She hadn’t gone right home. She had stopped at a Starbucks, wanting a hot chocolate even though it was spring. She had just sat down and begun to collect her thoughts when she felt someone staring at her. She looked up. It was a guy in his mid-twenties, kind of cute in his V-neck T-shirt and khakis, like one of the mannequins in a Banana Republic window. He smiled, casually yet with purpose, then looked away, as if he didn’t care, slyly checking back to see if she noticed him.

  She didn’t smile back, didn’t return the glance, just stared at her hot chocolate, wishing she hadn’t looked up in the first place, knowing already, at fourteen, that no stray glance ever went unacknowledged in New York City, that someone, some guy or girl was alert, on the prowl, looking to make a connection. She wished she were home, asleep.

  She felt a presence above her, heard him clear his throat, knew it was the guy from the line. Why, she thought. I’m just fourteen, she thought. Doesn’t he know I’m just fourteen?

  “Hi,” he said.

  Don’t look up, she told herself.

  But this one must have been used to getting his way.

  “Is there anything I could say in the next two minutes that might win your heart?”

  She looked up. He smiled in a well-practiced way, unzipping his lips to reveal his white, perfect teeth which he knew were very white and very perfect. The effect was supposed to be charming. His mother probably told him it was charming.

  “Hey, how about giving me a chance? Whattaya say?”

  All of a sudden she felt a surge of fury rush through her.

  “Get away from me!” she screamed, all the pain and humiliation of being with Owen pouring out.

  “But …”

  “Just get away!!” Her voice even louder now because the rest of the shop had gone silent.

  “Leave her alone, man,” came a deep voice from another table.

  “Hey, I just …”

  “You heard her.”

  The boy turned, indignant now.

  “Hey, I don’t need you telling me …”

  “I’m just fourteen!” she shouted. “I’m only fourteen!”

  She ran out of the store. She didn’t want to hear any more boy talk. She ran down the block and around the corner and then stopped and leaned against the side of a building, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. She wished she’d thrown her hot chocolate at him, right in his smirking face.

  Chantal sat up in bed.

  There was no way she would fall asleep now. She got up quietly, so as not to wake her mother, and went into the bathroom. She shut the door before turning on the light.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. She studied her hair, her lips, her breasts. These parts of her seemed to lure her into trouble. Danger. Her breasts were her enemy. Her hair, conspiring against her. She needed to cover them up. Hide them. The only way she could get some peace. They all had to be covered.

  She would start with her hair. Let down your golden tresses, Holden had said. Her hair was clearly wicked, shimmying and wiggling in some sordid dance without Chantal knowing it, giving the boys the totally wrong idea. Her hair was never quiet. She knew that now.

  So she’d start there.

  She found a small scissors in her mother’s cosmetic bag. She could cut only a few strands at a time, but it didn’t matter. She had all night. She started cutting. She could hear the cries of protest from her curls as they landed on the floor, in the toilet, but she didn’t stop. She was sick of being betrayed. She wanted it to end.

  When she’d gotten most of it off she stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. Her head was now an uneven, ragged mess, like starving insects had gorged there.

  It looked ugly. Her hair looked ugly. She liked it ugly. Because it was quiet now. Its coy teasing stilled.

  She smiled.

  There was a phone in the bathroom. She picked it up and called Malcolm on his personal line, wanting to tell him about what she’d done, thinking he’d be the one person who would understand. But there was no answer. She wondered where he was so late at night. She left a message with her room number and told him to call her tomorrow.

  Then she turned off the light and went back to bed and fell immediately into a deep, untroubled sleep for the first time in a long while.

  Rachel and Julia stood on one side of the hospital bed, Cori on the other. Cori held her father’s hand.

  “I shouldn’t have tried to climb over that fence,” he said. “I’m too old for that.”

  No one said anything.

  “I was never good at fence climbing,” he said.

  More silence.

  Then Julia coughed decorously.

  “We already spoke to the doctor,” she said. “He told us what’s going on.”

  “Oh,” Bliss said.

  “The bullet went through your leg,” Julia said.

  “Clean through,” Cori added.

  “No souvenirs,” Bliss said. “But I guess I’ll have the memory.”

  “That man,” Rachel said, “Rick. What was he thinking?”

  “He was babbling,” Bliss said. “Incoherent. I don’t know why he came after me.”

  “He must have been in great pain,” Rachel said. “Losing his son.”

  “It’s better not to think about it,” Bliss said, thinking about it, holding Cori tighter.

  Anton entered, moved to the bed.

  “Lenny,” he said. He was dressed in a tuxedo, probably just coming from a fundraiser. “Just heard. A bullet. Where?’

  “In his leg, Grandpa,” Cori said.

  “The leg. Lenny. My fault. I should have told you. Stay away from bullets.”

  The kids laughed. Rachel, too. It was a good line. Something for the novel. Stay away from bullets. Mae’s partner might tell her that. Rock, or whatever she was calling him now.

  “Lenny,” Anton said. “Maybe now. The job. This injury.”

  “It’s not serious,” Bliss said.

  “Still. A bullet. The job. It’s there. Waiting. Lenny. Security. Now more than ever.”

