Portman's POV:
Though I kept an eye out for him all weekend, peering down every alley I passed, I didn't see Fulton again till Monday. By showing up on time for a change, and actually listening while the teachers took attendance, I found out we had several classes together, though he was present for none of them. He had been on my mind a lot in the past few days. I had been struck by his singularity; to say that he didn't belong was an understatement, but it was more than that. Nothing about him seemed to make much sense; it was as if he went against all the laws of nature and society that governed people's lives, or lives in the East End, in any case. How could I know this after only a few brief encounters? You're asking the wrong guy; Fulton, he's the one with all the answers. All I knew was that he was like nobody else I'd ever met, and I liked that.
I had spent all Sunday with Johnny, helping him in the greenhouse, seeding new plants, transplanting others, and trying to avoid going home. My mother had been seeing a guy from work named Bud, and since Bud made attempts at male boding whenever I was around--mainly through loud, rude jokes and promises to take me hunting or fishing over the long weekend--I made it my mission not to be.
I told Johnny what had happened that Friday, and his take on the matter was similar to my own: that Fulton sounded interesting, and that he warranted further investigation, particularly where it came to his reluctance to play hockey. The two of us were unable to agree on a logical explanation for this, though Johnny surmised that he couldn't afford equipment, and I guess shyness or fear of crowds as the reason. Johnny also thought my joining the Swordfish was a great idea, pointing out that I was always complaining about the kids I played with, and that being on a winning team had never been very important to me.
"It'll be like the Bad News Bears, and you'll be the tough kid!" he'd exclaimed excitedly, swearing he'd come to all my games if I joined. Johnny loved underdogs.
So I was hanging in the parking lot after school, wishing I was drunk enough to be entertained by the conversations going on around me, when I spotted the Swordfish captain standing by the back doors. He was alone for once, so I hailed him over, meeting him halfway so the kids I was with couldn't hear us.
The Conway kid--Charlie, Fulton had called him--didn't seem that surprised to be approached by me; as soon as I mentioned hockey, his face lit up and he invited me to join before I even had the chance to ask. He said that Guy had spoken to him about me, and that between that, and what he'd seen, he thought I'd be a real asset to the Swordfish.
I wondered if the rest of the team felt the same way, and he replied-- rather cheekily, I thought--that my charms would soon win them over, and that Jesse--the mouthy black kid from Friday's fight--had a bit of a trust issue with newbies, but that he'd get over it soon enough. This reminded me of Fulton, but when I asked Conway why he wasn't on the team, he responded vaguely. It was only when I made a rather menacing allusion to my 60-lb advantage that he mumbled something about skating and, after giving me the date and time of the next practice, hurried off.
I took my dirtbike to the quarry and tore around for a while, contemplating my new-found fishiness. I found myself looking forward to practice; somehow, over the years, hockey had become an important part of my life, and being booted from the Hawks had been surprisingly devastating. To be honest, I'd had no idea that the game meant that much to me, but I guess it did. Conway seemed like a decent captain; the responsible, do-gooder type, and I'd been impressed with the balls on that Jesse kid, as well.
I'd seen Tracy that day at school; one eye was swollen shut, and the entire left side of his face had all the colour of a Canadian sunrise. I laughed when I saw him, and he only scowled and shuffled away, but Conway told me McGillis had tried to challenge him and his team to a showdown. He hadn't accepted, but he was worried Tracy would go to Jesse next, and he would never back down. I told him not to worry about it, and that while we'd likely lose terribly, I'd do my best to keep them from getting pulverised and vowed to take as many Hawks down with us as I could. He smiled, and said he was looking forward to playing with me. I felt a strange glow of pride at that; I'd never given a shit what any of those prepsters thought of me, but for some reason, I found myself wanting to be liked and accepted by Charlie and his team.
My mind always seemed to work best if my body was in motion: walking or driving or playing hockey, and dirtbiking was no exception. The wind whipped my hair across my face, and I thought about everything that had been happening lately; it seemed like pages torn from someone else's life, not my own. I was in alien territory, here, and I was no longer sure how I felt about anything. It was like I was going soft, or giving in to something, but I had no idea what it was. Conway and his friends were good kids; did I really think I'd fit in with them? I wished Fulton was on the team, too; he seemed more like my kind of people. Charlie had said he couldn't skate; just like me, when I was still living in Chicago. I remembered the ice skates I'd outgrown last year, and wondered if they would fit him.
