[Brackets] (5 page)

“You’re not?”

“No,” said Cole. “I know I can’t take these things personally. I barely even thought about the stupid thing. It’s not my fault that I didn’t have UCONN winning.”

“It wasn’t? Whose fault was it?”

A good point
, though he still felt that the events of the day were happening to him, not because of him.

“I blame Tom,” he said, and Nera wholeheartedly agreed.

Lunch arrived. In a
few
cardboard container
s
placed before each of them was more food than Cole had
ever
been served at one time. What added to his embarrassment was that Nera was breaking out chopsticks as he reached for the fork.

“It’s OK,” she
said
sweetly. “You can use the fork on your Chinese food. I won’t necessarily think you’re any less of a man.” Cole briefly considered whether trying to eat fried rice with two sticks would help
prove
his manhood. The fork it was.

They ate in silence for a while, mostly because the rice was very good, partly because Cole was very nervous. Cole began to realize that, although they had worked together for nearly a year, he actually didn’t know that much about her. He knew that she was cool, that she played all the sports that she liked, that she was probably a little smarter than her job, and that she could wolf down a container of lo mein in half the time it took anybody else on the planet. But when he thought further, he began to draw blanks. Nera was the one to break the silence.

“How’s your back doing?”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you hurt your back a few months ago trying to move that desk for Anne Marie?”

“Oh,” Cole said, “that wasn’t anything. I’ve had a bad back for a while.”

“How did you hurt it the first time?”

“Skateboarding. Kind of a freak accident with this
loose
railing in a parking garage. I was in a body cast for a while after my senior year.”

“I didn’t know you were a skater.”

“I haven’t skated since the accident. I got into other stuff, like local bands and stuff.” He took a drink of water, trying to swallow the nervousness. “You like music?”

She finished chewing her mouthful. “I like a little of everything. Pop, hip-hop, some latin, that kind of thing. You’re into rock, right? I know they’re always making you change your radio station.”

“Yeah, I’m not really into dentist office music, but it’s not a battle I can really win with Linda around, you know?”

She laughed and swallowed another bite of rice, almost without chewing. “I know. My mom was always listening to stuff from the seventies. Big Chicago fan. I still can’t hear them without…” She stopped talking without any intention of continuing. Her chewing became much more slow and deliberate. After a long moment, she shrugged off whatever thought was in her head.

“Anyway. Any good local bands? I don’t know much about who’s hot in South Windsor.”

Cole looked at her and debated whether he was brave enough to go back a step in their conversation. He decided not. “Molotov Entrails. It sounds gross, but their drummer is really good.”

She smiled. “You go to any concerts?”

He nodded and took a deep breath. “Actually, I’m going up to a concert tonight at the Dodge Center.”

“You mean HAIR?” she asked enthusiastically.

“Yeah, you know it?”

“Of course I do. I was going to go if I didn’t have to be out of town. I’m so jealous! I mean, I probably wouldn’t have known many of the bands like you would, but it sounded like fun.”

Cole thought about his second ticket and felt a little sick. “So, your plans for the weekend must be really set in stone for you to miss out like that,” he suggested, looking for a ray of hope.

Nera nodded soberly, disappointment among the emotions in her voice. “They are. I don’t come back until Sunday afternoon. But get some good stories to tell me on Monday, OK?”

“Sure,” he said, putting aside his fork. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. “Now, what can you tell me about basketball?”

“Everything,” she replied as she swallowed her last egg roll and began to attempt just that.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

When they arrived back at the office, they were laughing. Cole had never felt better. He thanked Nera for the third time in ten minutes, and she squeezed his arm and returned to her desk. Hopping into his chair with a half-whistle, he caught Tom’s eye.
So is something happening?
Tom asked with his eyebrows. Cole just grinned and called into his voicemail. He hadn’t even heard the first irate UCONN fan when Anne Marie poked her head out of her door.

“Cole,” she called, “can I see you a second?”

He entered the office; she closed the door.

“Cole, while you were out, I noticed that your phone was ringing pretty constantly. Tom told me that you had been getting unusual calls all morning, but I didn’t want to miss any calls from clients, so I answered your phone.”

She paused, as if she didn’t quite know how to go on. “There was a man on the other end who was most definitely not a client. He didn’t say anything at first. I kept saying ‘hello,’ and almost hung up. But then he asked for you by name. I said that you were at lunch and asked if I co
uld leave a message. He said, ‘T
ell him that I know who he is now.’ Then he hung up.”

Cole took this in but didn’t have anything to say about it. “So?”

“So, it was disturbing, Cole. This man sounded…cold. His voice was really just awful.” She shuddered at the recollection. “Have all your calls been like that?”

“No,” Cole assured. “Most of them were pretty harmless. Crazy, but not, you know.”

“Well,” said Anne Marie, still concerned, “I want you to let me know if you get any more calls that could be threatening. If we need to call the police, we can certainly do that.”

Cole stood up. He was ready for his boss to stop giving him her undivided attention. “Thanks, Anne Marie, but I’m sure this will all be over by Monday.”

Anne Marie looked up like she had failed to get her point across. “Fine, just be careful. The criminally insane have already cost our office once this week.”

