The Shocker Review: The Garbage Time

I was the newest assistant coach of the worst Junior College basketball team in the state but instead of our game later all I could think about was how our bus smelled like a child’s vomit strafed with tropical Febreze. We were the San Cato Whirlwind and we were genuinely, profoundly shitty, at least at basketball. The bus smelling like fruity bile probably had nothing to do with how awful we were at dribbling and shooting and passing and trying, but you know the old saying: you get the bus you deserve.

We were drifting south on 101 towards a 7:45 tip-off against the West Mission Wolverines. This was a very long drive to endure for an unquestionable thrashing. Our guys spoke about the West Mission Wolverines the way one might speak about the Huns or the Bad Boy Pistons or desperate hyenas.

“Dress to impress,” Mike the Murderer, our head coach, told the guys at practice the night before. “They aren’t exactly used to seeing ties and shirts with buttons. Psycho warfare, baby.”

We bounced without seat belts and I felt every bump in the road like a mallet to the ass. I sat behind Reggie, the other assistant coach. He very loudly ate his sour gummy worms and then burped three times and then farted twice.

Our driver was named Cole and he was friendly and also horrible. His goatee was sabertooth sharp but his mullet was just a mullet. He babbled continuously, and for the most part his babbling amounted to briskly stated racist and sexist jokes. His jokes were so disagreeable that even Mike the Murderer didn’t laugh and Mike the Murderer loved laughing at those sorts of jokes.

Cole ran out of material after about forty-five minutes. The trees grew thinner and the dirt bloomed. Traffic was not so bad. We arrived on time, if only just barely. As I stepped off the bus, Cole grabbed hold of me and said, “Hey, boss. Just remember the Third Valid Writ, yeah? Remember propriety.”

“What the hell are you talking about now, Cole?”

“Never mind,” Cole said, “Never mind, man! Sorry, I thought you were the other horny guy. Turns out you ain’t though, is you?”

Like I said, Cole was strange even for a sexist guy with a mullet who was also a racist guy with a goatee.

West Mission was the only college in a hot flat town that seemed fastened together mostly by dust and beige car dealerships. I broke away to search for a soda. They were out of Diet Dr. Pepper so I bought a Diet Pepsi. It tasted like a wet egg.

The soda wasn’t the only thing that felt a bit sideways. There was a big pile of trash by the swimming pool. A rabble of children wearing wife-beaters were jumping on garbage bags as though they were trampolines. The air was moldy. The gym especially had an unpleasantness to it. The lights above were dim and murky and the walls were cold as a cave, though heat hummed like a moody ghost in the walls. Two janitors, one very fat and one a bit less fat, swept trash with hostile broom strokes, but they paid us no mind. They almost started punching each other due to an argument about the newest episode of Vanderpump Rules, but that was a bit later.

The West Mission coach swapped stilted pleasantries with Mike at half-court. His name was Big Bobby Bolton and he was a flabby-armed bald guy wearing a faded Fantastic Four tie. Darius told me he was famous for something but couldn’t remember for what. “I think he might have choked one of his players. Or maybe he fucked one. Hard to say!”

Big Bobby Bolton and Mike went their separate ways. Bolton swaggered back to his bench, chuckling. This really messed with Mike the Murderer. He went redder than usual and boy, that was saying something.

“I will drink his tinny blood,” Mike the Murderer whispered into his clipboard, “I will open his veins with my molars.”

Some of the West Mission guys came over to say hello and to talk a little trash. A friendly giant shook hands playfully with every member of the Whirlwind as if they were old comrades from the Super Great War. When it came time to shake my hand he looked confused.

“They don’t seem that bad,” I said. A chorus of hard and fast disagreement rained down on me.

“Fuck those fucking pieces of fucking bullshit,” Henry Garza said, “They’re evil hicks from hell. What don’t you understand, man? This place is cursed.”

“They’re messing with us,” Curtis said to me, more gently. “They’re going to do us dirty. For sure. I’m going to get punched in the balls today. I assure you that my balls are going to be smashed by the second half.”