For a moment, I wondered if I really wanted to get into this. It was going to be big, I could tell... Who was I kidding? I knew what I was going to do. All the years of my life had always seemed to bleed together, like a painting left in the rain; the same stories acted out again and again, only with different settings and actors, but now things were changing. I was changing, and I figured the best thing would be to go with it, and see which way the winds took me. I mean, it wasn't as if I had much of anything to lose, was it?
I'd always felt that life was like a movie: shit happened, good and bad, and I just took it as it came, and tried to make the best of things. Everyone lived the lives they were given, and I had no greater ambition than to have as much fun as possible with the one I'd got. I took for granted the inevitability of things, because I knew all paths led back to the same place. But not anymore. It was the beginning of the end of my passive fatalism, perhaps. A week ago, a month ago, I think I'd have just shrugged him off, and gone on with my life, tried to forget about him. But not that day. I knew he'd never come looking for me, so I went looking for him. I could feel the possibilities being born from my decision, branching off in countless, unknown directions that sent shivers of excitement up my spine as I left the quarry, and went in search of an alternate ending.
***
It was past one a.m. when I finally found him. He was lying on his back on the raised island in the middle of the skate bowl, staring up at the sky, his breath coming out in tiny white clouds. Now that November had rolled around, it was really cooling down, and I felt my arms break out in goosebumps as I stopped the bike and took off my helmet. He wasn't even wearing a jacket.
"Aren't you freezing your ass off?" I asked as I ducked under the metal railing that bordered the bowl.
He propped himself up on an elbow, and watched me approach. He gestured to the plain black toque he wore. "You lose 80% of your body heat through your head; I'm warmer than you are."
I sat down beside him. "Is that true?" He shrugged, and I tried again. "You skate?" Christ, he was sitting in a skate park with a board beside him, and that was the best thing I could think to ask?
He shrugged again. "A bit. You?"
"Nah. I used to, then I got a bit too big for it. Took up dirtbiking instead." I looked around me. Tall trees grew on all sides, muffling the sounds of traffic. The night was cool and clear, and the stars shone brightly. It was almost beautiful. "You hang here a lot?"
"Sometimes, but I mostly just skate to get around; I'm no good at tricks. I can only grind a few feet, and then I always overbalance."
A smile threatened to break out on my face as I imagined Fulton going head over heels on a skateboard. "Hey, I took your advice, by the way."
He sat up straight. "About hockey? You're a Swordfish now?"
"You better believe it. You gonna come and watch us play, or do you only go to Hawks games?"
"Uh, no, I don't usually... I'll be there."
"But you won't play."
He started to stand up, but I put my hand on his shoulder. "Stay. Charlie told me you can't skate, and I--"
"He what?" His features hardened in anger, and I wished I hadn't said anything. "I should go." He shook off my arm, and got to his feet, grabbing his board.
His back was to me. He was leaving again, and I was just watching him go... "Wait!" I called. "What size shoe do you wear?"
He didn't answer for a long time, and I figured that was it, he didn't want anything to do with me. Not like I cared; he'd just seemed like someone I'd like to know...
"Twelve and a half." He was standing a few feet away, staring at me so intently that I half-expected laser beams to come shooting out of his eyes, reducing me to a smouldering pile of ashes.
Somehow, he knew exactly what I meant, and by responding to my shoe-size query, he was already agreeing to my unspoken proposal to teach him to skate. It didn't occur to me to marvel at this wordless communication until much later; at the time it seemed perfectly natural, as I got on my bike, and he on his board, and we took off, side by side, down the road.
***
Fulton's POV:
The light ahead of us turned from green to red, after the brief, perfunctory switch to amber, and Portman killed his engine and coasted to a halt. I skated hard to catch up, and each time I pushed off against the pavement I felt as if I was taking off: on a rocket ship, or sailing off a cliff, like Thelma and Louise at the end of that movie. When I was a kid, I dreamed about being in that car. I knew they'd find something amazing on the canyon floor, or at least on the way down there. They'd find beauty, perhaps; answers to unanswered questions. The moment before impact must have been glorious.
