PINTA PARADE

The next day I call Dawn Michelle and there is no answer. I wait two more days. I watch the Dream, team massacre Lithuania and Puerto Rico. I watch Shannon Miller get the silver medal and become America’s sweetheart. Kim Zmeskal is compeltely forgotten.I have decided that I want to be in the Olympics in four years.

During at evening run we meet at the golf course with only five of us showing up.  We do the course. I rip, The first mile 5:01. Coach looks at me like I am out of control. I am salivating. I am hungry. It feels like the harder I run the more I can keep Kim Zmeskal from falling off the balance beam of life.

I decimate the workout, Coach is looking at me like I am possessed. He says something about not wanting to peak to early, especially since our first official race isn’t until three weeks away.

“Coach this is the third time I have run today.”

Coach looks back at me with furrowed brow and says the word what followed by a visible question mark. I respond to his query by spitting before taking a deep breath.

I ran five miles this morning than I did hill work in Bradley park this afternoon. This is just a cool down.

Coach seems impressed. He tells me that my body is still growing. He tells me that I am pushing myself to hard.

“Go home and rest, take tomorrow off. When you come back Monday, we’ll talk about a training regime.”

Coach states I shouldn’t be running more than twice daily at this point in the preseason.

I say goodbye to my teammates; I run home, but not before running down Moss avenue, cutting through Bradley campus, doing a two minute sprint down Main and tramping across the hills of Bradley park.  It is late dusk.  It looks like I am viewing the glades through the vernal hue of a dirty 7UP bottle. I run past the Columbus statue.   I do three hill loops. Corn stock is doing a performance of Guys and Dolls.  I run past the chines bridge and the wanna be hipsters carelessly flinging plastic discs at a metallic fountain.

When I arrive home I realize that I have logged close to thirty miles during the day.

I walk in through the doorway where I kissed Dawn all of 78 hours ago.

I don’t hurt at all.

I cut out a picture of Kim Zmeskal from Newsweek and tape it over the desk in my bedroom. I pay no attention to the nylon silhouettes floating across the frame of the window next door. I turn on Depeche Mode. I think about Dawn’s lips.

  I reach the phone and bleep out her number using only my thumb.

There still is no answer.

She is nowhere to be found.

                                                                                          ***

As I sit on my desk performing post-callisthenic stretches a curled shard of paper plops off the side like dropping a petrified piece of confetti down a well.

As I open I realize it is Tina’s number.

Like Stacia she made a little heart steaming from the top of her eyes like a smoke signal on Valentine’s day.

I can’t understand why Dawn Michelle has completely blown me off. I wonder if maybe she was offended that we kissed. That she thought I was trying to cajole her into something else.

I am tempted to call Tina. To see what she is doing. To see if she just wants to hang out and watch a movie or something.

Instead I take my shirt off. I go outside and run one final cool down mile.

The season starts in less than a month.

There still is a long ways to go.

I want to be ready when it convenes.

                                                                                 ***

The next morning I run six miles after my route even though I swore to my coach that I would take it easy. The first two miles I feel like I am competing in the Olympics via the geriatric ward. I start wondering why Dawn hasn’t called or won’t return any of my messages.  I wonder what I did to irk her. I wonder if I crossed some sort of vicarious boundary by kissing her in my front doorway .

I call Patrick up. He says that he just got a new twelve speed and that maybe we can go for a ride later this week.  When I get a hold of Hale all he wants to know is how Dawn’s doing. When I talk to David Best all he wants to talk about is how the Dream Team is the coolest thing since Band camp.

“By the way, I talked with Renae. She really wants you to call her. She really thinks you are funny.”

“Ho-kah,” I say, “What’s her number."

Best gives me her seven digits. I stipulate that this is really weird and all, calling somehow that my best friend aptly named David Best used to go out with.

“You don’t get it man. We’re no longer going out. We’re just friends.”

When I call her number the line is busy. It sounds like patient in a coma just went off life support.

I go back into my room. I perform my stretches. It has been over 100 hours since I last heard form Dawn I pick up the phone and punch out her digits.  There are three listless rings and then a feminine voice picks up.

“Dawn?”

It is her mom. She informs me that Dawn is in class.

