The white ball disappears into the blue, purest blue, blue so blue it’s white—blue backgrounds everything; the ball reappears like the moon at midday, a ship out to sea, as it falls back to Earth in the wingspan of one, breathless moment, a breath abstained from by millions of people present and omnipresent, watching on their silver boxes, deflated on their couches, begging for an outcome, when at this point in gravity’s elegant intrusion, one has already been decided:
It’s good.
Roars and ecstasy. A play space the size of two airports covered by a helicopter that will hover up there all day, while below people the size of pixels advance, making the camera mount bounce, trying to keep up with them. Here comes the one they are all watching.
From a rush of white sand lipped by brilliant green, he rises, in a red shirt, flanked on all sides by people. For them, he is so there; for him, they are non-existent. He only needs to get one place: a void the same size as a coin, the color of a shadow orbiting a bending pin that tapers to a shaking flag. The flag is yellow. Yellow checkers the audience. They are the ones roaring. In an instant of set up and stance-assertion, they all stop, watch his next move.
At home my dad has gotten another beer and is opening it without taking his eyes from our convex screen. I am sitting at a diagonal to the screen, seeing the part where glass and image interrupt and warp one another, and it all seems like it could break down but doesn’t. Everything made staticky and elongated. Images seem to change quicker than when viewed front facing, like my dad and brothers are sitting. My dad has offered Alfred a beer and he’s drinking it without looking at it, and is spilling some of it down his chin and chest. My mom, from the kitchen, has stopped asking us what we would like for lunch.
Back on screen: the closer cameras cover the ball’s forward motion, a car navigating invisible architecture the man sculpted for it, unseeable bumpers to carve a path for it to slip. It flips to the architect’s face. He looks unsure of his building. His caddy is watching his master. Everyone is watching HIM.
I don’t get it, and yet somehow, I do. Not the game or the rules or any of the fancy that everyone else seems to root for. It’s the look on the guy’s face that does it for me, because I know that look. It’s a look you can’t fake—not enough time to. It’s the same as an injury, right when it happens, no matter who’s looking: you just can’t cool away pain like that. And it’s the same here. Everyone is rooting for the moment he can turn cool again, when his gambit will have been fulfilled by his proficiency, and he can return to being something larger than all of them, a beacon—no, that’s not it. Not exactly. I watch. Now I’m rooting for him.
Voices tell us, the viewers, what is at stake. These voices are superfluous. We all know what is at stake. It is written in the creases bracketing the man’s twitching mouth, a cavity a different shape than the one he’s aiming for but basically serving the same purpose: let air in.
The sound my dad’s can makes touching down on the coffee table says it’s empty. His hairy arm digs for another. The ball has reached the end of its journey, there can be only one outcome, and now gravity is less inclined to pick favorites; it seems that some other force is at play, more wicked than gravity, more controllable by sheer will of many people focusing their energy on it than even gravity is susceptible to. We all want to see him resolve cool again, to see those frown lines relax into an exalted mask that flaps and howls from the orgasm of sudden victory. But now it is not so certain. Even time seems to be waiting to see what will happen.
The ball has stopped rolling. It crouches over its perfectly tailored canyon, not sure what it wants to do. He knows where he would like to see it go. Maybe this is a different kind of cool, staying so in the zone with what he has put out into the world, as it were his progeny, that he cannot quit on it now, even when doing so might be more fortuitous that continuing to root for it. Whatever will happen.
My dad and brothers curse at our box. The images flit and snap and back and forth quicker for me than for them. It is like I can see into a future they are late to. I feel more powerful than all of them. I think I know what is going to happen.
Just when his mouth looks like it could not be any more agape, a new energy bristles in the blades supporting the dimpled specimen everyone is worshipping to, like in chemistry, change occurs. The ball rolls. This too, eventually, is good.
An explosion of hands making more noise than I thought possible to exist after so much silence. My dad and brothers are jumping. Even my mom has come out to see what all the fuss is about. Did someone win? I am still in my diagonal chair, watching the aftermath on my flashing sliver of bubble. It seems this final impetus has won him the whole thing. A microphone is under him, clearing away obese fans by sheer power of its symbol as a television implement. The fans realize they could be on tv if they take a step back, wave, jump up and down in the shot like my dad and brothers are still doing. I’m trying to hear what he’s saying. I could not tell my family to quiet down. It would be impossible. Who cares what he has to say? The universe is secure again for them. To hear what he has to say would take all the viciousness out of it.
Brooks Harris is a rising senior at DePaul University, studying creative writing. He focuses on poetry and short fiction, and has had his work featured in 14 East Magazine, DAC’s First Issue Zine “New Normal,” and soon in Crook & Folly. He likes riding his bike along the lakefront trail, wearing a helmet.