Twelve and a half, I'd said. And now here I was, with Portman, going somewhere (I assumed the ice rink) in the middle of the night. I'd wanted to stop myself from speaking, but the words were jerked out of me, violently, as if by a fisherman's hook. I was terrified I would say something, or do something, to reveal myself to him, how I felt. To keep ahold of my sanity, I had convinced myself that this was the one night I'd have with Portman, before he disappeared forever, and everything would go back to the way it used to be, when I didn't feel like I was falling, or spinning out of control all the time. And then I'd always have this to look back on, and relive.
I was a master at separating myself from the reality around me, and I used this talent most vigorously to convince myself that none of this was real. Just another one of my elaborate fantasies. I had to; it was all too good to be true.
We stopped outside an apartment complex, and I waited while he went inside, emerging soon after with a hockey bag slung over his shoulder. Then we were at the rink, and Portman was using a key to get in, and even though he said something about snagging a copy from his ex-coach, I knew it was just a movie-land excuse. He had a key because things worked out like that in dreams.
The only security was a night cop who patrolled the perimeter now and again, so once we were inside, we were home free. The light switches by the door didn't work, so together we walked around in the near darkness, feeling our way along the walls. I finally found the breaker panel, and turned on the lights in the hallway, and on the ice. Not the overhead fluorescents, though, so the place was still nice and dim.
We sat down on a bench beside the rink, and Portman dropped his bag on the floor, and started going through it, pulling out pads, pucks, and two pairs of skates, one shiny and new, the other old and worn, with frayed, broken laces and a faded NOFX sticker on one of them.
"When I joined the Hawks, Coach bought me new skates and gear and everything," he said, handing the old ones to me. "You can have all my old stuff, I don't need it anymore." He stuck out his leg and wiggled his toes. "I'm a thirteen and a half now."
My feet slipped easily into the skates, they seemed to be tailored just for me. Of course he'd have gear for me to use; this was a dream, remember?
With the skates on, I was at least four inches taller, and the world had a new perspective as I hobbled out onto the ice. I felt... big, powerful. The effect was ruined when Portman grabbed me from behind and I jumped, landing hard on my ass.
"Sorry," he laughed, looking down at me for a moment before extending a hand to help me up. "Mind if I do a few warm-up laps before we start?"
I shook my head, and as he sped around the rink, I tried not to imagine what it would feel like to hold his body in my arms, to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in, like gas at a dentist's office. I bet he smelled divine.
"So," he said, interrupting my lusting as he came to a sudden stop in front of me, sending up a shower of ice. "You've really never done this before?" I shook my head, and he grinned. "Well, you gotta start somewhere. At least you can skateboard; maybe that'll help. Come on."
He grabbed my hands, and I thanked god for the sublime creation that was the glove, because as soon as he did, my palms grew slick and moist.
I knew the correct form, had watched games innumerable, but my feet felt strange and awkward. Portman skated backwards, half-pulling me along, giving me pointers and encouragement. "Just like boarding, push out with your feet... harder... just like that, good... long strides..." He was a wonderful teacher, patient and observing. I quickly mastered the skating part, but turning and stopping on a point were another story.
"How about this," he said bemusedly, looking down at me as I lay on the ice after a failed left turn brought me to another high-speed collision with the boards. "I'll stand against the boards, and you'll skate towards me, then if you can't make the turn, at least I'll break your fall."
See? Would anyone have offered to do something like that in real life? No way in hell.
After about an hour of me overshooting or falling short of my turning targets, Portman began complaining about the lack of music. "I'm telling you, if I'd thought to bring a stereo, you'd have hit the mark by now. Good music is, like..."
"Auditorily invigorating?" I suggested.
"You took the words right out of my mouth."
"If your key's a master, we can probably get into the control room and play something on the loudspeakers."
"Finally, I meet a proper delinquent in this bloody city. Let's go!"
Turned out his key wasn't a master, but the door only had a simple sliding lock, and I picked it no problem, promising to show Portman how another day, though I knew that day would never come.
