If the 1960s ended at Kent State, McNab thought, the 70s—the decade when he grew his hair long and smoked his first few hundred packs of cigarettes—ended at Flushing Meadow, Queens. It happened there, Sunday September 13, 1981: the U.S. Open tennis final in which McEnroe bounced McNab’s idol, Bjorn Borg, off the court.    

Even at the time, watching on his small black and white TV while taking numbing hits off his bong, McNab could tell something was wrong. The usually unflappable Borg looked rattled, and during the final set he didn’t seem to be even trying. Watching the dashing Swede behave like he wanted to be anywhere except a tennis court felt eerie, as if time was out of whack. When the drubbing was over Borg refused to be part of the post-match awards ceremony. Instead, he walked off the court, shoulders slumped, a diminished man who had had the life sucked out of him. McNab had sat there, stunned. He sensed in the dispiriting spectacle that everything was about to change, that they were going to take away his way of life. 

And they did.

​

                                                                                                         ---

​

Twenty years later McNab, a public relations executive, was standing outdoors in the cold, lighting a cigarette. He hadn’t been smoking much lately but after the pitiful events of the morning, he didn’t give a damn. For four hours he’d been fantasizing about this cigarette, and the first drag was a blessed relief.  

But huddled alongside a wall, braced against the cold, he considered how smoking had changed. It used to be the greatest thing in the world; now, it was embarrassing. He pictured himself: overweight, droopy-eyed, balding. Puffing so hard on the butt that his cheeks caved in. McNab made himself smile. He guessed that he looked as wretched as he felt.  

McNab dropped the cigarette. He straightened the knot of his tie, as if to restore some dignity. He walked toward the door to return inside. McNab held a corporate identity card with his photograph. He placed the card against a metal security device on the wall. The contact made a buzzing sound, and the door popped open. McNab went through, and rode the elevator to the eighth floor. 

McNab walked down a corridor. He was too ashamed to look at anybody. He heard voices and tapping keyboards; telephones buzzed. McNab entered his office and closed the door. The noise retreated. He leaned against the door and shut his eyes.

                                                                                                         ---

 

Two days after the 1981 U.S. Open final, McNab was still brooding. No way Borg should have fucking lost. Well, McNab would have gotten over it eventually. Then fate, as if to rub his nose in it, brought his girlfriend to his door.  

McNab in those days worked at a Florida radio station. When Cathy arrived at his studio apartment, he was sitting at his kitchen table. Wearing only shorts, smoking Camels and reading The Village Voice. He might have known something was up; Cathy was 17 and should have been at school.      

McNab was 23, and Cathy was his first love. She was five feet tall, with a chubby face and a beaming smile. She walked in, carrying a soft soap smell, wearing a t-shirt and short shorts that were in style in those days. Her legs had a caramel tan.

   
She sat at the table across from McNab. Lying between them, the Voice was open to the film reviews and an ashtray was crowded with butts. Cathy pulled a pack of Marlboros from a purse and lit one. Her strong blue eyes blinked with the force of crashing waves as she and McNab clasped hands, and she told him that she was moving away.

                                                                                                          ---  
                                   
Cathy was going to live with her grandparents in Colorado. It was a consequence of her grim home life, of which McNab was well aware. Her mother was dead, and her father was a wanderer. In the man’s absence, Cathy’s aunt looked after her; but now nobody had seen or heard from her father in a year. The family had to make new arrangements.

   
They squeezed each other’s hands. McNab’s face showed distress and Cathy said, with a smile, “Now don’t you go crazy on me.”  

McNab was ashamed. He wondered how many awful telephone conversations had led to the decision to send the kid away. The least he could be was supportive. He lifted a burning Camel from the ashtray. He rubbed his cheek, on which bristled five days’ worth of whiskers. He took a drag, trying to relax his face. He blew smoke into the sunshine that streamed through the window.  

The light splashed across the apartment, painting the noisy air conditioner and the bookshelf stocked with paperbacks. It beamed on the black and white movie stills hanging on a wall. It put a gold layer on Cathy’s chestnut hair.    

McNab sat hunched over, craning his neck to look up at her. Holding her smile, Cathy had slouched down to keep level with him. “You okay?”  

With his thumb McNab massaged her wrist.  Her skin was heart-stoppingly soft.  “I don’t suppose,” he said, “there’s any other way.”  

Cathy shook her head. “Long plane ride.” 

McNab crushed out his Camel. “You flying?”

 
“Fat chance. I mean, like, if you visited.”

“Yeah.” He looked away, tapping the Village Voice with a forefinger. “Guess we won’t be seeing this. Thief.”

“Which one is that?”

