Neal Pollack

My face muscles tightened; I felt my lips draw taut. That was a popular ticket for the firm. They always tried to get a big client in there for that one, and they always wanted a show of force. Andy looked away.

“Maybe

”

“I gotta go to the bathroom.”

“Okay. I'’ll clean up.”

I didn'’t enjoy going to the box. I hated it. The chit-chat and bullshit bonhomie with clients or prospects over beers and wings—we were all such regular guys in our luxury suite—while talking business. How to get ready for Y2K. How to open a plant in Mexico. How to find reliable partners in China. Usually the game was background music. Only a few of them could even follow it. Any time one of them said something, it was just rehashed Chris Berman or Dan Pompei.

“What we need are more Grabowskis,” said one west suburban metal bender busy plotting to move a couple of lines to a maquiladora, invoking the word Ditka used to describe blue-collar guys he wanted on his teams.

“You probably got a guy named Grabowski who’ll need a new job soon,” I had replied. It was a joke. That’s what I told my boss the next morning. I was told to consider myself lucky we had kept the business. He left it at that.

I prodded the wrappers and stray French fries onto the tray. I spotted a napkin crumpled under Andy’s chair and reached for it. My shoulder hit the tray, sending my cup tumbling over my back. It hit the floor and sprayed ice across the floor. I swore and started to pick up the cubes. Mama Bear was watching me with a thin smile as I set the last shard on the tray.

I dropped everything in the trash and headed toward the bathroom, wondering what was taking Andy so long. The nut and candy stand by the bathroom was closed. I heard someone yelling. I started to run. I heard words now:

“Favre sucks. Why don’t you get a real team?”

My hands were on the door.

The bathroom reeked of stale whiskey. The fluorescent fixtures cast a nicotine-yellow glow. I looked past the bank of stalls and saw Andy. He was pressed up against the wall near the sink. His eyes were wide and wet. His fingers were spread against the tiles. The only parts of him moving were his carotids, throbbing.

The man standing between us had half a head and fifty pounds on me. A Bears helmet patch was stitched on the back of his army jacket. Wiry black curls sprung from under his knit Bears cap. From the way he rocked in his heavy boots, I was sure he was the source of the whiskey odor. Then he started slurring.

“What, are you going to start crying now, you little pussy?” He stuck his gloved hand at Andy. “That faggot Favre likes to cry.”

And then the man’s body tensed as if to take a step toward Andy. And maybe he did, I can’t be sure. I don’t remember it clearly. I remember what happened next as a fragmented sequence of impressions.

My hands against the man’s back. His headlong fall toward the stall door. The door opening as his face hit it. The sharp, hard crack. The heavy whumpf on the floor. The door bouncing back and forth several times before settling shut. The man’s boots sticking out from underneath it. Then the smell: sharp, sweet, and sour at once. Like something rotting.

Andy was shivering. I realized we had to get out before someone else walked in. “Andy,” I said. He didn'’t look up from the floor. I said his name again; no answer. Then I saw he was looking at something.

The liquid was black in the yellow light. The first trickle streamed along the grout line on its way to the sink. But it was chased by a faster current moving across the tiles.

“Get over here, Andy.”

He looked at me, looked at the floor, and looked at his shoes.

“Andy, get over here right now. We have to get out of here.”

His eyes repeated their motion. Then he broke for the stall. I hopped over the widening puddle and cut him off. I hugged him and lifted him off the floor. Just as I stretched my leg over the puddle, he kicked the stall door open. I caught a glimpse of the stain the man’s head made on the toilet. I don’t know how much Andy saw.

I set him down at the exit door. “Walk,” I said. “Walk, just fucking walk.”

Mama Bear’s hand was locked on the forearm of her crying daughter. The lines were getting deeper at Wendy’s. A kid was playing the mechanical crane game near the doors, trying to maneuver the claw toward a stuffed rabbit in the corner. No one said a word to us, no one looked at us. No one shouted, “Stop!” We were just two sorry-ass Packers fans scurrying on our way home.