"Ho-kay," I say, as I hang up the phone without revealing the syllables of my name.

                                                                             ***

“I was hoping you would stop by.” Tina is smiling. She is looking at me. She is playing with hair, forming a loop with her index finger. She smells like the sun. Her bikini top is a different color then it was the night before. She is wearing gnawed jeans.

She thanks me for stopping by before wielding the screen door open and inviting me inside. The entire house is dank, like old tint. There is a thick waft of Newport cigarettes dangling in chandelier wisps overhead.

“I just need to grab something real quick then we can go out by the pool.”

She reaches into what look like a hollowed out pear-contoured Buddha and grabs a ziplock bag and some sort of pinkie-sized chrome pipe. We walk out back to the pool.

"This is a really nice pool." It is an in ground pool. It is shaped like a lima bean.

“Yeah, me and Celeste pretty much just live out here in the summer.”

I intuit that Celeste was her friend with the black hair who was giggling the first time I saw Tina on the couch. I am looing for a socializing ice breaker to melt. Tina takes a drag out of whatever it is she is smoking, She passes it in my direction. I hold my palms out and refrain.

"You don't get high?"

"I'm sort of an athlete in training."


She takes another drag. She asks me what sport.

"Cross-country. Running is kind of my life. I'm hoping I can be in the Olympics in four years time."

Tina nods and says that I sound ambitious. She takes another hit. Tendrils of pungent smoke kick through her lips. I am still not sure what to say. Tina smells like chlorine and sun tan lotion mingled with the sweltering douse of early August sun.  I am looking down at my shoes because I don't want her to think I am intentionally ogling her cleavage.

I am still looking for words to say.


"I really like your mom. I'm really glad I have he on my route."

Tina looks back startled.

“Oh I’m sorry. Marge is my actually my stepmom. "

"Oh," I inquire about her dad since all I really ever see is Marge. Tina says that they are still married and it’s a long story .

Tina sits down. Her bare feet are thoroughly manicured. They look nothing like Dawn Michelle's bare feet.

"Are you excited about School starting in a couple of weeks. I guess I'll see you around the hallways at Manual."

"I don't go to Manual," She says, taking another hit of whatever it is she is smoking. I ask her if she goes to Notre Dame. She laughs again in a little hiccup."

"No. I go to Central."

       “If you live here why do you go to Central. Why not just go to Manual. You live in Manual's district. Did you get a waiver or something."”

Tina laughs at the word waiver

  “How is it you end up going to Central then?” I ask, in an almost innocuous fashion.

 “I just use my grandmothers address.” Tina says,


   “Oh,” I say, looking down into the laces of my running shoes. Either sweat r dollops of sun tan lotion ski down the precipice of her neck like a limp comet.

"You'd rather go to Central than Manual?" I ask


Tina makes a face that looks like someone just poured vinegar and wet concrete through her marijuana-snickering lips.
    
“Are you kidding?” Tina says, “There’s no way my real mom would let me go there. All the gangs and everything. She's afraid I'd get shot."

"I tell her that It's not that bad. She asks me what year I am. I lie. I say I am a junior. She says that is her same year."

"You must know Jason Sexton then."

I lie and say I do. Tina says its a shame what happened to him. I have no clue what she is talking about. I continue to nod my head and concur.

We talk for fifteen minutes.  We sit on the lip of the pools and kick with our bare feet. I tell her that I'll come back later this week with my bathing suit and we can go swimming.",       

"You don't need a bathing suit," She says. She then laughs. She tells me that she is really glad that I stopped by. She tells me that she want to see me soon.      

As I am walking out the door her friend Celeste  walks in with a beach towel and a boom box. She is next to a kid with a flat top.

"This is Earl," She says. WE shae hands. Earl is African Amercan. He has the whitest smile I have ever seen.

"We're glad you stopped by, you should stay and go swimming." celeste notes, taking a drag off the chrome pipe Tina has handed her.

I tell her that I can't. I tell her I have to meet my friend Tim from down the street.