Darius was having none of that talk. “They try anything and I’ll send them to the hospital. Or I would, if they had a hospital. We’re playing in a village! The Village of the Damned Rednecks!” Darius put both hands up for some high-fives but he only got one (from the usually taciturn Joe Oliver) and then Wadie told him to shut his dumb mouth, so he did. People usually listened to Wadie and not just because he was our best player.

West Mission’s starting lineup was oddly diverse for a town composed of dead soil and strip malls. Their bigs were both black (one chunky local hero, one rangy Sudanese Lost Boy), their shooting guard was a Mexican with long purple hair in Morningstar braids, their small forward was an emaciated Vietnamese kid with a lethal first step, and their point guard was a stubby ginger haired white boy with braces. In all fairness, the ginger had a pretty good handle and ran their offense to dull perfection.

The West Mission Wolverines were as rowdy as advertised. They instilled the fear of flying elbows early. It felt like ten minutes before we could secure an offensive rebound. Freddie Swanner finally corralled one but was jabbed in the groin for his trouble. No foul was called, even as Freddie folded to the floor in agony and started crying for his long dead mother.

But at halftime we were only down ten points. As I followed the team back to the lockers, I looked down and noticed I wasn’t wearing the shoes I thought I was wearing.

“You can win this fucking game,” Mike the Murderer shouted in the locker room. The heat and sweat made everyone drowsy and angry. “You can win this fucking game. These guys are not good. They’re just assholes. These guys are bullshit. Get low. Put your hands up. Clog the passing lanes. Rebound, rebound, rebound!”

Reggie nodded from behind Mike’s stooped shoulder, “Yeah. Rebound that ball!”

I started drifting away two minutes into the second half. The Wolverines scored ten straight points and the game was all but over with eighteen minutes remaining. Nobody asked my advice about the situation, so I began staring at people in the stands. Loud grandmas in oversized jerseys, roughnecks and bikers, middle-managers, grade school kids in Raiders gear. And in the middle of them all there was a young woman with no face but eyes that I knew. She had long thick hair, midnight black. I couldn’t help but think it was strange that she had no face, but the game demanded my attention. I had to pretend to coach because Mike and Reggie were no longer even trying. The din was unbearable. An avalanche of just stupid incomprehensible noise, savage encouragement and bloodlust.

Fatigue took a crowbar to the Whirlwind’s legs as the game wore on. With a rotation of six healthy players, no one was given much respite. I had seen some of them collapse after the final buzzer and refuse to move for long awkward minutes. At every dead ball they tugged at their shorts and moved like the limping dead.

Wadie was the exception. Both he and Freddie Swanner had played every minute of the game. Wadie because he was good and Swanner because he was very tall. But Swanner was dying. His screens were lazy and his granite hands were terrible even on a good day. His face was more sweat than skin. Curtis and Darius were almost as useless, and fat Henry Garza had missed three layups in a row. Only Wadie continued to fight.

At six feet (with shoes), Wadie was undersized. But he was fucking good. He didn’t belong with these dumb idiots. He toyed with them. His game was both fundamentally sound and exciting, part swashbuckler and part bricklayer, but there was neither bravado nor mathematical precision to it. His shot was deadly from any spot on the floor; his shooting form was a thing of face slapping beauty. His crossover was low and fast and cut-throat. He was that rare Division 3 player that made you say “Oh, shit!” and “Golly, that young Lebanese man has a future!” and things like that aloud.

Still, despite Wadie’s angry effort, the West Mission Wolverines beat us by thirty points. As we walked back to the locker room Mike the Murderer gave me a strangely affectionate pat on the head. There were tears of rage in his eyes.

“Next time. We’ll get them next time.”

Then he walked away, wound up like a softball pitcher, and punched a wall. The idea that we’d get them next time was almost funny. Might as well try to make the Sun cum. It’s not going to happen, no matter how enthusiastic you are.

It was dark outside and the pebbles crunched under our feet on the walk back to the bus. Cole had wandered off, so we were stranded. We sat on the earth and waited by the empty bus. Wadie sat alone, a deliberate grump. Darius and Curtis passed a bottle of mid-shelf vodka between them, giggling and cussing. Reggie was on the phone with his mistress, apologizing for the elaborate lies he continued to tell his wife. His mistress was very fond of his wife. I didn’t quite understand that dynamic.