You know," I said, getting to my feet and brushing myself off for the third time in as many minutes. "Falling on your ass to the Clash is much better than just falling on your ass."
"Hey, you're getting better, you just need to use your edges more. Don't stand up so straight when you turn... lean into it."
So I leaned. So well, in fact, that I leaned myself into another faceful of ice. "Okay, Fult," he chuckled, hauling me to my feet. "You might have leaned a bit too far that time."
Fult. He called me Fult; no one had ever called me that before. I had a nickname.
We talked as we skated, mostly about music; turned out Portman loved the Clash as much as I did. "I use them like a musical measuring stick," I said. "If someone says they don't like the Clash, you can automatically disregard the rest of their opinions."
We both fell silent for a moment when "I'm so bored with the USA" came on. "This is one of my favourite songs," he said. "And it's pretty appropriate right now, don't you think?" Joe Strummer would have said something caustic and subversively funny, but I only nodded. "I mean, lately, I've been getting bored with the country myself, and I live here."
"Yeah, I don't know when we became such a cloying nation, but I wish we'd let up a bit."
"Me too. You think this is what Vietnam was like?"
"Probably, but it's different, too. People used to blame the soldiers, now they just blame Bush."
"Weird, huh? Cause guys were drafted in Vietnam, right? And the soldiers in Iraq are volunteers."
"I think we've gotten better at assigning blame since then. Lord knows not much else has changed."
"It feels like a cycle, sometimes, doesn't it? The way everything has to repeat itself cause no one was listening the first time around."
"Yeah." He was so honest and perceptive. He probably thought he was stupid, but he understood things on an intuitive level, even if the mechanics eluded him. He said things that had been said before, many times, but the way he worded them, slowly and thoughtfully and very simply, you could tell he'd come up with them himself. I'd never spoken like this to anyone, just saying what I thought and not worrying about how it sounded, but when I was with him, I couldn't help myself.
"Okay, just like that, now get ready... turn, and... oof!"
The "oof," if you hadn't figured it out, came from me crashing into him at full speed. We hit the ice, and I hoped the cold would keep my flushing cheeks from burning too visibly.
"Fult, stand up. Show me how you hold yourself." He was kneeling beside me, and started making adjustments to my posture. When he grabbed my leg with his hands, I had to smother a gasp. This was no dream. I could feel his hands... oh god, what was I doing? "You want to keep your feet close together, like this... shit, you're tense. That's your problem, I bet, you need to loosen up. You're a natural, if you could stop thinking and trust yourself, you'd be great."
He looked at me, and I dropped my eyes. "I guess that's easier said than done, huh? Well," he said, his eyes taking on a playful gleam that made my stomach do somersaults. "I bet I can help with that."
As it turned out, Portman's help took the form of a particularly potent strain of the cannabis family, and after we'd hot-boxed the men's room, we were back on the ice, and wouldn't you know it? I *was* feeling far less self-conscious than before.
"And the best part was," I choked out, my body trembling with repressed giggles. "Not only did he destroy his home with the runaway motorcycle, but when he blew his ass off tossing his cigarette into the toilet full of gasoline a few hours later, the paramedics who answered the call were the same ones who came when he drove through the patio door that morning, and when they heard what happened, they started laughing so hard, they dropped the stretcher, and the guy rolled down the driveway and broke his arm."
"Brilliant!" Portman gasped. "Did he live?"
"Yeah, that's why he only got an Honourable Mention. To win one, you have to die."
"Like those college students who dared their friend to go down the library book return chute, but he went down the garbage chute instead, and got crushed to death!"
"Shit! I never heard that one!" I rolled over onto my side, clutching my stomach. Finally, I stopped laughing, and rolled over to look at him. "Isn't it strange, that we have this big long tube running through our bodies, from our mouth to our ass? So when you swallow something, it's not really inside your body until it gets absorbed."
He looked at me very seriously. "I never thought of that. It's like there's a tunnel going right through us."
We finally had to leave near five in the morning; people would be coming in soon. We both headed back home to get some sleep, and as I watched his shadow recede as he drove towards the rising sun, I could feel that tunnel running through my body begin to widen, growing bigger and bigger until there was nothing left inside me but a gaping black hole.
