Taming the Star Runner

"Let's see your ID."

Travis looked up, startled. Some guy with a beard was glaring down at him.

Travis searched his pockets.

"Uh, I guess I lost it. Maybe in the john. I'll go see--"

The guy hauled him up by his jacket and shoved him toward the door.

The crowd had thinned out quite a bit, and Travis wondered what time it was.

"Gary, did you let this kid in here?"

They paused by the doorman.

"Hell, no."

Gary followed them outside. Travis assumed he was kicked out and was ready to go anyway, but the guy still had a grip on his jacket.

"He didn't come up through the drainpipes. How'd you get in here?" He shook Travis like a stray cat.

"Oh, you know, I walked--"

"You didn't walk by me, man," Gary said.

"Who sold you drinks?"

This is getting real boring, Travis thought.

"Look, I'm new in town, I didn't know what your drinking age is."

"It sure as hell ain't fifteen, man."

"I could lose my license over this, dammit! You know what kind of money I put in this place? What kind of money I borrowed to put in this place?"

He was shouting at Gary but shaking Travis, who was having a hard time standing up anyway.

"Who sold you drinks?"

"Nobody, really man, I brought my own..." He searched through his jacket, then vaguely remembered he'd left the empty Coke bottle on a table.

"Look, nothing's happened--" Gary began.

"Something's happened all right--you're fired."

He finally let go of Travis and stormed back into the club. Gary and Travis stared at each other.

"And you're dead meat," Gary said, and slugged him. Travis went down on his butt, then flipped backward and cracked his head on the parking lot.

It had been too long since he'd been in a fight, he decided. He'd forgotten how much it hurt to get punched.

"Get me fired, will you? I needed this job--"

Travis rolled to avoid getting kicked, got to his feet, and flew into Gary with a couple of swift jabs. He had the satisfaction of seeing both surprise and blood before getting knocked on his ass again. This time he wasn't fast enough to miss getting kicked.

If I wasn't drunk I could take him, he thought. Then: God, don't let me be killed before my book's published.

The owner came back out and pulled Gary away.

Travis lay there and listened to them yelling at each other.

At least it wasn't my nose, Travis thought, curled up around his cracked ribs like a worm on a stick. He coulda really ruined my face.

It was a while before he felt like moving. For one thing, he wanted to make sure both those guys were gone. He thought they were, then heard their voices again.

"Okay, okay, you're not fired. But you know what I did, man. I put my house on the line for this place. My goddamn house."

"I didn't let that kid in. Mike shoulda spotted him."

"They say they never spotted him."

"It was a packed house, man."

"Yeah, we pulled in the big bucks ... Sherry might have seen him. She says not, though. I coulda lost my house."

Travis listened, not moving, not calling attention to himself. He decided that all those years of writing, all that last year of working on the book, clobbering Stan, it was all a predictable chain of events leading up to this guy losing his house.

This is so totally weird, man, he thought. His face felt sticky. He hoped it was blood and not motor oil.

"And did you have to beat the kid up? Look at him. What if the cops come by?"

They were closer now.

"He had it comin'!"

"Okay." The owner was squatting down beside him. "Where do you live?"

"Cleveland," Travis muttered.

"Then forget me calling a cab."

"No." Travis rolled himself into a scrunched sitting position, huddling in his jacket. "Could you call my uncle?"

"Geez, Gary, you really whopped up on him."

"He had it comin'."

"I'm okay. Could you call my uncle?"

Travis was really tired of this scene. He dreaded the coming hangover.

When the owner left to call Ken, Gary kicked him again. "You had it comin'."

Travis didn't even feel it.

I sold my book. He clutched at the thought like a drowning man at a raft. He wanted to be somewhere quiet to think about it.

It wasn't on the ride home. He had never seen Ken this mad. The only thing saving him was Christopher sleeping in his car seat--Ken had to keep it down a little. Travis had forgotten Christopher was going to be at the ranch this weekend.