“Right,” he said, starting to leave.

“Oh, and Cole?” Cole looked back. “Feel free to hang up on
anyone you want today.”

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

That night, the festival was packed and the amps were loud. He had given his extra ticket to the only high school friend he still talked to. Within an hour, that friend
had
found a girl and Cole
never saw him
again. He stayed a while longer, but although the music was as good as he’d anticipated, he found his interest waning.
T
he experience just wasn’t what it could have been. He felt tired and left early.

The drive home was quick. Not much traffic, very few stop lights. Cole watched the houses go by, with snow-covered lawns and gleams of ice on the sidewalks. His usual practice was to drive while soaking in a healthy wash of electric guitar from his custom stereo. That night, he just turned it off.

The entrance to his apartment complex was a left turn up an incline, past a stretch of lawn and hedges. In the yellow lights of the street, he couldn’t see that one of the sprinkler heads had burst earlier in the day, spewing a flow of
now-frozen
water across the
driveway
.

Making his left turn quickly, Cole zipped up the incline. The front wheel hit the ice patch and skidded, bucking the car sideways so that the left wheel knocked into the curb. He spun the wheel left, then right, trying to get the car under control before reaching the parking lot. When the car finally stopped, he was at an angle in the lot, with the front bumper six inches from the back end of an expensive-looking coup.

He sat for a minute, hands clenching the steering wheel, replaying the event.
What just happened
?

After checking himself once over for good measure, he eased carefully into a parking spot near his door and got out gingerly. No back pain, no
spinal
twinges. Safe.

“Excuse me?” a voice said behind him. Cole turned around and saw a figure, about twenty feet away from the stairs, standing rigid in a hooded sweatshirt. The man was massive and heavy, like a weightlifter. He had glasses that reflected the yellow lights over the parking lot, but most of his face was obscured by shadow under the hood. The figure was perfectly still, both hands deep in his pocket
s
. Cole began digging for his keys uncomfortably.

“Yeah?” he asked back.

“Do you live here? I was looking around at apartments and was wondering if this would be a great place to live.” The words were spoken slowly, as if there were no rush to get his meaning across.

“Sure, it’s fine, for what it is.” Cole found his key and used it.

“I see,” the figure stated, still unmoving. Cole turned again as he waited for
more
. It came, after an irrational silence.

“And the inside?”

Um, weird
. “It’s fine
. I’m going to…”

“It looks nice. Like a nice place to set up. To plan for the future. Is it nice?”

Cole opened the screen door. “Yeah, real nice. Look, it’s really cold outside. I’m going in now. Good luck with the apartment hunt.”

“Yes, yes it is cold,” said the figure. “But you never know. It could get warm real soon.”

Cole took one more look back. “Sure,” he said, and quickly closed and locked the door behind him. By the time he’d unzipped his jacket and peeked through the front blinds, the figure was gone.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

The next morning, when he left his apartment, something fell to the ground. It was a piece of paper with a typed message on it. A poem.

As the stone rolls forth

From David’s arm,

The giant’s reach will

Cease from harm,

And bracket’s glory

Will lose its charm

For one man’s blood is

Earth’s alarm.

-Ichabod will come-

[
East Division
: Elite Eight]

[Sunday, March 29]

Cole took three phone calls from his bed on Sunday morning. The first was from Deborah Cheney, who couldn’t help but notice that his bracket was still perfect halfway through the Elite Eight. To congratulate him, and as a human interest element to their Annual Spring Fundraiser that night, he was invited to meet the entire station as a guest of honor at the Player Pier in Hartford. He really, really didn’t want to go. But he didn’t think guests of honor could turn down invitations, so he said yes.

The second call was from Nera, who was very excited to hear about Cole’s invitation. With a surge of hope, Cole suggested that he could really use some familiar company to help him avoid March Madness faux pas. Nera laughed and said it was too late for that, but she’d be there anyway.

The third call was a wrong number.

In none of those conversations did a large man in a hooded sweatshirt come up.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

The Player Pier, said to be the best sports bar in a city without any professional sports, stood expansively on manicured grounds overlooking the Connecticut River. The river, along with everything else, was half-frozen that night. The lights from the small group of skyscrapers to the east were reflected darkly in the water. It was a stark
contrast to the vibrant, audibly throbbing
, neon mayhem inside the Pier.

Cole stood in the parking lot outside, looking at the building and watching people hurry to get out of the cold. He preferred freezing to going inside just yet. It was one thing to go into a concert, where he could lose himself in the anonymity of big noise and flashing lights. It was another to be a sideshow in celebration of a sport that he didn’t really understand. There was no way that he was going in alone.

He recognized the blue Jetta as soon as it pulled into the lot, and he walked over to meet the car where it stopped. Nera stepped
out and gave him an unexpected hug.

“Hi!” she squeezed. “I’m so excited! This is the weirdest thing. My parents don’t even understand what’s going on. Who would have guessed that you’d be a celebrity?”

“It’s not a big deal.” Cole downplayed. “I’m actually hoping I’ll lose a game tonight, then we can steal as many wings as we can and life can get back to normal.”