This is the Part Where You Laugh (12 page)

When I get home, I stash my bike behind the shed. Walk up on the back porch and stop. Grandpa's pipe, the old briarroot he loves, is on the glass table. I pick it up. Smell it. Smell the burnt marijuana, the ash. I walk down to the edge of the lake.

I hold the pipe in my hand, dark-wood bowl, black stem, little white cloverleaf imprint in the middle. I snap the stem off, try to break each piece again but both the bowl and the stem are solid. My hands slip. I reach down and pick up a large pebble. Jam the pebble into the bottom of the bowl. Then I lay the stem on a wide rock and smash it into tiny pieces using another rock. Dump those off and grind the pieces into the dirt. Then I pick up the bowl, the pebble stuck in its mouth, and throw it in the lake.

I look over at my tent and see two pages pinned underneath a rock, the white paper reflecting the early moonlight.

Mathilde Kschessinskaya, I've watched you from the front row at the Imperial Ballet, looking up your tutu as you rise on pointe, your calves flexing and your feet arching downward like commas on the sentence of the stage.

You became
prima ballerina assoluta
even though the maestro Petipa didn't like you and called you “that nasty little swine.” He was afraid of you, afraid of how you could use your body. And you used your body like a goddess from an unknown religion. But I am not afraid of you.

I will build a stage of marble, smooth and straight, underneath the naked sky, and we will dance without clothes when it rains. I will watch your muscles ripple over your bones, your thin ballerina's body a perfect match for the long muscles of an NBA two-guard. I will guard you.

I know that you created scandals and rumors by passing back and forth between two dukes of the Romanov family, that you held Nicholas II in the palm of your hand, but you will stay with me from now on and never be traded again.

Your rivals mean nothing to me. Anna Pavlova, long limbed and ethereal-looking, a crowd favorite, will drink a concoction of lime juice and Ex-Lax before her next show, and she will lose control of her bowels onstage. And Preobrajenskaya won't be given another premier role either. Her pointe shoes will always be missing, her costumes torn before she walks onstage, the hair on one side of her head shaved off in her sleep. You will hear your rivals weeping after every show, asking, “Will I ever star again?”

The answer is no. Not again. Because of me.

When you decide to quit dancing, you will ask me to move to France with you, and I will agree. We will rent an artist's studio on the east side and live off bread and cheese and vegetables grown in our window boxes.

In the afternoon, you ask me to suckle your neck on a riverboat heading up the Seine. You lay back on the prow, your skeletal body arched as I put my lips to your throat.

In the evening, you will sit at a café barefoot, begging me to tickle the thick calluses on your gnarled feet, feet that will never recover from your years of dancing. I will pour water over the thickened twists of your toes, watch the drops fall from the yellow of your fungus-covered toenails.

The next afternoon, I arrive at Natalie's dock in the canoe, gliding to catch the edge.

She says, “Hey there.”

I'd seen her from across the lake, paddled hard. I say, “Hey back.”

As I tie the bowline, I try to think of something funny to say. I want Natalie to kiss me again, but I don't know how to start a new conversation after what happened. In the end I don't say anything.

Natalie frowns. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was thinking about something.”

“Your face looked so serious. What were you thinking?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Do you have a bike?”

“A bike? Yeah.”

“All right. Then do you want to go jump off Knickerbocker Bridge with me?”

“Knickerbocker? I can't remember, is that a tall bridge?”

“Not too tall,” I say. “Maybe 35 feet?”

Natalie folds the corner of the page in her book. Sets it down next to her. “What are we jumping into?”

“Water,” I say.

“No shit.” She laughs. “I mean, is it a river, a pond, a lake, a creek…?”

“Oh, right. A river. The Willamette River. The water's deep, and not too cold.”

Natalie nods. “Okay,” she says. “Let's do it.”

“Yeah?”

She stands up and dusts off the back of her shorts. “Yeah, that sounds like fun.”

“Okay. I'll paddle back to my tent and get my bike. You get your bike. If you ride south on Gilham while I ride east, we'll meet at the skate park. Sound good?”

When I get to the skate park, Natalie isn't there yet, so I wait and watch the kids skate. Most of them aren't any good, but one kid is, and I watch him do nollie kick-flip tricks on the tabletop and think about how much he must've worked to get those tricks down. I've always liked watching anyone who had to work to learn a skill. That's why YouTube sucks me in sometimes. I couldn't care less about kitten videos or the newest celebrity video of whatever it is that celebrities do, but I'll watch a snowboarder or a BMX biker who's dialed a new gap trick even though I've never ridden a snowboard or done a BMX trick in my life. I'll sometimes watch the same video over and over, just thinking about how many times he messed up before he got it down. That's what I think about when I watch skaters too. They have hundreds of attempts behind every successful stick. It's a lot like watching Michael Jordan hit a double-clutch reverse layin so smooth and perfect, and people say stupid things like “It's because he was such a natural athlete.” But I know better. It's because he worked harder than other people were willing to work.