"The one I was talking about, with James Caan. Got great reviews. Opening here Friday.”

Her smile softened. McNab saw mist in her eyes. They bounded up and dashed around the table. Their bodies collided and McNab’s arms were around her. Bent at the waist, he buried his nose in her neck. Her smell blew through him. She managed to pull away, then stepped up on a chair. She looked down at him, taller by almost a head. Cathy’s eyes shone and her palms rested on his bare shoulders, tingling his skin.    

Her smell was all over him after she left and the sunny apartment felt deadly. He sprawled on his couch. His fists pounded the surface, his head quivering and his eyes filling with tears.

                                                                                                         ---     
                                                     
Two weeks later McNab was at work, covering a news story for the radio station. On the eastern end of town a strip mall was on fire. Black, sooty smoke drifted skyward. McNab stood behind a police barricade, chatting with O’Hara, an older newspaperman. Other reporters milled around, including a couple of TV crews. Two attractive young women, holding microphones, patted their hair and skirts.

O’Hara was tall, with long floppy hair. He wore glasses held together with masking tape. “How’s your backhand?” he asked. O’Hara puffed a Pall Mall, despite—or because of—a cop’s warning not to.

    
McNab looked around, then bummed a drag from the newspaperman. “My timing’s off.” He pantomimed a stroke holding his small tape recorder. “I was playing Goldberg the other day. Couldn’t get the ball over the fucking net.”

“You ought to switch to one hand.  Don’t have to move as much.” Despite prodigious smoking and drinking, O’Hara was always good for a set or two before feigning a heart attack.

Given the afternoon’s humidity and the reporters’ proximity to the fire, the air around them was foul. McNab saw moisture bubbling on O’Hara’s forehead. His own hair was dripping. The back of his shirt stuck to his skin. McNab saw the cop walking in their direction. With his forefinger, O’Hara flicked his cigarette backward. It landed at the feet of a cameraman.

"What the fuck, man,” said the cameraman. Next to him, a female reporter was adjusting the front of her blouse. McNab stared at her.    

The cop walked past. Behind him were about a dozen firemen dressed in long raincoats and fire hats. Through hoses they directed white streams of water at the shell of a drug store. Rivers and puddles formed around the parking area, releasing steam into the air.

   
For the press, if not the firefighters, this was routine. The area was cleared; nobody had been hurt. The reporters would simply interview a fire department spokesman when the job was over. Maybe find an eyewitness.

   
McNab kept his eye on the female reporter. “Don’t be so fucking obvious,” O’Hara said. “Anyway, you’re taken. You’re good as dead.”

“Not anymore,” McNab said.

    

McNab had decided to become a journalist when he was a teenager, motivated by the exploits of Woodward and Bernstein. He had felt righteous indignation while watching the Watergate hearings on TV. The procession of middle-aged white men in suits, scowling at their accusers, had angered him and suggested that society needed an overhaul. With such examples of so-called leadership, he reasoned, how could you not grow your hair long and smoke pot—all in the name of good, healthy protest? Then, you might become a journalist and explain to the people how the world really worked.  

Edging into his mid-20s, though, McNab wondered how much fulfillment there was in covering ribbon-cutting ceremonies, car wrecks, and school board meetings.      

“So what happened?” O’Hara said. “I’m only asking. You know me. I’ve been married three times.”

“She had to move. Colorado.”

  
“Well you can visit. 'Course, you’d have to get permission from her homeroom teacher first.”

McNab smiled. “Can’t afford it. At least, no time soon. I wrote her a letter.” He shrugged. 

The firemen continued spraying. The water looped in rainbow-like arcs. A hot breeze directed the smoke toward the group of journalists. Everyone grimaced and fanned in front of their faces. O’Hara launched into a coughing fit. He lit a cigarette when it was over. McNab checked out the TV reporter again. She looked new. Well, that was typical.  They worked in this town briefly, then went on to bigger markets. He felt lonely.    

   
“I don’t know,” McNab said. He pressed buttons on his tape recorder. “Maybe I should try newspapers. Get outa this rut. Plus, I’m not sure I have the voice for radio.”

       
“You sound okay to me,” O’Hara gasped. “But it’s a competitive field.” He pulled his Reporter’s Notebook from his pants pocket and began leafing through.

 
The controls of McNab’s recorder weren’t moving. He slapped the machine against his thigh.

      
One of the two fire trucks at the scene started its engine, a sign that the incident was ending. The reporters shuffled restlessly.  

McNab looked at his tape player and said, “Son of a bitch fucking thing.” He saw O’Hara’s face twist with surprise. He felt a heavy splash of water. It smacked the side of his head. He saw O’Hara covering his hair with both arms. He saw all the members of the news media hopping around, looking wet and dismayed. Both TV reporters shrieked. O’Hara removed a soggy cigarette from his mouth.

