7.

Joshua rarely went to New Jersey, nor had he ever been to this little corner of it, nor did he even have any idea whose house door this was he was knocking on; hence his utter surprise that he did knock. He glanced up at the pale sun, more white than yellow, at the leaves well into their autumn decay.

The door opened to a burly black man with the curly short hairs of a goatee on his chin, his afro puffing up and out, unkempt.

"Hey, Bubba!" he said. No one ever called Joshua "Bubba".

"You are . . . ?" said Joshua.

"I'm Rubix, Bubba--come on in, I been waiting."

Joshua cautiously followed him in, where Rubix sat on a brown leather easy chair with stuffing poking out of its seams. There was a football game on the TV, the announcers going through their feigned enthusiasm, the auditory flicker of cheers.

Joshua sat down and stared at the TV. He did not notice what teams they were, and did not care. He didn't follow football at all.

Rubix jumped up suddenly, clapping his hands and hooting in a manner Joshua felt was vulgar. Rubix did not know about the beer spilling out of the Budweiser can in his fist, the potato chip crumbs that went flying off his New York Giants jersey when he'd stood.

Joshua stared in silence back at the TV.

"Can I . . . can I leave now?" asked Joshua. "I mean, just go on to the next thing?"

Rubix turned to him. "Hang around, Bubba. I'll get you a beer. Enjoy the moment awhile--the next thing won't be any better--it never is. And I guarantee you--" he walked into the kitchen and was back in time to finish the sentence--"that they don't have any Budweiser in the next thing."

Joshua felt comfortable with this man, in all his squalor. He took the beer and sipped it, glanced across the room at a pair of socks that lay crumpled in the middle of the room, gray crust on their bottoms. He looked to Rubix again and saw his bare feet. There was an ashtray by them.

Suddenly Rubix shot up again, this time in a booing, saying things like: "No, no--you did not throw that interception! You gotta be fucking kidding me!" Joshua saw his bare foot step smack into the full ashtray--Rubix oblivious--cigarette ash and butts flying onto his foot and the carpet.

Joshua looked at the TV again. Football didn't make sense to him. Sports seemed a vain enterprise.

"How do you get excited about that?" he said. "For every one like you cheering for the--what are those?--the Giants, there's somebody else cheering for the other team. You're getting all worked up about inconsequential shit. Don't you see it?"

"That's all there is, Bubba--that's all there ever was. Everything you do in this world, there's someone on the other side of the world undoing it. And you came into this world from nothing--and everything you gain gets canceled out back into nothing at the end. The trick--the trick is to get enthusiastic about it, feel it, know it--enjoy yourself!"

"I guess I just find joy about other things," said Joshua. "Important things."

"Ain't nothing more important that fun, my friend, plain fun--a game, a beer, maybe going to the titty bar weekends." He winked. "What is art? It's what you do and enjoy. You paint, you're a painter--and someone sees your art and enjoys it. Other people enjoy football, shooting hoops, fucking skiing in Aspen with the crackers. Now you can't tell me some nitwit staring at a painting in the Met is somehow enjoying himself more than those folks. What is it? His happiness is more intense?--well?--what, he's seeing things that give him deeper feeling? No man, some cracker skiing down the slopes who never looked at paintings is having fun, enjoying himself the same. Hell, a dirty old man in the bathroom with a Hustler is getting just as much out of life as some novelist. Where is this thing, this value in art? It's just something for people to enjoy is all, same as football or anything."

Joshua stared back at the TV. He saw now that there was a shot from above the whole stadium--probably a blimp shot--only it went on a very long time. He saw the symmetry of the opposing teams lining up at scrimmage, saw them break formation on the snap, saw the different colored uniforms move about, spread into the distance, a line of protection about the quarterback, his teammates and their opposition fanning into the distance towards the prized end zone on the left.

"Look at them--it's mesmerizing sometimes, hypnotic," said Rubix. Joshua noticed that the whole scene was playing out again, this time in slow motion, looking like some dance of a fish school, the small dots on the screen that were the players moving about gracefully, as if choreographed. "They each only have eyes on one side of their face--each one of them can only see a tiny piece of the field--they can't see all of it like us. None of it is rehearsed--they move instinctually, reacting to all the others, each as if by ESP knowing just the position of the quarterback, the ones trying to sack him, the receivers and their guards. They've done this all their lives--the receivers know just when to stick and turn to throw off the defense, the quarterback knows just where the receiver will be when the ball hits him, he knows it before he throws the ball. He knows just how hard to throw it, with just what spin--he knows his receivers, knows where they will twist and turn, when they will look over their shoulders for the ball, what the whole field will look like ten seconds from now. It's--it's an organism. The Giants--they're a single entity. They've assimilated themselves into themselves with practice, drills--hell, even hanging out at bars together helps. They know one another's minds, hearts, souls, if there is any such thing. And they do it all without knowing any of it--they don't know it like we know grass is green. They sense it and react--but they don't ever know it--no verbal sentences pass through their minds, not information like the scientist speaks of it. They hardly know how or why they do what they do; it all comes to them by second nature. ESP. Telepathy. It's no wonder people believe in it. It's no wonder madmen become insane, thinking all the world knows their thoughts. We human beings are more intimate with one another than any of us suspect, when things like football are possible."

The scene on the TV snapped into static, and Joshua was kind of dazed; then he was anguished. "Where'd it go? Where the fuck did it go?"

"I guess you'll be going off to the next thing then," said Rubix. "Too bad you never sipped your beer."

Joshua looked at the beer in his hand. It was open, the tab sinking down into the froth. He hadn't so much as tasted it.