Though I kept an eye out for him all weekend, peering down every alley I passed, I didn't see Fulton again till Monday. By showing up on time for a change, and actually listening while the teachers took attendance, I found out we had several classes together, though he was present for none of them. He had been on my mind a lot in the past few days. I had been struck by his singularity; to say that he didn't belong was an understatement, but it was more than that. Nothing about him seemed to make much sense; it was as if he went against all the laws of nature and society that governed people's lives, or lives in the East End, in any case. How could I know this after only a few brief encounters? You're asking the wrong guy; Fulton, he's the one with all the answers. All I knew was that he was like nobody else I'd ever met, and I liked that.
I had spent all Sunday with Johnny, helping him in the greenhouse, seeding new plants, transplanting others, and trying to avoid going home. My mother had been seeing a guy from work named Bud, and since Bud made attempts at male boding whenever I was around--mainly through loud, rude jokes and promises to take me hunting or fishing over the long weekend--I made it my mission not to be.
I told Johnny what had happened that Friday, and his take on the matter was similar to my own: that Fulton sounded interesting, and that he warranted further investigation, particularly where it came to his reluctance to play hockey. The two of us were unable to agree on a logical explanation for this, though Johnny surmised that he couldn't afford equipment, and I guess shyness or fear of crowds as the reason. Johnny also thought my joining the Swordfish was a great idea, pointing out that I was always complaining about the kids I played with, and that being on a winning team had never been very important to me.
"It'll be like the Bad News Bears, and you'll be the tough kid!" he'd exclaimed excitedly, swearing he'd come to all my games if I joined. Johnny loved underdogs.
So I was hanging in the parking lot after school, wishing I was drunk enough to be entertained by the conversations going on around me, when I spotted the Swordfish captain standing by the back doors. He was alone for once, so I hailed him over, meeting him halfway so the kids I was with couldn't hear us.
The Conway kid--Charlie, Fulton had called him--didn't seem that surprised to be approached by me; as soon as I mentioned hockey, his face lit up and he invited me to join before I even had the chance to ask. He said that Guy had spoken to him about me, and that between that, and what he'd seen, he thought I'd be a real asset to the Swordfish.
I wondered if the rest of the team felt the same way, and he replied-- rather cheekily, I thought--that my charms would soon win them over, and that Jesse--the mouthy black kid from Friday's fight--had a bit of a trust issue with newbies, but that he'd get over it soon enough. This reminded me of Fulton, but when I asked Conway why he wasn't on the team, he responded vaguely. It was only when I made a rather menacing allusion to my 60-lb advantage that he mumbled something about skating and, after giving me the date and time of the next practice, hurried off.
I took my dirtbike to the quarry and tore around for a while, contemplating my new-found fishiness. I found myself looking forward to practice; somehow, over the years, hockey had become an important part of my life, and being booted from the Hawks had been surprisingly devastating. To be honest, I'd had no idea that the game meant that much to me, but I guess it did. Conway seemed like a decent captain; the responsible, do-gooder type, and I'd been impressed with the balls on that Jesse kid, as well.
I'd seen Tracy that day at school; one eye was swollen shut, and the entire left side of his face had all the colour of a Canadian sunrise. I laughed when I saw him, and he only scowled and shuffled away, but Conway told me McGillis had tried to challenge him and his team to a showdown. He hadn't accepted, but he was worried Tracy would go to Jesse next, and he would never back down. I told him not to worry about it, and that while we'd likely lose terribly, I'd do my best to keep them from getting pulverised and vowed to take as many Hawks down with us as I could. He smiled, and said he was looking forward to playing with me. I felt a strange glow of pride at that; I'd never given a shit what any of those prepsters thought of me, but for some reason, I found myself wanting to be liked and accepted by Charlie and his team.
My mind always seemed to work best if my body was in motion: walking or driving or playing hockey, and dirtbiking was no exception. The wind whipped my hair across my face, and I thought about everything that had been happening lately; it seemed like pages torn from someone else's life, not my own. I was in alien territory, here, and I was no longer sure how I felt about anything. It was like I was going soft, or giving in to something, but I had no idea what it was. Conway and his friends were good kids; did I really think I'd fit in with them? I wished Fulton was on the team, too; he seemed more like my kind of people. Charlie had said he couldn't skate; just like me, when I was still living in Chicago. I remembered the ice skates I'd outgrown last year, and wondered if they would fit him.