About fifty feet away, a fireman was holding a hose aimed in the reporters’ direction. Its water pressure lessened, then slowed to a drip. “Gee folks,” the fireman called. “I’m really sorry about that.”

The reporters shouted and cursed except for O’Hara, who laughed. McNab cursed, but mainly because he couldn’t get his tape player working. Without it he couldn’t record audio for the story. For a radio reporter, that was disastrous.

        
Fire fighters were gathering their equipment, packing to leave. The department spokesman, named Holmes, appeared near one of the trucks. He wore a sports coat, tie and a fire hat. The reporters spotted Holmes and, like a pack of cattle, stampeded toward him. 

McNab said, “Holy shit, O’Hara, my tape recorder won’t work.”

“Hey, your man sprayed us!” one of the TV reporters yelled.  

Holmes smiled. “Our men risk their lives daily. Accidents happen.”

 
“Bullshit!” yelled someone.

 
“I’m fucked,” McNab cried. “Fucked right up the ass!”

The reporters reached Holmes. “You want the story,” the spokesman said, “or you wanna complain?”

Pressed for time, the journalists became docile. They had their pens ready, and the cameramen turned on their cameras.

  
“O’Hara,” McNab said. “You gotta help me.”

“How the hell I do that?”

“Follow me back to the station. I got another tape recorder there, okay?”

“I suppose.”

Holmes intoned, “At approximately 12:35 this afternoon, we received an alarm indicating a situation at the Rexall Drug Emporium, 402 Archer Road. Two engines were dispatched immediately…”

                                                                                                    ---

​

“Jesus Christ, McNab,” said Fitzgerald, the news director of WDVH-AM. “We got a fucking newscast in ten minutes. And all you got on tape is O’Hara?  Our fucking competitor from the fucking newspaper?”  

McNab and Fitzgerald stood in a small newsroom among reel-to-reel tape players and a clattering Associated Press machine. McNab felt like the clattering was inside his head. He knew he had fucked up, that it’s the reporter’s job to test equipment.  

He also knew that using O’Hara on tape was dumb. But he tried to weasel out of it. “O’Hara’s a well-known figure in our community,” McNab said. “Everybody reads his stuff in the paper. All the other guys are using Holmes. We have something different for a change.”

 
Fitzgerald scowled.  “They got Holmes because he’s the most credible source, the representative of the agency that made the news. We can’t use that drunk O’Hara. He’s the competition. We’ll look like even bigger idiots than we are.”  

“Well, I didn’t know there was a rule against that,” McNab said. “Just trying to do something different is all.”

“Something stupid more like,” Fitzgerald said. “You have an eyewitness at least?”

 
The Associated Press machine clattered on.  

  
“No,” McNab said meekly.

“Get out,” Fitzgerald said. “I got a newscast to do.”

                                                                                                        ---

    

That evening, McNab was miserable. He questioned his professional capabilities.  His boss’s contempt jangled his nerves.    
He stood in his apartment and studied his movie stills on the wall. They gave him a tiny measure of relief. He pulled a paperback of On the Road from the bookshelf and read a few paragraphs. He looked through his second-floor window. A vine had crawled up the outside wall and was digging its creepy tentacles into the glass. Behind it, the parking lot looked cracked and battered by the day’s sunshine.    

McNab was swathed in perspiration. His air conditioner hummed without apparent effect. He tore off his damp shirt. He wondered if he was doomed to be trapped forever in a shithole where the humidity choked his spirit away.    

He let the machine’s air blow onto his neck and chest. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and removed a small yellow envelope. He shook two small tablets into his hand. He walked to the kitchen sink. With nice cold water, he washed the tablets of mescaline into his stomach.    

                                                                                                         ---

​

Later that evening McNab planned to go out drinking with O’Hara and some others. They were going to their usual place, where the news media hung out. Maybe that TV reporter would be there. At least he had that to look forward to.  

He put a Supertramp album on his stereo. It was Crime of the Century, the one about the guy going insane.  

The music blasted against the walls. He removed his tennis racquet from a closet. He danced around, pretending to play. McNab knew his main problem in tennis was an unwillingness to lean into his shots, to hit through the ball. Too often he bunted, afraid to make errors. He didn’t have the nerve to go for it. And he wanted to be a journalist?  

Ha!

Now he pretended that, like Borg, he was ripping two-handed backhands for winners. McNab flicked his racquet around, whacking the imaginary ball. He pictured opponents, scores and cheering crowds.

