Horizons Read Free

and I had become quite adept at touching each other unnecessarily. I could tell by the way his hands trembled by the end of each visit and his breathing would shift and become a little ragged. The last time he all but threw me out, urging me away in a voice raspy with suppressed feeling.
    It was during one of my checkups that I decided to ask him out for dinner. I did it on the pretense of gratitude for a job well done. In actuality, I was throwing caution to the wind, and giving in to the impulse once again.
    “You don’t need to take me to dinner, Clark. I didn’t do anything special.”
    “Maybe not, but I’d like to anyway. Come on; let me buy you a meal.”
    “Clark, you don’t have to.” The doc seemed very reluctant, probably in light of all that was going on with us during my follow-up visits, but I persisted, and he finally agreed.
    We drove to Skates on the Bay in his black BMW. You could have eaten off the floor, which said a lot about the man. I wondered if he was this anal about everything else in his life.
    “Tell me something about you,” I asked, after we got settled and the waiter brought our drinks. He was having a frozen margarita, and I had my usual Corona.
    “There’s nothing much to tell. I’m just a simple Midwesterner living out his dream in the Bay Area.” His smile came easily, along with that small dimple that I noticed on the first night we met.
    “Are you some kind of genius?”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “You went to Stanford, didn’t you?”
    “You don’t have to be a genius to go there. I just got lucky.”
    “Oh, come on. You were probably on the fucking honor roll in your school.”
    He laughed, but I was comfortable with it, knowing he was laughing with me and not at me. It was the end of the day, and the shadow on his face was thick, giving him that dangerous look that I found so appealing. His hair fell over his forehead, and he raked it back with his long fingers in an unconscious move. I tried to imagine what that hair would feel like fanned out all over my chest. I was embarrassed by my own thoughts, so I pulled a piece of bread out of the basket and tore it apart.
    “I was a good student,” he said, breaking through my train of thought. “Do you come from a big family?”
    “Oh, yeah,” I replied, “There’s a bunch of us. I’m the runt of a five-son litter.”
    “No kidding.”
    “Yup. I’m the baby of the family, subject to all the indignities of being the youngest.”
    “Such as?”
    “My brothers bullied me constantly, so I learned how to fight at an early age. I also got quite good at running away from them.”
    “Like Forrest Gump.”
    I laughed at his comment, a picture of Tom Hanks running across the football field vivid in my brain.
    A waiter arrived to take our order. “My name is Brad. What can I get you guys?”
    I rattled off my usual: steak, medium rare, and a baked potato, loaded. Jody ordered some kind of fish.
    “Hey,” the waiter said, sticking the pencil behind his ear and getting really animated. “Aren’t you Clark Stevens?”
    I nodded.
    “Dude, I’m a huge fan!”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “I’ve been watching you ever since you started at Cal. Your numbers are outstanding, man.”
    I could feel my cheeks burning up, an embarrassing physical trait I couldn’t seem to outgrow.
    “I heard you broke your arm?”
    I lifted my arm and showed him my cast. “The doc over there patched me up.”
    The waiter turned to Jody. “This kid’s going places, Doc.”
    “So I’ve heard.”
    “I’ll be bringing your food as soon as I can.” He gathered the menus and left.
    Jody took a sip of his drink. “I had no idea you were so famous.”
    “This is Berkeley, Doc. Anyone who likes California Golden Bear football knows me. Outside of this area though, I’m nobody.”
    “I think you’re just being modest.”
    “Let’s not talk about me anymore.”
    “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
    “How come your name is Jody?