For a moment, I wondered if I really wanted to get into this. It was going to be big, I could tell... Who was I kidding? I knew what I was going to do. All the years of my life had always seemed to bleed together, like a painting left in the rain; the same stories acted out again and again, only with different settings and actors, but now things were changing. I was changing, and I figured the best thing would be to go with it, and see which way the winds took me. I mean, it wasn't as if I had much of anything to lose, was it?
I'd always felt that life was like a movie: shit happened, good and bad, and I just took it as it came, and tried to make the best of things. Everyone lived the lives they were given, and I had no greater ambition than to have as much fun as possible with the one I'd got. I took for granted the inevitability of things, because I knew all paths led back to the same place. But not anymore. It was the beginning of the end of my passive fatalism, perhaps. A week ago, a month ago, I think I'd have just shrugged him off, and gone on with my life, tried to forget about him. But not that day. I knew he'd never come looking for me, so I went looking for him. I could feel the possibilities being born from my decision, branching off in countless, unknown directions that sent shivers of excitement up my spine as I left the quarry, and went in search of an alternate ending.
***
It was past one a.m. when I finally found him. He was lying on his back on the raised island in the middle of the skate bowl, staring up at the sky, his breath coming out in tiny white clouds. Now that November had rolled around, it was really cooling down, and I felt my arms break out in goosebumps as I stopped the bike and took off my helmet. He wasn't even wearing a jacket.
"Aren't you freezing your ass off?" I asked as I ducked under the metal railing that bordered the bowl.
He propped himself up on an elbow, and watched me approach. He gestured to the plain black toque he wore. "You lose 80% of your body heat through your head; I'm warmer than you are."
I sat down beside him. "Is that true?" He shrugged, and I tried again. "You skate?" Christ, he was sitting in a skate park with a board beside him, and that was the best thing I could think to ask?
He shrugged again. "A bit. You?"
"Nah. I used to, then I got a bit too big for it. Took up dirtbiking instead." I looked around me. Tall trees grew on all sides, muffling the sounds of traffic. The night was cool and clear, and the stars shone brightly. It was almost beautiful. "You hang here a lot?"
"Sometimes, but I mostly just skate to get around; I'm no good at tricks. I can only grind a few feet, and then I always overbalance."
A smile threatened to break out on my face as I imagined Fulton going head over heels on a skateboard. "Hey, I took your advice, by the way."
He sat up straight. "About hockey? You're a Swordfish now?"
"You better believe it. You gonna come and watch us play, or do you only go to Hawks games?"
"Uh, no, I don't usually... I'll be there."
"But you won't play."
He started to stand up, but I put my hand on his shoulder. "Stay. Charlie told me you can't skate, and I--"
"He what?" His features hardened in anger, and I wished I hadn't said anything. "I should go." He shook off my arm, and got to his feet, grabbing his board.
His back was to me. He was leaving again, and I was just watching him go... "Wait!" I called. "What size shoe do you wear?"
He didn't answer for a long time, and I figured that was it, he didn't want anything to do with me. Not like I cared; he'd just seemed like someone I'd like to know...
"Twelve and a half." He was standing a few feet away, staring at me so intently that I half-expected laser beams to come shooting out of his eyes, reducing me to a smouldering pile of ashes.
Somehow, he knew exactly what I meant, and by responding to my shoe-size query, he was already agreeing to my unspoken proposal to teach him to skate. It didn't occur to me to marvel at this wordless communication until much later; at the time it seemed perfectly natural, as I got on my bike, and he on his board, and we took off, side by side, down the road.
***
Fulton's POV:
The light ahead of us turned from green to red, after the brief, perfunctory switch to amber, and Portman killed his engine and coasted to a halt. I skated hard to catch up, and each time I pushed off against the pavement I felt as if I was taking off: on a rocket ship, or sailing off a cliff, like Thelma and Louise at the end of that movie. When I was a kid, I dreamed about being in that car. I knew they'd find something amazing on the canyon floor, or at least on the way down there. They'd find beauty, perhaps; answers to unanswered questions. The moment before impact must have been glorious.
