The World Played Chess (64)

“One of you said something,” he said to all of us.

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “I let you walk in.”

“What do you mean let me?”

“You saw it. Don’t pull this bullshit.”

“Bullshit?” the guy said and took a step forward.

I held my ground, and my gaze. His eyes were not pinpoints of black or laser focused. This guy was bluffing. “Yeah. Bullshit. Don’t make up shit to impress your girlfriend.”

He glared at me, but he didn’t throw a punch. He turned to my friends. “Then one of you said something.” They looked equally confused.

“Nobody said anything,” Mif said.

The guy looked in the car. “Kelly, which one was it?”

The girlfriend got out of the car and came around the back. “Him.” She pointed at Billy.

“I didn’t say anything,” Billy said.

“Are you calling my girlfriend a liar?”

“Call her what you want. I didn’t say anything.”

“Either you admit it and apologize or we’re going to go at it right here.”

I had been working hard, swinging sledgehammers, carrying lumber and hundred-pound bags of cement and grout. I still didn’t touch 170 pounds, but I was in good shape and as strong as I had ever been. Maybe that’s what encouraged me to say what I did. Maybe it was just the male hubris I had learned that summer from Todd and William. Maybe it was my realization that the guy was bluffing, because I had seen a guy truly prepared for a fight.

“There’s four of us,” I said, volunteering my friends. “We’d kill you.”

The guy stepped to me and slid off his jacket, throwing it on the hood of the car. “Yeah? One at a time. Who wants to go first? You got a big mouth. How about you?”

“You really want to do this?” I asked.

“You just said you’d kill me. Kelly, take the car. Go get Brian and Tim. Tell them where I am and what’s happened. Tell them to bring the guys.” His eyes didn’t change, and I heard the lack of conviction in his voice.

The girlfriend moved to the driver’s side of the car. I hadn’t expected this.

“Hang on,” I said to the girl.

She had a smug smile on her face, Farrah Fawcett beneath the curls. I realized she had put the guy up to this. She was testing him, his feelings for her, and enjoying it. He’d picked the confrontation to impress her, and now he had no way out. His bravado had backed him into this corner. He wasn’t looking to fight. He was looking to save face.

I didn’t care about losing face, and I didn’t want to get punched in mine. I had no doubt Cap, Billy, and Mif would jump in, but then what? Where would the fight take us? Where and how would it end? And what purpose would it serve? I’d have to explain to my mom and dad why I had a black eye, a chipped tooth, or a broken nose. I stood to gain nothing from this confrontation, even if I won.

Just as William described the war in Vietnam.

I’d learned what tough guys really were, and I’d learned about real consequences talking with William that summer about a war we had no business fighting. I wasn’t about to get into a random fight with a guy I had no beef with. I looked to the girlfriend and returned her smug smile.

Then I refocused on the guy. “What do you want?” I asked.

“What?” He seemed surprised by my question.

“What is it you want?”

“I told you. I want you to apologize to her.”

“Okay.” I looked to the girl. “I’m sorry if anyone said anything to you that was offensive. It shouldn’t have happened. I apologize.”

She lost the smile and squinted as if she did not understand English. Then she turned to the little tough guy, who looked equally confused but also relieved.

“Are we good?” I asked him, now ignoring the girlfriend.

He stared at me for a second, then turned to his girlfriend. Her brow furrowed like she was failing to solve a geometry problem. I cut her off before she could talk. “You asked for an apology,” I said to the guy. “I gave her one. I’m not asking her. I’m asking you. Are we good?”

I’d given him control over the situation rather than emasculate him by talking to his girlfriend. If he was smart, he’d understand. After a beat he said, “Yeah. We’re good.”

I turned to my friends. “Let’s go.”

“Brad,” the girl said.

“Get in the car, Kelly.”

I held the bucket seat for Billy to slide in. The tough guy leaned against his car, head turned, watching me. His girlfriend went around to the passenger side and got in, sulking. She slammed the door. I looked at the guy one last time, and I thought of the army recruit William had described to me that summer, the one so easily indoctrinated that he would run into a wall over and over until he knocked himself out. And when he regained consciousness, his superiors would pin a medal to his shirt and he’d wear it with great pride, or maybe frame it and put it on the mantel, and never know that thousands of other guys had the very same medal, for doing the exact same thing, but not one of them had ever succeeded in knocking down that wall.

Tough guy gave me a small nod.

I didn’t return it.

Inside the car, as we drove away, Mif said, “Why’d you shut the car door? We couldn’t get out.”