And then the young woman with no face but eyes that I knew slid up beside me. She held out a Dr. Pepper, like a peace offering. I took it from her hands, unscrewed the cap from the bottle, and took a mighty big swig. Didn’t taste like a wet egg at all.

She wore a blue pea coat and seemed almost gaunt. She was taller than me. She had no shadow. No one did, I realized.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” I said, “Where’s your face?”

“Oh, it’s there,” she assured me, and I thought I could hear her smiling, “Sort of. It’s complicated. Well, really it’s simple and stupid.”

“Oh. That’s cool.”

A coyote howled somewhere close. It sounded like a baby crying. Me and the Girl With No Face But Eyes That I Knew watched Darius and Curtis drink their vodka. We made fun of them a bit. Both moons were full tonight, I noticed suddenly. That was strange. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

I wiped a tear from my eye and then another.

“Is it like how you remembered it?” the Girl asked, gently.

She motioned to the Whirlwind. To the bus.

“Or is it different?”

I looked down. I was wearing different shoes yet again. These were my old shoes, from years and years ago. Sambas. For soccer and looking cool.

“I think it was different. I don’t think…” I struggled with both the words and the memories, they were mixed up and twisted together. “I think Cole the racist sexist bus driver was here. I think we left when we were supposed to.”

“Yeah,” the Girl With No Face placed a soft coffee colored hand on my shoulder, and squeezed. Her fingers were long and strong and felt like fingers, even though they probably weren’t exactly. “You guys were on time.”

“I guess I knew when I realized I didn’t have a heartbeat,” I admitted, sometime later. Snapping turtle wind kept the heat at arm’s length, though it messed up my hair, what was left of it. I took another big sip of the Dr. Pepper. I would have preferred Diet Dr. Pepper.

“Yeah. That’s how I figured it out too. Weird how long it takes you to notice though.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rabea.”

“Well hello, Rabea. I guess we’ve met before.”

“Kind of. I told you. Hard to explain. Also, it doesn’t matter, but it’s fine. It’s just a dream.”

“A dream? Does that mean I’m alive?”

“No, no. Not exactly. Just dreaming.”

“And we’re going to be friends?”

“Best friends. Best fucking friends, mate.”

No one from the Whirlwind seemed to care I was talking to a girl with no face. Typical. I looked over at Wadie. Never even made it to a Division 1 school. He would have done really well there. He would have turned some heads. He had such an amazing floater…

“I like your shoes,” Rabea said. I could see her face now. It was good. It was the Golden ratio.

“Thanks. They’re Sambas.”

“Yeah. They really, really are.”

“Is it just like this forever?”

“That’s up to you, Tiberius.”

I watched Mike the Murderer throw rocks at a lizard except he wasn’t Mike the Murderer anymore. He was another guy I knew named Mike.

“This reminds me of a poem my father used to read to me,” I said, “When I was little.”

“I hate poetry. Hated poetry.”

“So do I. It’s terrible and it hurts my ears. But this was a poem my father read to me in my bunk bed and I never forgot it. I remember the way his breath smelled. It smelled like a fever.”

“Go on then,” Rabea said, now with a British accent, “How does your poem go?”

I looked out at the chubby sky and then at the spindly landscape, which blurred and shifted and shrank and then seemed to crawl closer. I cleared my throat. Wadie’s voice cut through the darkness, telling me to shut up. Rabea laughed. Her laugh was filthy perfect.

I began to recite the poem.

“Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view. Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause. Moved our grand parents in that happy state. Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off. From their Creator, and transgress his will. Cut my life into pieces. This is my last resort. Suffocation. No breathing. Don’t give a fuck if I cut my arm, bleeding. This is my last resort.”

I recited the poem so well that applause exploded all around me like an artillery barrage.

But I didn’t care.

I only cared about how great it would have been to beat the West Mission Wolverines, those stupid rowdy fools.