Twelve and a half, I'd said. And now here I was, with Portman, going somewhere (I assumed the ice rink) in the middle of the night. I'd wanted to stop myself from speaking, but the words were jerked out of me, violently, as if by a fisherman's hook. I was terrified I would say something, or do something, to reveal myself to him, how I felt. To keep ahold of my sanity, I had convinced myself that this was the one night I'd have with Portman, before he disappeared forever, and everything would go back to the way it used to be, when I didn't feel like I was falling, or spinning out of control all the time. And then I'd always have this to look back on, and relive.
I was a master at separating myself from the reality around me, and I used this talent most vigorously to convince myself that none of this was real. Just another one of my elaborate fantasies. I had to; it was all too good to be true.
We stopped outside an apartment complex, and I waited while he went inside, emerging soon after with a hockey bag slung over his shoulder. Then we were at the rink, and Portman was using a key to get in, and even though he said something about snagging a copy from his ex-coach, I knew it was just a movie-land excuse. He had a key because things worked out like that in dreams.
The only security was a night cop who patrolled the perimeter now and again, so once we were inside, we were home free. The light switches by the door didn't work, so together we walked around in the near darkness, feeling our way along the walls. I finally found the breaker panel, and turned on the lights in the hallway, and on the ice. Not the overhead fluorescents, though, so the place was still nice and dim.
We sat down on a bench beside the rink, and Portman dropped his bag on the floor, and started going through it, pulling out pads, pucks, and two pairs of skates, one shiny and new, the other old and worn, with frayed, broken laces and a faded NOFX sticker on one of them.
"When I joined the Hawks, Coach bought me new skates and gear and everything," he said, handing the old ones to me. "You can have all my old stuff, I don't need it anymore." He stuck out his leg and wiggled his toes. "I'm a thirteen and a half now."
My feet slipped easily into the skates, they seemed to be tailored just for me. Of course he'd have gear for me to use; this was a dream, remember?
With the skates on, I was at least four inches taller, and the world had a new perspective as I hobbled out onto the ice. I felt... big, powerful. The effect was ruined when Portman grabbed me from behind and I jumped, landing hard on my ass.
"Sorry," he laughed, looking down at me for a moment before extending a hand to help me up. "Mind if I do a few warm-up laps before we start?"
I shook my head, and as he sped around the rink, I tried not to imagine what it would feel like to hold his body in my arms, to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in, like gas at a dentist's office. I bet he smelled divine.
"So," he said, interrupting my lusting as he came to a sudden stop in front of me, sending up a shower of ice. "You've really never done this before?" I shook my head, and he grinned. "Well, you gotta start somewhere. At least you can skateboard; maybe that'll help. Come on."
He grabbed my hands, and I thanked god for the sublime creation that was the glove, because as soon as he did, my palms grew slick and moist.
I knew the correct form, had watched games innumerable, but my feet felt strange and awkward. Portman skated backwards, half-pulling me along, giving me pointers and encouragement. "Just like boarding, push out with your feet... harder... just like that, good... long strides..." He was a wonderful teacher, patient and observing. I quickly mastered the skating part, but turning and stopping on a point were another story.
"How about this," he said bemusedly, looking down at me as I lay on the ice after a failed left turn brought me to another high-speed collision with the boards. "I'll stand against the boards, and you'll skate towards me, then if you can't make the turn, at least I'll break your fall."
See? Would anyone have offered to do something like that in real life? No way in hell.
After about an hour of me overshooting or falling short of my turning targets, Portman began complaining about the lack of music. "I'm telling you, if I'd thought to bring a stereo, you'd have hit the mark by now. Good music is, like..."
"Auditorily invigorating?" I suggested.
"You took the words right out of my mouth."
"If your key's a master, we can probably get into the control room and play something on the loudspeakers."
"Finally, I meet a proper delinquent in this bloody city. Let's go!"
Turned out his key wasn't a master, but the door only had a simple sliding lock, and I picked it no problem, promising to show Portman how another day, though I knew that day would never come.
