleased to talk. It was like we’d been practicing all our lives to play with each other. Houston didn’t talk either until we were almost back at the hotel.

“You’re a hell of a shooter.”

“It was a good day.”

“Pickup basketball is always a miracle to me,” said Houston. “Nowhere else in the world will five strangers meet and immediately—within seconds—start to function as a single whole. We look each other in the eye. Every wolf instantly knows his role in the pack. Before the game even starts we know our leader, our rebounder, our scorer, our knuckle-down defender, our wise encouragement, our sparkplug of infectious energy, our scapegoat, our passer, our hustle, and our soul.” Houston was speaking very passionately now and so I tried to pay attention closely. “Take the big redhead, for example. He was our rebounder.”

“You were the passer.”

“Correct. The black guy was our hustle, and he also had wisdom. That’s an unusual combination in one player. The skinny young kid was our knuckle-down defender. Also rare for a youngster to step into that role.”

“You were our scorer.”

“No. You were our scorer.”