Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach

periods I’d been beside myself with jealousy, and Linsey felt it: Emily had given her attention to Mark Nussbaum, put her hands on him, anger all for him. I had to calm down so Linsey would, had to put Emily out of my mind.
    Which worked. And class proceeded.
    After, Emily was at the door as Linsey and I shuffled out at the back of the pack, her eyes blazing for me, for me alone, her long braid pulled over her shoulder, raveled in her hands. She dropped it to give me a short hug, said, “I want to say. You were so great. You just walked away. All that power and you chose not to use it!”
    Linsey heard the same thing in her voice that I heard: he honked and spun around on his heels. “Schist!” he said, which we all knew meant kiss.
    â€œOh, Linsey, shut the fuck up,” said Emily.
    â€œSchist,” he said again, delighted, demonstrating a proper pucker.
    Without thinking it through, without thinking at all (and using a straight-arm to hold Linsey back from the girl), I said, “You know how you told me you wanted to meet Linsey’s mom?”
    And I invited Emily to the Yale game, a lot of stammering and extra phrases in explanation: “. . . Coach Keshevsky gave me tickets and . . .”
    â€œYes,” she said cutting me off. “Yes, yes, yes.” For access to the dancer, Emily would brave even the most medieval fare, and Linsey’s slobber, too. She bumped against me quickly in lieu of a hug, brushed past the famous boy, and bounded off to French class, or whatever came next.
    D AD WENT MISSING four nights, his record, and Mom had had it. Downstairs I heard her on the phone with Missy Stratton, her great divorced friend, what sounded from our end like advice on lawyers. But Dad returned the night before the Yale–Princeton game, all abashed and chastened and bearing the oddest possible gift, a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder, no case, several boxes of blank 3M tape. “You can record anything,” he said cheerfully. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the little Dolus Investments logo stamped into the metal of the frame.
    â€œMust have been heavy to carry all this way,” my mother said, skeptical.
    â€œIt has a handle,” said Dad. Th eir making up was as subtle as their fights were severe.
    But Mom didn’t miss much. “Nick, where’s the car?”
    â€œStolen,” said Dad simply. And then a lot else, a mudslide of words, the upshot being that the Blue ’Bu had been taken from Westport Station, where in his angry discombobulation those several nights before he’d managed to leave the keys in the ignition, all his own fault. “Not to worry,” he said, “ Th e good men of the Westport Police Department are on the case.”
    I imitated Freddy, his gravelly tones: “ Th e police aren’t always up to the job.”
    Dad tried a smile.
    My mother didn’t like my having private jokes with Dad, shut me down with a look. “And now, Nick, the truth: where have you been?”
    He looked offended. “Holed up in my office, lonely as an astronaut. But I caught up on a lot of things and singlehandedly untied some of the knots the company was in with that Tetron thing and, tell you what? I’m back on Mr. Perdhomme’s good side.”
    â€œRaise in the offing,” Mom said tartly, but with a delicate glimmer of forgiveness that allowed me to breathe.
    Dad, too. He said he understood why we’d given his ticket to the Yale game away. Why, it was his own fault. “Great that your Negress can attend!”
    â€œNicholas!” my mother said.
    â€œAnd who’s the other?” he said.
    Everyone counting tickets.
    â€œFriend of Kate’s,” I said. No need to bring in the dancer.
    â€œFriend of Kate’s,” Mom repeated with relief.
    I was in a raft heading down the Niagara River, deafening roar ahead, no way to steer to the banks. Dad tried hard to seem he didn’t care