Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen Page A

dangerous eyes,” she tells me, barely above the music.
    â€œMarcia wins the prize!” Scott hollers. “Mr. Wolf. I love it. Mr. Wolf. We’ve got a winner!”
    That’s how I get my nickname. That’s how I meet Marcia . . . and Tammy and Glory and Mona and Jessica. Lamar slips into my head as I keep drinking, surrounded by all this beauty. He tells me to take what I can get because tomorrow everything could change.
    With that thought, and lots of Jack and Coke, I end up on the couch and Marcia ends up in my lap.
    â€œI saw you play on Friday!” she tells me, putting her mouth right on my ear to be heard over the music. She lets her lips rest there when she’s through talking. Her fingers come up to comb my hair out of the way and then her tongue flicks against my lobe. I’m getting way too excited below and I try readjusting my pants but she’s sitting there and no way she can’t feel it.
    â€œI hear ... Mr. Wolf . . . you’re the biggest . . . ,” she says, and her lips travel from my ear to my jaw to my neck. Still kissing me, her fingers come up to trace the long scar running down under my eye. Her other hand reaches down between her legs and lands on the spot where I’m totally hard. “Are you the strongest, too?”
    Throughout the basement bar area people are sloppy drunk and swaying to the music—plebes and varsity starters, cheerleaders and dance line girls. Just before I stop caring about anyone but Marcia, I notice Goldberg handing a drink to Tom Jankowski and Jankowski laughing and rubbing Goldberg’s scabby, bald head like a genie lamp, like they’ve been best friends for life.

13
    DANNY
    H ow’d your meet go today?” Dad asks. He pulls a slice of pizza from the cardboard delivery box resting on his lap. A long string of cheese attaches itself to his mustache. We sit on the couch, watching TV. I pull out a slice of pizza from my own delivery box balanced on my knees and bite into the soggy, hot goodness.
    â€œOkay,” I say. “Bruce scored a personal best on rings and I got best score on high bar. Fisher surprised everyone. He got second-highest score on parallel bars. But we’ve got no depth. Farmington High killed us.”
    â€œAnd why is that?” my dad asks, his eyes not looking at me, but watching the Friday night movie on TV, half listening to what I say. “Why no depth?” His hangdog expression deepens every year. The shadows under his eyes, which I never really noticed until after Mom died, progressively darken from lack of sleep during the week, so that by this time every Friday he looks like someone’s given him two shiners in a fight. I think about answering his question by saying, Well, if you ever came to a meet, you’d know our team has one, maybe two, good scores on each event but that we can’t put up three solid scores on every apparatus and that’s what the judges combine.
    But I don’t say that. My dad has basically worked two full-time jobs ever since Mom died, putting in long hours and also volunteering his time at a free clinic. It’s selfish of me to expect him to stop treating really sick people to make one of my regular meets. He says he’ll go see me in the state meet if I qualify. He won’t come right out and say it, but sports, in his eyes, should be more like a hobby, like chess, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Especially if it gets in the way of grades. That’s why my secret plan to get an athletic scholarship is so important. I play and replay the scenario of a letter arriving one day and me opening it and handing it over to him—an offer for a full-ride scholarship. Then he’ll understand why I spent all that time in the gym, why I pestered him to go to private clubs during the off-season. It won’t be just a dumb hobby when I hand him that letter. It doesn’t matter to me if he can pay for my education. I