Free Going Home Again by Dennis Bock Page A

them explained how they roamed around the opponent’s half of the field waiting to pounce, always pressing. They were predators, he said. It was instinct, nothing thought out, nothing verbal. You exploited the moment. At any instant each knew where the other two were on the field. That night it looked like they had that same nonverbal communication going on. The hotel room was like a playing field, and Bunny was the object of their attack. Without needing to speak or make eye contact, they chucked beers to one another and traded high fives, and when Pete—the dark-haired one who’d explained the magic of the game—took Bunny into the washroom and locked the door, my brother smiled and slid down against the headboard and folded his hands over his chest with a look of great satisfaction on his face, like he himself had just scored the winning goal.
    She went around to each of us that night, and when it was my turn, Bunny grabbed her small leather purse and led me into the bathroom and closed the door behind us. I got out my money and gave it to her. Shecounted it and put it in her purse, then sat on the edge of the tub and opened my fly. I watched the top of her head for as long as I could, then closed my eyes. She didn’t want to embarrass me. Everything happened very fast. When she was through, she slipped the red purse off her shoulder again and took out a paperback copy of
L’Étranger
and started reading. I did myself back up and leaned against the tiled wall and watched her. She might have been waiting for a bus or for a waiter to bring her a burger and plate of fries. I hadn’t needed as much time as my brother or his friends had, though we waited like that for as long as the others had taken. Her checkered black-and-white fingernails looked beautiful and modern against the dull, scuffed cover of her book. She mouthed the words as they came to her and rolled each page softly between her fingertips before turning it.
    Later that night I lay in bed and thought about doing all the things I hadn’t done with Bunny and wanted to do now. I’d wanted to hold my eyes open and look into her eyes when I came, to strip off her clothes and explore her body. But none of that had happened. My mind raced that night. We’d finally gone back out into the main room after enough time had passed, and soon after that I took a cab home.
    My brother had smiled, slapped me on the back and said, “Okay, stud. Go home and get some beauty rest.”
    I told Miles I was thinking about dropping out and going traveling. This was a few weeks after Nate’s visit.
    “Why would you do that?” he said.
    “I don’t know. I guess I’m just bored.”
    We were sitting at one of those old beer halls with great big round tables that seat twenty or twenty-five people. It was loud, everyone talking and laughing. I think midterms might have been winding down just then. Students were out celebrating, getting drunk and looking for sex. MTV videos were blaring on a big screen at one end of the room, and we were forced to raise our voices to hear each other.
    “Okay,” he said. “So what’s stopping you?”
    “That’s the weird part. I can’t think of anything.”
    “What’s even weirder is if you stuck it out here just to get some stupid piece of paper with your name on it.”
    He was right.
    I went to the Office of the Registrar after a few days of debating this and gave notice that I was dropping my courses. When they told me I’d be entitled to a refund for the spring term, I decided to put that money toward my plane ticket.
    That night I told my roommate Stevens what I had in mind. He had a friend who’d just moved out of his girlfriend’s apartment and needed a place, so my moving out wasn’t a problem, and I was welcome to leave as soon as I wanted. The next day I cleared out my things, got my rent deposit back and moved in with Miles and Holly. Four days later I bought my ticket to Athens. It was a cold afternoon, the temperature