Playworld by Adam Ross

Author:Adam Ross [Ross, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2025-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

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It was pouring on the day we returned. The cab from LaGuardia Airport smelled like wet wool and cigarettes, and the sky was gray as soot. The windows were opaque with droplets of rain, reflecting everyone’s terrible mood. So little had been said on the flight home. Oren had sat with Mom, I with Dad. We both had window seats, and the entire flight Oren was either staring out his or had his face in his book on cars. He refused to acknowledge me. It had been thus since I’d beaten him, and I wanted to get on my knees and beg his forgiveness, I felt so much shame at my eruption. Because it was a good prank, I thought, credit where credit is due, I wanted to tell him that. Even now, in the cab, as Dad chatted up the driver, a behavior of his that drove us both crazy, Oren sat staring at the wet mess that was Grand Central Parkway.

Back home, Oren immediately left for Matt’s, and Mom and Dad went to their room and shut the door. When I called Cliffnotes to tell him I was back, he said that he was taking his Intellivision console to Tanner’s house. Mr. Potts had just gotten a forty-five-inch TV, and they were going to play Sea Battle on it. Did I want to come?

On the bus ride across town, we watched the rain. It was one of those downpours that seemed to have caught people unawares. Pedestrians ran down the streets with newspapers over their heads. Others, hatless, walked soaked, disconsolately. Lightning flashed, strobe-like, a rare event in March. Thunder clapped.

When we ran into Tanner’s building, Sean the doorman said to us, “Someone shot the president!” He had a small closet off his desk and, on a shelf inside, a tiny black-and-white TV.

“Shot him as in killed him?” Cliff asked.

“Shot as in shot at,” Sean said.

Tanner’s elevator opened onto two apartments, and his parents always left their front door unlocked. In spite of this, Cliff and I made a point to ring the bell before entering. Tanner greeted us topless and in a bathing suit, like he’d just gone swimming. He was as dark as a mug of Ovaltine but his hair, normally brownish blond, was as white as his puka-shell necklace.

“You bleached your hair,” Cliff said.

“Fuck you,” Tanner said. “It was the sun.”

Cliff was laughing. “What’d you use, hydrogen peroxide?”

“Lemon juice and beer.”

“And chemicals,” Cliff said.

“Strictly speaking, citric acid and alcohol are chemicals.” Wanting to change the subject, he took in my pink-streaked nose and shook his head. “I warned you,” he said.

On the Pottses’ new television, Frank Reynolds was reporting live from the ABC newsroom. He was stiff-backed and wooden in his delivery. He had a deep voice like my dad’s, but it was absent human feeling and toneless, though he was clearly shaken: …and shots were fired apparently at President Reagan as he was coming out of the Washington Hilton this afternoon. The president was not hit.

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