  The doctor came in, checked the wound, and assured everyone Bliss would be fine, would be walking with a cane or crutch by the end of the week. Then the doctor thought it best if everyone left, so Bliss could get some rest.

  They kissed him and said good-bye. Rachel looked at him lovingly. He smiled. She took Cori by the hand and they all left together.

  A moment later, Julia came back in, walked close to him, and pressed a piece of paper into his hand.

  “Maybe it will help you,” she said, “next time you have to climb over a fence.”

  He looked down and saw he was holding in his hand the coupon for the yoga.

  Malcolm leaned his bike against the massive support of the Tri-borough Bridge. He could hear the unearthly whirring of the cars on the span thirty stories above, a steady stream of traffic even at dawn. Birds filled a small tree bordering the many baseball diamonds wedged into this corner of Wards Island. They chirped madly, in defiance, claiming those few, meager branches as their own.

  The East River flowed quietly, slowing as it divided around the island. LaGuardia Airport was just a mile beyond the water. To the west was Manhattan. It was a pleasant bike ride in the morning, one he took often along the promenade adjacent to the FDR Drive, over the East River pedestrian bridge at 110th Street, a few loops around Wards Island, and then back home. In all it was about seven miles. A good workout.

  If it were the weekend, carloads of kids and parents would be arriving for little league. Younger kids playing T-ball, older ones playing hardball in full uniforms, wearing cleats and those high socks, the brims of their caps set in a rakish curl.

  Malcolm did not have fond memories of Little League. His career, mercifully, lasted only one game. He kept missing the ball when he was at bat, even though the ball was sitting on a tee and they gave him far more than his allotted three strikes. He remembered the extra swings making his humiliation even more acute. The kids in the field, waiting for him to make contact, kicked dirt with their toes or stared up at the bridge. Some just sat down and picked at the grass. Finally he hit the ball, listless tap that dribbled down the first base line. He prayed it would stay fair, so he wouldn’t have to bat again—ever again. He jogged to first, slowing down so the first baseman could tag him out. His coach patted him on the shoulder as he trudged back to the bench. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then he had to go out in the field and play defense. They stuck him in as remote a spot as they could, a bald patch of the dirt in the outfield surrounded by goose shit and cigarette butts. Somehow a ball made it through the legs of two other players and wound up in his glove. He had no idea what to do with it. The other kids screamed at him—throw it! Throw it, you idiot! but he was frozen. Afraid to do the wrong thing, he did nothing at all. Finally, one of the junior jocks-in-training ran over and ripped the ball out of his glove and threw it back to the infield. Jerk, he said. Faggot.

  The next day his father bought a shiny new glove and ball and they went out to Central Park to have a catch. His father turned out to be as wretched at baseball as he was. His dad would make a bad throw and Malcolm would lunge for it and miss. Then he’d chase down the ball and throw it back to his dad, who would make his own spastic lunge and also miss. Malcolm’s glove was still so new that on the rare occasion when he did manage to catch it, the ball would pop out, almost as though it was mocking him.

  After one errant throw, the ball rolled to a young couple lying on their blanket reading the Sunday paper. The guy grabbed it and with great fervor, jumped up and got ready to toss it back to Malcolm. As soon as he went into his windup, Malcolm knew he was in for trouble—that this guy, seeing a kid with a glove, must have assumed Malcolm had played catch before, that his dad had been out with him every spare minute, working on their grounders and pop flies. Malcolm wanted to say, Can’t you see my glove is brand new and my dad’s an artist and we’ve never played catch before—and that I’m a jerk and a faggot and I can’t catch and I can’t throw and I can’t hit the ball even when it’s not moving?—can’t you see? But the guy couldn’t see, maybe because he was too busy showing off for his girlfriend or maybe because (and this was something Malcolm was now beginning to understand in a deeply profound way) guys like that never see anything different from themselves. So the guy made an exaggerated wind up and threw the ball at Malcolm. Hard. He had tried to stop it with his glove, not even catch it, just knock it down, or protect himself. Something. But he missed and the ball hit him squarely on the cheek.

  He dropped to the ground, curled up and started wailing. The guy ran over and his dad ran over and even the guy’s girlfriend ran over. His father picked him up and told everyone it was all right. Through his tears, Malcolm could see the guy who threw it looking all fearful and his girlfriend was calling him an idiot and whacking him on the arm. He clung to his dad who brought him to the shade of a large tree and set him down. It was one of those soft baseballs they’d been playing with, the kind little kids use, so the pain was subsiding and there was no real damage done. His dad brushed away his tears and when he calmed down, took him to get a soda and hot dog from the vendor in the park. They walked around together, his father taking some pictures, and then wound up on Fifth Avenue across from the Frick Collection.

  Suddenly his dad’s spirit’s lifted and he hustled Malcolm across the street and into the most magnificent home he’d ever seen. Only it wasn’t a home anymore, it was a museum. His father passed one room after another, knowing just where he wanted to go, striding along the marble floor with ease and lightness. Malcolm couldn’t help but be swept along. They didn’t stop until they’d arrived in a little room in the back where there were only a few paintings, one of which was of a woman sitting by an open window. Look at that, Malcolm, his father said, a tremor of awe in his voice. Look at the light. Malcolm was immediately drawn into the mystery of the painting, the way the sunlight leaped out from the canvas, the softness of the woman’s face. They stood like that in silence and his father gently took his hand and held it.