I'm thinking about all of that, and I don't notice when Natalie rides up. She puts her arms around me from behind and hugs me. “You okay today?” she says.

I like her hugging me, so I don't say anything other than “Yeah.” I keep watching the kid skating in front of us.

I don't know if Natalie understands how hard nollie kick-flips are because she doesn't say anything while the kid's skating, but she keeps hugging me and that's good enough. When I turn around, she kisses me, one long kiss, and her lips taste like mint ChapStick again, and I feel the tip of her tongue and I want to kiss her like that all day long in the sun.

She pulls back and raises her aviator sunglasses, her green eyes wide. “Ready?”

I nod. “Yep.”

I'm riding in front, leading, and I look back at Natalie and she's wearing a white tank top over a black bikini and the straps are thin and there's so much tan skin to admire, and I wish that I could ride behind her so I could look at her as much as I want to.

I smile back at her and pedal a little faster. She has her knee brace on her one leg, but it doesn't seem to slow her down. She rides fast on her 27-speed white Surly, and I like seeing her big fat smile every time I look back.

We ride along the river on the north bank, through Alton Baker Park, then down past the cottonwood grove at the footbridge. From there, the bike path winds along the field, the old landfill with the methane pipes sticking up every hundred feet, and I think about all of the homeless camps across the river, the big one behind the low-head dam, the dam's angled cement graffitied in yellows, purples, and silvers, and how my mom lived there one summer. That was when I was 10, the first time I stayed with my grandma, and I thought the house on the lake was magical, the food in the refrigerator more than I could imagine. I remember going into the kitchen even when I was full, right after breakfast or lunch or dinner, and just opening up the fridge door and staring at all of the food lit up on the shelves. I would tell myself,
I'm gonna eat that, then I'm gonna eat that, then after I finish, I'm gonna eat that and that and that until I'm so full that I feel sick.
Then I'd open the freezer and look at the ice cream.

Knickerbocker Bridge straddles the river just down from the I-5 bridge near the edge of town. On the southeast side of the bridge, the water underneath is a smooth green channel, deep and fast. The wooden railing is gouged and carved, marked with names, dates, and arrows showing where people jumped from. There's a TR,with a wide arrow next to it, and that's my jumping spot. I've never hit the bottom from there.

I say, “The police put up a
NO JUMPING
sign three times one year, but the sign was stolen every time.”

Natalie says, “Can you get arrested for jumping, or is it just a fine?”

“I don't know.”

She takes off her sunglasses. Wriggles out of her jean shorts. “Then we better jump quick.”

There are some guys drinking at that end of the bridge, a little down from us. Each one's holding a 40 of Olde E or Steel Reserve, swigging and laughing. One of them walks up, sets his bottle down on the cement, climbs over the rail, and holds on, facing me and Natalie. He has his back to the river below. He lets go and leans back, rolls through a slow backflip, and hits the water feetfirst. His friends cheer and hold up their 40s.

Natalie says, “Damn, that was smooth.” She pulls her tank top over her head. Unties and reties her bikini top. Adjusts the straps on her knee brace.

She climbs up on the rail. “Are you coming or what?” She stands there for a second, balancing, putting her arms out wide to steady herself.

“You're gonna jump from the top of the rail? It's 35 feet from there.”

She says, “Then I better not think about it,” and jumps. Her body arcs out into the space above the water. She falls. Pulls her feet up a little before she hits and I hear the slaps of the bottoms of her feet before she splashes into the water.

The boys with the 40s cheer for her. Lean over the rail and yell, “Yeah, girl!” and “You killed it!”

I wait for her to come back to the surface. When she does, I yell, “Are you good?”

“Yeah,” she laughs. Slides under the water again and comes back up. “Nothing going on here. Just a little bit of a loose bikini.”

The 40s boys cheer again when she says that.

She treads water below us and reties the strap behind her neck.

When Natalie gets back on top of the bridge, I say, “That was awesome. You didn't hesitate at all.”

“Well, if you hesitate, you'll panic, and you might never go.” She tilts her head to the side and pounds water out of her ear. She grabs my face with her cold hands and kisses me. Her nose drips onto my nose. “Your turn,” she says.

I want to impress her, and there's only one way to do it. I kick off my shoes and climb up on the rail. Stand there for a second, then turn around.

Natalie says, “What are you doing?”

“Backflip from the top of the rail.”

“From up there? I don't know about that.” Natalie scrunches her nose. Squints one eye closed.

I say, “I've got this.”