 

"But we’re your friends now.” Tina is saying. From behind the screen door I can make out her navel. The top of her bikini is two blonde scoops busheled together, knotted in a generous bow behind her back. Her towel is tucked underneath her belly button. When she smiles I see dimples. From behind the screen door, the scent of lotion leaks up and hits my nose


                                                                                              ***

As I leave I saunter into Tim. He has his DC RPG box tucked under his arm as if it were ticking and could go off

"Tim this is crazy, there's like girls everywhere all of a sudden."

Tim looks like he is just entering freshman year even though he is three years older than me.  Last summer I introduced him to Pat and to role-playing and somehow, Pat and Tim has been insufferable ever since even though Tim mostly torches Pat’s character’s in his campaign.

I mean, as I was trying to tell Best, who keeps on insisting that somehow his ex-girlfriend who admittedly is really hot is my soul mate. 

Tim nods his head.

“Plus there’s Dawn Michelle whom I met while I was doing Music man and who is candidly the most well-rad and intelligent human being I have ever met. Half the time I don’t even know what she is saying

Tim is looking at me like he is an old testament prophet.

“What about these other girls?”

 

“Well, there’s this girl named Renae Holiday who goes to Limestone whose my buddy Dave Best ex-girlfriend. She ‘s beautiful as shit It was weird. Dave Best has three way calling and I used to tell Bwest something witty and he would convey to her what I said and then he would click back and state that Renae is laughing out of control even thought I would never hear her voice.”

“So have you met her,” Tim says, stating the words tete-a-tete, which he mispronounces tit-uh-tit.

 “Just once, at the fireworks at Glen oak park. She was wearing a black top and white shorts and sun glasses. She was really hot.”

 Tim shrugs his shoulders and says so. He is wearing sunglasses which make him look like Robocop.

 “Then out of the blue there is this really cute girl who is on my paper route.  She goes to Central but she is using her step moms address or something. She’s hot  as shit. Blonde hair. Always laying out in the sun all day so she smells brand new.”

 "It’ s weird all I was collecting and she just gave me her number out of the blue and when I went over there she seemed excited to see me. "

Tim seems quirt as if he is ruminating. As if he is a Hindi llama and I came to him for sage theosophical advice.

 "But it's mainly about Dawn. I mean I really like that girl. We've gone on two dates now and we've just sort've walked around. She's probably the most intelligent person I have ever met in my life. I really like her. A lot."

Tim says that he knows Dawn from Washington gifted back in Junior high. I refrain from telling Tim that Dawn informed me that, due to his Ritalin.  Tim asks me where Dawn is now.

"I think she's at Bradley, along with everyone else I seem to meet in my life these days she's attending a poetry workshop class." 

Tim says we should walk in that direction. For inexplicable reasons Tim always sounds like a Jedi Knight. We cross Western at the Koffee Shoppe and walk down Moss Avenue, in the direction of Bradley University, away from the bruised mango flares of the setting sun.

                                                                        ***

  When  arrive on Bradley quad I see her seated in a group, outdoors not far from the library.

Her creative writing class is seated in a what looks like a Mayan calendar oval. I walk towards her. She is wearing glasses.  The instructor of the class has auburn hair that is medium length and sprints into her shoulders .

There is a statue on Bradley Campus in front of the library known as the silver vagina, partly because it looks like a vagina, partly because some drunken frat boy got his tongue stuck to it early last November  I walk towards dawn with my glasses off, It feels like I am walking in slow motion . As I get towards the group the instructor with the short shoulder length hair flagellates her arm at me as if she is throwing an invisible boomerang, insinuating that I should shoo.

I walk back towards Tim.

“I think she is in class right now.”

I look back. There books are on their laps.  Even with my glasses off I can swear I see Dawn flashing me a smile.

On second perusal she just looks pee-owed.

                                                                              ***

When I get home I go for a run. An hour later my sister tells me that there is a phone call and that I need to take it upstairs. It is Dawn.

I am expecting her to be pissed only she isn't.

"Hey, she says, "Sorry I've been so elusive. I've been really busy with the poetry class and with speech."

I tell her I'm sorry. I didn't me to be intrusive.

"Listen," She says, "How about we meet tomorrow, for lunch. My treat. campus town."

It has been almost a week since we last circled the loops of Bradley park and Dawn dared me to put my glasses on.

"Yes, " I tell her, "Tomorrow will be fine."