Page 69 of Playworld

“Yeah,” Oren said, and poured his daiquiri’s remainder down his throat, “don’t count on it.” Then he knuckle-bumped Frazier, and they parted. Oren watched him go and then said to me, “Want to see the shark?”

We settled up and left. To my dismay we walked past Meredith and her mother on the way toward the docks. “Hi, Griffin,” she said. “Hi, Oren.”

As we passed the sailboats, Oren couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “It was Frazier’s idea. At least the part about the note.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“You’ve got to admit the handwriting was convincing.”

I was so mad my eyes were welling up. “Who’d have thought Frazier was such a good forger,” I said.

“His sister did it,” Oren said, as if this were a consolation.

The sailboats’ masts clanged when a gust kicked up. Kerosene rainbows slicked around the fishing boats. A stray cat crossed our path. An osprey flew low over the bay. I looked around. So far as I could tell, we were alone. Oren noticed this too. At the end of the dock, beneath a winch for weighing fish, with a huge hook attached to a rope, was a large cooler.

Oren opened it.

The sand shark lay half submerged in the water. It was big enough that it could not completely straighten out but was curled uncomfortably, like a cramped muscle. When the sunlight hit it, as if sensing the bay beyond its confines, the fish thwapped and thumped its tail against the cooler’s walls, swung its head, and sent its saving element splashing. We stood looking at the fish as it struggled, and then it stopped.

Oren said, “I’m really sorry.”

I said nothing in response.

“Please,” he whispered.

I grabbed him by the collar and foot swept him. I followed him down to the deck, so that his head slammed against the dock. I pinned his biceps beneath my shin so he couldn’t cover up, and I grabbed his throat. I pulled his necklace’s fishing line till it snapped; when it did, the shells skittered. I punched his aviators on his chest once, twice, until both lenses shattered. I grabbed his hat and chucked it into the bay. I grabbed a fist of my brother’s hair, right at the forelock, lifting him until he stood. Then I pushed him off the dock, into the water. There was a splash. And when he surfaced—he was coughing—I lifted the cooler over my head and flung it at him, the shark, midair, flung from its confines, landing with a great smack, the cooler’s base donking Oren directly on the head. And then the creature disappeared into the depths while Oren treaded water and stared at me, red-eyed, but did not cry.

—

It was pouring on the day we returned. The cab from LaGuardia Airport smelled like wet wool and cigarettes, and the sky was gray as soot. The windows were opaque with droplets of rain, reflecting everyone’s terrible mood. So little had been said on the flight home. Oren had sat with Mom, I with Dad. We both had window seats, and the entire flight Oren was either staring out his or had his face in his book on cars. He refused to acknowledge me. It had been thus since I’d beaten him, and I wanted to get on my knees and beg his forgiveness, I felt so much shame at my eruption. Because itwasa good prank, I thought, credit where credit is due, I wanted to tell him that. Even now, in the cab, as Dad chatted up the driver, a behavior of his that drove us both crazy, Oren sat staring at the wet mess that was Grand Central Parkway.

Back home, Oren immediately left for Matt’s, and Mom and Dad went to their room and shut the door. When I called Cliffnotes to tell him I was back, he said that he was taking his Intellivision console to Tanner’s house. Mr. Potts had just gotten a forty-five-inch TV, and they were going to playSea Battleon it. Did I want to come?

On the bus ride across town, we watched the rain. It was one of those downpours that seemed to have caught people unawares. Pedestriansran down the streets with newspapers over their heads. Others, hatless, walked soaked, disconsolately. Lightning flashed, strobe-like, a rare event in March. Thunder clapped.

When we ran into Tanner’s building, Sean the doorman said to us, “Someone shot the president!” He had a small closet off his desk and, on a shelf inside, a tiny black-and-white TV.

“Shot him as in killed him?” Cliff asked.

“Shot as in shot at,” Sean said.

Tanner’s elevator opened onto two apartments, and his parents always left their front door unlocked. In spite of this, Cliff and I made a point to ring the bell before entering. Tanner greeted us topless and in a bathing suit, like he’d just gone swimming. He was as dark as a mug of Ovaltine but his hair, normally brownish blond, was as white as his puka-shell necklace.

“You bleached your hair,” Cliff said.

“Fuck you,” Tanner said. “It was the sun.”

Cliff was laughing. “What’d you use, hydrogen peroxide?”

“Lemon juice and beer.”

“And chemicals,” Cliff said.

“Strictly speaking, citric acid and alcohol are chemicals.” Wanting to change the subject, he took in my pink-streaked nose and shook his head. “I warned you,” he said.

On the Pottses’ new television, Frank Reynolds was reporting live from the ABC newsroom. He was stiff-backed and wooden in his delivery. He had a deep voice like my dad’s, but it was absent human feeling and toneless, though he was clearly shaken:…and shots were fired apparently at President Reagan as he was coming out of the Washington Hilton this afternoon. The president wasnothit. He was pushed into his limousine and immediately taken away to safety. However, three personswerehit. We believe they are two Secret Service agents and the president’s press secretary, James Brady.

Tanner said, “How many presidents were assassinated?”