I've done flips off people's diving boards, off small rocks into the river, off a log that hangs about 15 feet over the McKenzie, but I've never done a backflip off anything high, nothing like a bridge, and I have no idea how to land a flip from this height. Inside I'm terrified, but I make my face into a calm smile. Relax my shoulders.

The 40s boys walk up while I'm standing on the rail, my back to the water. The one who did the flip earlier says, “Get it, man. Go get it.”

I can't hesitate because I know I'll chicken out if I do.

Natalie says, “Please be careful.”

And that makes me smile for real. I know I've impressed her if she's scared for me. I put out my arms and lean back. No stopping myself now. I go into the flip and try to rotate slowly, but right away I know I'm going too fast. I tuck my chin and wave my arms, roll through all the way and see the water, too early, keep rolling, and I try to stop my flip but I only manage to twist my body sideways when I do that.

I hit the water flat on my left side, like hitting cement at that angle, and it knocks the wind out of me. I stay under. Let the river current take me, and I keep my eyes closed. Wait for the strike of pain to ease up, for the tightness in my body to loosen like it usually does when I hurt myself, but it doesn't, or not much anyway. My body stays tight, even when I come to the surface.

I'm downstream. Natalie's yelling something off the bridge. I go under again and come back up. My left arm is stung. Won't work. I use my right arm to paddle.

Natalie yells, “Are you okay?”

I look up and see all of the 40s boys and Natalie hanging over the west-side bridge rail, watching me float downstream. I try to yell back, to say that I'm fine, but I'm still gasping for breath. I make a thumbs-up sign with my good arm. Hold it for a second, then try to swim. But I can't swim correctly. I cripple-swim to the side using my right arm only, kicking my feet and gasping for air. My chest feels like it's supporting a large rock, like I'm lying flat and the rock's crushing me.

I make it to some rocks at the side of the river. Moss covered. I drag myself up. Breathe. Try to calm my breathing. Open and close my numb left hand. My arm feels the way it did last winter when I ran through a screen in a basketball game and hit the other team's center at a full sprint. He was 260 pounds, and I jammed my shoulder so hard I got a stinger.

I hold my left side and stumble up the bank of the river, over the mossy rocks and through the blackberries that hang above the water, scratching my legs and arms. I roll my neck and shoulder to loosen them up, to get the nerves going again. When I get to the dirt underside of the bridge, I put my hands on my knees and breathe, try to relax and get strong again before I have to face Natalie and the 40s boys.

But Natalie runs down the dirt path and meets me under the bridge. “Oh shit, Travis, are you okay?”

I straighten up when I see her. Say, “Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine.”

“That looked horrible. Are you hurt?”

“No,” I say, “it wasn't that bad. I just over-rotated a little.”

Natalie starts to hug me, then pulls back and looks me over.

“Really,” I say, “I'm fine. Let's just walk back up.”

She leads me and I hold her hand with my good arm. We weave through the blackberry bushes, up the trail. Past broken glass and an old sweatshirt. One syringe and needle, and a glass cap. Human shit on a newspaper. When we get on top of the bridge, the 40s boys gather around me. “You all right, man? That was crazy.”

I nod. “I'm fine.”

“You need a drink?” One of them holds out his 40. “If you chug the rest of that, it'll take the sting away.”

“No, I think I'm good.”

The one who did the perfect backflip earlier says, “That was crazy, bro. Crazy to do a flip if you don't have the height dialed.”

I nod.

He says, “I dialed 35 feet at a quarry years ago. So it's not hard for me to get it right.”

I smile, but then I cough and a little bit of blood splurts out onto my chin.

“Oh damn.”

Everyone steps back.

“What the…? You're coughing blood, man.”

“Oh my God,” Natalie says. “This is really bad.”

“I'm okay,” I say. I wipe the blood off my chin with the back of my hand.

One of the 40s boys says, “There's a clinic not too far from here. University health center on 13th. There are doctors there.”

“Travis”—Natalie grabs her shorts and tank top—“we're going there now.” She picks up my shoes and lays them out, right and left at my feet. I step into them, bend over slowly, and pull the tongues to get them on. Bending over feels like pushing a steak knife between my ribs.

Natalie says, “It's gonna hurt to bike, but you have to bike fast anyway. We need to get you checked out. Okay?”

“Okay.”

One of the 40s boys turns my bike around for me. “Good luck, man.”

“Thanks.” I get on. Hold the handlebars with my good arm.

“Come on,” Natalie says. She starts to pedal.

My left side hurts so bad I feel like laughing.

Natalie yells back, “Come on, Travis.”

I follow her. We pedal down off the bridge, west along the river, under the train tracks, up onto Franklin Boulevard, and down 13th. We stop in front of the clinic. Natalie clips my lock around both of our bikes. “Come on,” she says. She takes my good hand. Pulls me into the clinic. At the nurse's desk in front, Natalie says, “He's got to be seen at once.”