 
McNab listened to both sides of the record. When the music was finished he felt energized. His skin felt like it sparkled. Without him realizing it, the effects of the mescaline had settled in, as stealthily as an army of germs. His heart pounded and his senses felt sharp. He could hear muffled voices from all corners of the building. Small bumps and cracks on the wall gleamed like neon.        

 
McNab ambled into his bathroom. He looked in the mirror and, despite his buoyed spirits, was reminded that he was one skinny bastard.  His shoulders were narrow, his chest flat, and his head was as gaunt as a fucking shrunken head.  

He was dismayed. What could any girl see in him? What had Cathy seen in him?    

His face had its usual three days’ growth of beard. Well, at least he could do something about that. You never knew, he thought. He’d lucked out with Cathy. It could happen again. He calculated that if he got rid of the stubble, he might have a chance at someone with a vagina. He lifted a Bic plastic razor.    

                                                                                                        ---

​

Occasionally he felt a pinch and saw a drop of red flash in the bright bathroom light. That was not uncommon; he’d always been a sloppy shaver. He had to get one of those electric jobs. Meanwhile, now, he dug in. His eyes were fires of concentration. He wanted an unprecedented level of smoothness. He ignored the pinches. When finished, he rinsed his face and blotted it with a towel.

 
In the mirror he saw for a millisecond his face with clean smooth skin. Then, he gradually transformed. Red lines and splatters broke out in small explosions. Blood peppered his skin like zits. A ring of blood bordered his lips. McNab stepped backward.  The pounding of his heart kicked up alarmingly. He couldn’t recognize himself. He cupped his face in both hands; he rinsed several times, but the blood kept coming. 

He lay on his bed with his face on a towel. He was inches from the wall. He discerned molecules within the small bumps and cracks. They darted around like ants.  He lay still for the next several hours trying not to lose his mind.          

                                                                                                          ---
                                                      
McNab dropped into a black canyon. He awoke at 1 p.m. His towel was streaked with blood. He sat up with care. He felt spooky, like an atomic blast had emptied his head. McNab staggered to the bathroom and pissed. He saw in the mirror that reddish scabs covered his cheeks, chin, upper lip and neck. His skin was pasty. He looked like a ghoul.

 
Memories of the evening gradually emerged, like something shapeless rising from the sea.

       
The phone rang, and he all but jumped from his skin. It had to be somebody at the radio station. Did he have a story to cover? He didn’t know. He touched the dried blood with his fingertips. The scabs hurt but the pain was weirdly attractive. He considered ripping them off. The phone kept ringing. He stood, grimacing, and the phone finally stopped.

 
Locked into his own mirrored eyes, McNab was surprised to discern bright flecks of wisdom. He calmed down.  

Like a buried seedling that had struggled and finally burst through to sunlight, the conviction smacked him. He knew it at that moment. He had to do something.  Everything was a mess and out of control. He had to change.

He had to change his life. 

                                                                                                          ---

​

There were false starts. But only a few. McNab went to graduate school and got a Master’s Degree in Communications. He went to work for a public relations agency. He bought suits from Sears. He never took mescaline or smoked pot again, and didn’t give himself much time for tennis. Occasionally, he drank white wine. He went to work for a large corporation. He bought suits from Armani. He drove a sports utility vehicle. He married and divorced. Worked late hours and weekends, on the road a lot, not much time for the family.  

In short, he figured, like millions of other assholes.  Convinced, for a moment in time, they were doing the right thing. 

                                                                                                          ---

​

Up in his office, McNab opened his eyes to a wavy room. Sweat dampened his shirt collar. He moved away from the door, passing shelves crammed with business books. He looked through a panoramic window that showed the city’s downtown area.    

 
McNab loosened his tie and sat behind his large desk. A folder with the company logo lay in front of him. Inside was a memo he’d read that morning, no doubt cobbled together by some public relations hack like himself.  

Dear Mr. McNab:
As you know, our organization has been under significant cost pressures that have made it necessary for us to engage in a restructuring exercise. Regrettably your position is among those we are forced to eliminate. Inside this package, you will find the terms of your separation agreement from this organization . . .

At that, he had to smile. If they take away your compromised life, maybe they’re doing you a favor.

 
But what was left?

McNab wondered what he would do. He wondered whatever became of Bjorn Borg. He thought of a hot afternoon twenty years ago when Cathy carried a soft soap smell.    

     
He remembered the mist in Cathy’s eyes. He rested his right cheek on the desk.  His fists pounded the surface, his head quivering and his eyes filling with tears.    

 
Colleagues spying on McNab in those moments, aware of the company’s layoffs, would believe they understood why he was so upset.  

They would have been wrong.
                                              
                                                                                             THE END