Page 18 of Playworld
“We gonna have a battle ofwits,” he said.
Ali jumped up and raised his fists, hopping soundlessly, and then waved me from my seat. I obeyed, mirroring his moves, bobbing and weaving. I feinted a few punches and, in response, Ali fired several jabs, their speed so strobic it made me slightly sick. His arms were absurdly long. Retracted, they appeared mantis-like. Ali continued to rhyme:
“Knocked out Liston in the third, stunned Foreman in Zaire. Beat Frazier so bad he cried for a…” He cupped a hand to his ear.
“Year!”I said.
“Good!” he cried. “Nowyou.”
“Fake with my left, punch with my right. Ain’t losing to the champ without a…”
“Fight!” Ali said. He dropped his guard and then shook his head in mock defeat. He held out an open palm. “Give me five.”
I slapped his hand, and he pulled me into a hug. He asked me my name, and when I told him his eyes widened.
“The mythological creature,” he said. “Guardian of greattreasures.What’re you protecting, boy?”
I hadn’t given it a thought. But by now Funt was up, applauding, and he inserted himself between us.
“Great stuff, Muhammad,” he said. “Absolutelypriceless.”
The man with the clipboard took my elbow and led me toward the door. When I looked back, Funt, who was still talking to the champ, checked over his shoulder to see whether I was within earshot. At that moment, Ali slit his eyes and shook his fist at me, this a secret sign of our allegiance. I nodded, disingenuously, and felt something akin to shame.
“You want to explore that a bit?” Naomi asked me.
I considered her question for a moment. “It was like I was on Funt’s team instead of Ali’s.”
“Like you werecolluding.”
I told her I didn’t know what that meant.
“Cooperating,” she said, “but in secret.”
A word can open a world. I thought of how I’d thrown Andy Axelrod under the bus on set several weeks ago. Was it because he never listened to me? Because when we talked, he made me disappear? Funt behavior, all the way. Whereas I wanted to be like the champ, someone who in person was exactly like Ali—a rare thing indeed. How to become my opposite?
“As for what you’re protecting,” Naomi said, “I think we both know the answer to that.”
Being baffled, and safely allowed to be so, I remained silent.
“Yourself, silly.”
I had questions. But by now, Naomi had pushed her sleeve’s cuff back to check her watch. She leaned over to kiss my neck, close to my clavicle, and this caress sent a charge down my spine that zammed to the soles of my feet. “Maybe,” she whispered, “we pick up with this tomorrow.”
—
During those afternoons Naomi and I spent together, the order of operations was always the same: talk first, touch afterward. I had initially thought of the latter as something I owed her, like the check Dad wrote to Elliott at the end of our sessions, the one he folded and sometimes asked me to hand him when we were done, as if I were the one paying the good doctor. But this was changing.
After myCandid Camerasegment aired, Dad made me an appointment at the Billy Kidd Talent Agency. There was no discussion about it. He simply showed up at school one afternoon—a rare occurrence, since Oren and I went to and fro on our own—explaining only that there was someone he wanted me to meet. Chronology dictates his real motivation: we’d just moved back to Lincoln Towers and were struggling. Why not enlist a little help? Brent Bixby, the company’s founder and sole employee, ran the business out of a single-room office overlooking Coliseum Books on West Fifty-Seventh Street. He gave me some commercial sides. Unwilling to play along, I robotically read my lines. “Mr. Owl,” I said, deadpan, “how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” My reluctance should be no mystery. It was one thing to want to be onCandid Camera,quite another to risk being exposed. I would step into the open onmyterms.
“That’s fine,” Brent said. He took back the script and suggested we chat. He folded his hands on his desk and refused to speak. We stared at each other for a while. Brent had a wooden impassivity and a perfect goatee. If he’d wrapped a turban around his head, he’d have been a dead ringer for Zoltar, the coin-operated swami that gave your fortune at the arcade. On his giant desk, there was a telephone on whose face several cubed buttons flashed, a sight I found profoundly distracting when it burbled:Who had he left on hold?The desk’s corner was anchored by a Rolodex so big it required a hand crank, the only thing I was sure Brent would grab should the building ever catch fire. All four walls were crowded with kids’ headshots, the subjects posed and in costume: Thequarterback, in a number twelve jersey, smiling as he prepared to make a pass. The redhead with Pippi Longstocking braids sticking out beneath her straw hat, a giant swirled lollipop held close to her lips. The young tough in a leather jacket, its collar popped, leaning against a wall while he glared at the camera. I felt an overwhelming urge to scratch out their eyes, like the defaced ads I saw on the subway, and was reminded of one of Elliott’s favorite aphorisms: “Those who annoy us the most remind us of ourselves.”
“What’s with all the stupid pictures?” I asked. My bluntness shocked me. Behind me I heard Dad laugh.
Brent mulled my question. “So that when I get a call from a casting agent for a certain type of kid, I know which horse to pick.”
“I’m not a horse,” I said.
Brent shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said, “but this is a race.”