  They walked through the rest of the museum and it wasn’t until they were outside sitting on a bench and eating a Good Humor that Malcolm realized they had left their gloves and their baseball in the park. He didn’t say anything about it. Neither did his father.

  * * *

  Malcolm walked to the edge of the river and took off his backpack. He unzipped the main compartment and took out a trophy. There was a bit of blood on the fake marble base. The name on the brass plate read HOLDEN GELMAN. The figure on the trophy was in the process of hitting a baseball.

  He reached back and threw the trophy as far as he could into the East River. It made a small splash and disappeared.

  Malcolm got back on his bike and headed home.

  His life had irrevocably changed. He understood that there was unfairness in the world, that delicate things—delicate people—like Chantal, would always be treated unfairly. Violated. And that the only fairness there was, was what you made yourself.

  He also knew this was wrong. That once you start making big moral decisions that are for your own good and not society’s, then bad things happen, like gay boys being beaten and tied to fence rails and left to die. Or abortion doctors getting shot through their kitchen windows.

  He thought about the trophy, now at the bottom of the river. It would stay there. Hidden. A dark secret he hoped to somehow completely forget. He wondered if it was possible to completely forget.

  But as he rode back home, the morning sun reflecting off the water of the East River, he saw once again in his mind, in a kind of slow motion, the golden boy of the trophy sailing in a gentle arc and landing in the water. And he thought that for a jerk, for a faggot, it wasn’t such a bad throw.

  ONE MONTH LATER

  Bliss handed the coupon to the same pretty Asian girl behind the desk at the Serenity Loft.

  “This has expired,” she said.

  “I know. I was hoping … you know, in the yoga spirit.”

  She smiled and stamped the second square of his card. The Chinese symbol was slightly different from the one he got the first time. The ink a different color. Maybe she remembered him, and this stamp was some kind of warning to the others, that he was Yoga intolerant, the he was one of the un-Zen.

  “Been a while,” the girl said,

  “You remember me?” Bliss said.

  “No,” she said. “The stamp. We haven’t used the waning moon stamp in a few months.”

  “What’s the new one mean?”

  “Dawn. Rebirth.”

  “That’s always good, a little rebirth.”

  She gave him a knowing look and handed him back his card.

  “Beginnings are always hard,” she said.

  “I know.”

  He couldn’t swear to it, but the girl might have had one more earring pierced through her ear than before. They ran up the outside edge, six or seven of them. Maybe they were markers, or badges, that she was one step closer to Nirvana. Bliss had an impulse to show her the scar on his leg, where the bullet went through, his own piercing, ask her what higher state of consciousness he was getting closer to, but he thought better of it.

  He pocketed his card and went into the studio.

  He found a place on the floor and looked around for his teacher, but it was a different woman that day. She was young with short hair and taut, lithe arms. She was cute, but carried around her an aura that Bliss immediately sensed made her impenetrable to anything carnal—a toxic combination of deep spirituality and perkiness.

  He started assuming Downward Facing Dog, trying to relax his back, trying to relax anything that would relax.

  It wasn’t going well.

  His uniquely asymmetrical approach must have attracted the teacher. She moved to him, her feet barely touching the floor.

  “First time?” she asked.

  “Second.”

  “Beginnings are always hard,” she said.

  “I know.”

  He gave up the dog and rested on his knees. The teacher gazed on him with pity.

  “Too much stress, perhaps,” she said.

  “Too much bullet,” he replied.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was shot.” He pulled up his sweat pants and showed her the scar. “It passed clean through.”

  He noticed others in the class were watching him, startled by the viscera he had brought into their space.

  “I’m a cop,” he said.

  “Wow,” one of his classmates said.

  “More cops should do yoga,” another said.

  He wanted to tell them that Mae Stark did yoga. That she did pretty much everything Detective Bliss did. That they could real all about him in his wife’s book, on which she was working feverishly.

  “Did someone want to hurt you?” the teacher said. She gently rubbed the back of his neck and shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said. “But it was a case of mistaken identity.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said.

  They started working on Lotus again. Bliss was no closer this time. He felt stiff and foolish.

  He decided that just because he wasn’t able to assume the proper position, that didn’t mean he couldn’t assume any position. He just needed to name them.

  Like the way he was sitting now, one leg stretched, leaning back on his elbows, eyes facing upward, he had assumed the perfect form of Cop in Existential Crises.

  He saw some of his classmates had their eyes closed. So Bliss closed his eyes.

  The events of the past month were starting to fade. The bullet had passed through his leg. He’d been lucky. He would be back at the job soon, back with Ward, working cases.

  Rebirth. Dawn.

  He had been happy sitting around the house, listening to music with Cori, meeting Julia after school and taking her for Frappucinos or whatever else she wanted, sometimes with her friends, sometimes just the two of them.

 

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