Ken pulled up at the back door. He paused for the first time since Travis had staggered into the car.

"Well."

"Well what?" Travis winced as he popped the door open.

"You have anything to say?"

"Yeah, I sure am glad I didn't have to listen to all that sober."

For a second Travis felt a stab of fear at the look on Ken's face. But somehow he came up with the bravado he'd faced the cops with.

"Chill out, man," he said. "It's my life."

He and Ken stared at each other in the white glare of the car's interior light. Travis waited, shivering, though he wasn't cold...

"I used to say that," Ken said. There wasn't any irony in his voice at all, only a half-laughing wonder. "I remember saying that."

Later, watching the room spin, wishing he could throw up, Travis felt strangely comforted. It was really weird, but ever since Ken yelled at him, he hadn't seemed so lonesome anymore.

Chapter 6

His head felt like it was going to pulsate wide open, like a special effect in a horror movie. It was the price you had to pay for the party, he told himself, as he had many times before. You don't get something for nothing. But since the "something" seemed to be a swollen jaw, sore ribs, and a vague memory of talking to some girls, the price seemed a little steep.

Especially since Ken was still on his back. Travis sipped his orange juice and chewed his toast in silence, listening to Ken, thinking: Just as long as he doesn't kick me out...

"I've got enough worries without chasing around after some drunk kid in the middle of the night."

"Look, man, I'm sorry they woke you up, I just couldn't think of who else to call."

"They didn't wake me up. I was already awake--wondering where the hell you were, what the hell you were doing, and asking myself why the hell had I let myself in for this."

"Why did you?" Travis asked. He'd started out with good intentions, but he was ready to chuck them. "And no more of this irony bullshit."

Ken looked slightly surprised that he knew the word irony. Then he sat down on the bar-stool across the island table...

Finally he said, "The last time I saw Tim, we had a big fight. I guess you've figured out we didn't see eye to eye on the war. And the last thing I said to him was 'I hope you get blown right out of the sky, you fascist baby killer.'

"I wake up sometimes hearing those words. That's why you're here. And that's probably why you can still stay."

He picked up his coffee cup and left for the den.

Travis sat there. It was really weird, how he'd think he knew how he felt about things, then suddenly there'd be a sharp turn, and he'd end up in a place he wasn't expecting. Like his feelings were a bumper car, he'd have a grip on the steering wheel, and it still didn't go in the direction he'd thought it would.

It was raining. Casey wouldn't be giving lessons today. Maybe he'd go down to the barn later.

He poured himself another cup of coffee and went to the den.

Ken had Christopher on his lap, watching He-Man cartoons.

"Hey, I know what," Travis said. "You can ground me."

Ken smiled in spite of himself. Christopher wiggled off his lap to act out the cartoon, waving an imaginary sword at the villains.

"You

know," Ken said, "one of the reasons I'm glad I waited so long to have a kid is, by the time he's a teenager, hopefully, I'll be too senile to care what he's doing. And, hopefully, I'll have forgotten what it's like to be one. Its been spooky enough, hearing myself say things to Chris that my parents said to me. Now I'm hearing things from you I remember saying. 'It's my life'--God, I remember that. And it doesn't seem so long ago either."

He absentmindedly switched channels. Bugs Bunny was blowing up Daffy Duck. Chris screamed in protest. "No more He-Man," Ken said. "Too violent."

The commercial seemed to appease Christopher immediately. "I want one of those," he said.

"In fact," Ken said to Travis, "I remember what it was like so vividly I feel like Achilles, in the Iliad, coming back from the land of the dead, like I've come back to tell you what it's like in the land of grown-ups."

"Not the Iliad," Travis said absently. The coffee was chewing a hole in his stomach. "The next one, where what's-his-name is trying to get home."

"My God," Ken said, slightly thunderstruck, "you're literate!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm real literate." Travis finally remembered what it was that had caused this whole thing. "That's why I had to celebrate last night. I sold my book."

"What book?"