You know," I said, getting to my feet and brushing myself off for the third time in as many minutes. "Falling on your ass to the Clash is much better than just falling on your ass."
"Hey, you're getting better, you just need to use your edges more. Don't stand up so straight when you turn... lean into it."
So I leaned. So well, in fact, that I leaned myself into another faceful of ice. "Okay, Fult," he chuckled, hauling me to my feet. "You might have leaned a bit too far that time."
Fult. He called me Fult; no one had ever called me that before. I had a nickname.
We talked as we skated, mostly about music; turned out Portman loved the Clash as much as I did. "I use them like a musical measuring stick," I said. "If someone says they don't like the Clash, you can automatically disregard the rest of their opinions."
We both fell silent for a moment when "I'm so bored with the USA" came on. "This is one of my favourite songs," he said. "And it's pretty appropriate right now, don't you think?" Joe Strummer would have said something caustic and subversively funny, but I only nodded. "I mean, lately, I've been getting bored with the country myself, and I live here."
"Yeah, I don't know when we became such a cloying nation, but I wish we'd let up a bit."
"Me too. You think this is what Vietnam was like?"
"Probably, but it's different, too. People used to blame the soldiers, now they just blame Bush."
"Weird, huh? Cause guys were drafted in Vietnam, right? And the soldiers in Iraq are volunteers."
"I think we've gotten better at assigning blame since then. Lord knows not much else has changed."
"It feels like a cycle, sometimes, doesn't it? The way everything has to repeat itself cause no one was listening the first time around."
"Yeah." He was so honest and perceptive. He probably thought he was stupid, but he understood things on an intuitive level, even if the mechanics eluded him. He said things that had been said before, many times, but the way he worded them, slowly and thoughtfully and very simply, you could tell he'd come up with them himself. I'd never spoken like this to anyone, just saying what I thought and not worrying about how it sounded, but when I was with him, I couldn't help myself.
"Okay, just like that, now get ready... turn, and... oof!"
The "oof," if you hadn't figured it out, came from me crashing into him at full speed. We hit the ice, and I hoped the cold would keep my flushing cheeks from burning too visibly.
"Fult, stand up. Show me how you hold yourself." He was kneeling beside me, and started making adjustments to my posture. When he grabbed my leg with his hands, I had to smother a gasp. This was no dream. I could feel his hands... oh god, what was I doing? "You want to keep your feet close together, like this... shit, you're tense. That's your problem, I bet, you need to loosen up. You're a natural, if you could stop thinking and trust yourself, you'd be great."
He looked at me, and I dropped my eyes. "I guess that's easier said than done, huh? Well," he said, his eyes taking on a playful gleam that made my stomach do somersaults. "I bet I can help with that."
As it turned out, Portman's help took the form of a particularly potent strain of the cannabis family, and after we'd hot-boxed the men's room, we were back on the ice, and wouldn't you know it? I *was* feeling far less self-conscious than before.
"And the best part was," I choked out, my body trembling with repressed giggles. "Not only did he destroy his home with the runaway motorcycle, but when he blew his ass off tossing his cigarette into the toilet full of gasoline a few hours later, the paramedics who answered the call were the same ones who came when he drove through the patio door that morning, and when they heard what happened, they started laughing so hard, they dropped the stretcher, and the guy rolled down the driveway and broke his arm."
"Brilliant!" Portman gasped. "Did he live?"
"Yeah, that's why he only got an Honourable Mention. To win one, you have to die."
"Like those college students who dared their friend to go down the library book return chute, but he went down the garbage chute instead, and got crushed to death!"
"Shit! I never heard that one!" I rolled over onto my side, clutching my stomach. Finally, I stopped laughing, and rolled over to look at him. "Isn't it strange, that we have this big long tube running through our bodies, from our mouth to our ass? So when you swallow something, it's not really inside your body until it gets absorbed."
He looked at me very seriously. "I never thought of that. It's like there's a tunnel going right through us."
We finally had to leave near five in the morning; people would be coming in soon. We both headed back home to get some sleep, and as I watched his shadow recede as he drove towards the rising sun, I could feel that tunnel running through my body begin to widen, growing bigger and bigger until there was nothing left inside me but a gaping black hole.