about each other. Just as Rank’s fellow gland-cases no longer compete to hurl the weedy Adam out of windows, classmates and profs are no longer as quick to dismiss Rank, for all his overgrowth, as a special-needs, Andre-the-Giant goon.
It’s a fact that his association with Adam causes Rank to consider that he, Rank, is perhaps a smarter person than he has given himself credit for all these years. People consider Adam deep, if only because he never wastes words — he’s not a bullshitter like Kyle, a smart guy who nonetheless believes the only path to profundity is to run off at the mouth until something intelligent inadvertently emerges. Adam just doesn’t talk if he doesn’t have anything real to say. There are people in their circle who find this annoying, and unnerving, and Rank was for a while one of them, but now he can’t help but think that there’s an enviable confidence in Adam’s zipped lip. He’s not trying to impress anyone. Which is a singular thing in a community of twentysomethings.
So when Adam opens his mouth to pronounce, a part of you trembles, thinking: Oh hell, he’s going to start quoting Kierkegaard or something and I’m going to have to nod a lot and then maybe pretend I have to go to the bathroom. But Rank found he never had to do that. Rank found he could keep up.
Like the talk they had on the way to the liquor store after Rank had walked out on one of his playoff games, thereby pretty much annihilating his academic future. Rank had gone directly to find Adam because he knew Adam would be the only guy on campus who would not realize that he should be utterly appalled and horrified by what Rank had done. You don’t, of course, leave the arena in the middle of a playoff game. Nobody does that. It’s not conceivable. But Adam could be relied upon not to grasp this principle quite as keenly as the other guys in Rank’s acquaintance. Which meant that they could just talk about what Rank had done as if it had been a rational, measured decision as opposed to the cataclysmic middle finger to his future — and his current, quasi-respectable college boy existence — that it was.
“Coach was a dick,” explains Rank.
“Right,” says Adam. “But you’ve been saying he’s a dick all year. Aren’t they all dicks?”
“No,” says Rank. “My high school coach wasn’t a dick.”
“So why is this guy a dick?”
“My high school coach would practically stop the game if a guy even got checked. Whereas Francis figured I should be an enforcer. He put me out there to bash the shit out of guys and I wasn’t gonna do it.”
“Isn’t that part of the game?”
“Yeah, it is,” says Rank after a moment. “It’s everybody’s favourite part of the game. So I quit.”
“I still don’t get why you quit now, though. If you knew it was part of the game.”
“It’s like I said, my high school coach coddled us. He was a social worker. I thought I could just keep my head down here and play defence like I did in school. And, you know, I’m good, so the coach gets pissed off but I figure he’s not going to kick me off the team for neglecting to maim people as I was clearly born to do.”
Adam just keeps quiet now — listening.
“Anyway, we’re losing, is the problem. We’re sucking hard. And Francis is practically bashing his head against the wall at half time. And he’s got his eyes closed like he’s praying to Jesus and he’s saying: I’m so sick of having pussies on my team. I’m so sick of trying to coach a bunch of goddamn pussies who don’t even have the balls to get out there and punish those bastards. And then his eyes pop open and he bulges them at us like he’s going to pick up a sledgehammer or something any minute and he barks: I want you to put up your hands. Who hasn’t fought all season? I’m fucking serious. Who hasn’t got out there and really slammed someone? And of course he’s glaring right at me, because I’m conspicuous, right, like he saw me at the beginning of the season and he’s been thinking I’m going to crush everything in my wake. But I haven’t, no matter how much pussy talk I get from Francis — and I’ve been getting a lot of it, Adam, and I don’t give