Tom Moran, Assignment the Deuce

We found our seats on the edge of a rainbow riot, children and men trussed up in baseball caps and replica basketball jerseys, toting $6.50 beers and clutching souvenir programs to their breasts. Even never having been to a game before, I could appreciate just how sensational our seats were: five rows back from the players’ bench, square with the painted logo at midcourt. I asked Eric incredulously how much they cost, but he waved me off.

“This is our night,” he said. “Enjoy it.”

I pondered the applicability of the phrase “our night” through an hour of watching a sport I barely understood, seated next to a man who had rapidly begun to mystify me as well. So well-behaved and honorable in front of my family, so respectful of me at home, Eric turned into a frenzied heap of aggregate vitriol as soon as the starting lineups ran onto the court through a cloud of dry-ice fog. I halfheartedly watched the game, but was more observed by the spectacle of my boyfriend progressing through four watery beers by the end of the second quarter. Even in an arena filled with random taunts and deafening snippets of arena rock, Eric had turned grating: when he wasn’t telling players how much the sucked, he leaned on me heavily and explained things like how many points a three-point shot was worth. When he stood up to get a fifth drink, I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back down into the seat. He just needed to loosen up, he said, roughly swatting me away. I punched him the arm, harder than I meant to.

“Loosen up for what?”

But he had gone. Twenty minutes went by while he waited in line, again. I began to think about walking out, taking a bus home, hoping that the next morning I would wake up next to the calm, even-handed man I had been dating for the last four months. The one who had taken me to the Florentine Opera for our second date, who never complained about sitting idly around the mall while I lingered in search of a more flattering dress or the right kind of shampoo. Had the charged environment just taken hold of him? Or was there a side to Eric, loudmouthed, boorish, thoughtless, that had always skulked just below the surface?

I resolved not to stick around to find out. When Eric still hadn’t shown himself by the halftime buzzer, I found my purse and jacket and stood up to leave. I had started to inch my way to the nearest exit when a woman tapped my shoulder and pointed upwards, towards the massive electronic rhombus suspended over midcourt. There, faithfully reproduced on thousands of pixels the size of hamburgers, was Eric. Stunned, I looked down at center court, where Eric stood, alone, atop the giant drawing of a charging stag festooning the floor. He was waving me toward him.

I stood motionless for what seemed like hours, until I felt the woman’s hand on my shoulder again, this time gently urging me down to court level. Dazed, I walked past the fromt-row celebrities, skirted the gaggle of colossi in warm-up suits that cut in front of me at courtside. Everything was in motion: antlike fans all over the arena sidled toward the exits to reach bathrooms or concession lines. Ball boys ran flat brooms over the perimeter of the court. But the referees and the players were still grouped outside their tunnels, not ready yet to take their halftime breaks. Why not? What were they waiting for?

Eric smiled at me, a broad, drunken, nervous grin. He was shaking. I wanted to comfort, question and scold him at the same time, but I had lost the ability to speak. I looked around. Everyone had stopped heading for the exits. Most of them were stopped in the aisles, eyes fixed on the screens above.

Eric dropped to one knee and opened a small, rounded velvet box.

“Holy shit,” I heard myself say. The crowds erupted, and Eric’s grin grew wider, more confident. I suddenly noticing the klatch of cameramen still gathered around the edges of the court. Thousands of men, beer-gutted, balding from sky-high testosterone levels, clad in $120 souvenir jerseys, all convinced that their team would lose if they went to the bathroom before the game ended, sat in living rooms and sports bars nationwide, wondering whether this woman they didn’t know would say yes to this man they didn’t know, hovering with fingers over the remotes to watch the foregone conclusion of happily ever after. My cheeks flushed as my throat, already incapable of speech, dried up completely. When I started to hyperventilate, Eric put his hand on my shoulder. I shoved it off. The crowd roared like I had just fed him to the lions.

I looked down at the scuffed floor, bent over and put my hands on my knees until I breathed normally again. Crash position. Eric leaned in to me, and I could smell his cologne mixed with stale concession-stand lager. “See why I was nervous, honey?” he cracked.

“That’s a hell of a ring,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“Cost me almost as much as the seats.” I didn’t say anything, and a sudden flash of concern crossed his face. “So how about it?”

The crowd, I realized, was now chanting. A chorus of “Say yes” bounced off the rafters above. In the end, I think the fans made my decision for me.

I stood upright and placed my hands above my breasts, composing myself. Then I slowly waved them back and forth, palms down.

“No,” I said firmly. “Not here. And probably not ever.” The last part was drowned out by the crowd, which burst into an ear-shaking cacophony, equal parts riotous laughter, shouts of female empowerment, and peals of misogynistic fury. Eric’s smile melted into an infinitely pitiful look, like a misbehaving cat subjected to a squirt gun, then stared blankly at the rejected ring weighing down his hand.

I had to escape. Across the court, my heels scuffing the wood, I started at a normal pace but lost it when the cameramen inched towards me. I ran, loping up through a section of fresh-faced women in go-go boots and hot pants, finding the nearest exit and exploding, gasping, into the concourse.

I had started to cry, big, brooding tears that eroded my makeup and probably exacerbated the stunned expression on my face. I looked for the nearest ladies’ room, in the process spotting a TV mounted next to the nearest hot-dog booth. There was Eric, another beer (somehow, already) in hand, being escorted off the court by a man in a giant plush deer suit. Eric’s expression had grown, if possible, more dejected, and for a moment I felt sorry for him. For his shortsightedness. For his misdirected sense of spectacle. For being cursed with the supreme arrogance to even try a stunt like this.

Suddenly I started to laugh. It was the mascot that did it, Eric’s quasi-suicidal look paired with a permanent plush grin normally devoted to raising the roof and demanding stingier defense. People in the concourse stared, even ones who had been in the bathroom and missed the entire tragicomedy. I ducked into the ladies room.

Five minutes later, I walked out the other end of the concourse and toward the bus station.

I never found out who won.