Read Online Prodigals by Greg Jackson - Free Book Online

there,” I said.
    He breathed on my face for a few seconds before turning away from the papers. “You must think we’re very strange,” he said.
    I looked at him appraisingly. He couldn’t have been more than eleven.
    â€œEveryone’s strange,” I said.
    â€œAre people in America this strange?”
    I laughed. Lots of them were, I told him. Lots even stranger. Antoine sighed. We looked off together at the hills.
    â€œNobody understands my father,” he said, “but I do.”
    I asked what he understood and his voice grew soft. He moved his hand to my neck so he could whisper in my ear and I felt the clamminess of his fingers on my skin.
    â€œHe doesn’t believe he exists,” Antoine whispered.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I said.
    He looked at me with wide, dramatic eyes. “How do you know you exist?”
    I said I didn’t really worry about it. He laughed. “Maybe you’re crazy,” he said.
    â€œDo you think I’m crazy?”
    He shrugged. “You’re still here.”
    Léo emerged on the lawn not long after. He had a video camera on his right shoulder, the old boxy sort that a videocassette slides into, and a tennis racket in his left hand.
    â€œI have figured out what we can do,” he said.
    â€œWhat we can do…” I frowned.
    â€œC’mon.” He beckoned me with his head and led me around to the tennis court, where, although it was only afternoon and still bright out, he flipped the breakers on the overhead lights. They glowed to life, bathing the already lit surface in a further saturation of light.
    â€œHelp me put up the net,” he said. He hesitated at the gate, then strode purposefully onto the court. We strung and cranked the net until it was taut. Léo handed me the racket. He looked into the rubber viewfinder on the video camera.
    â€œWhat am I doing?” I asked.
    â€œPlaying,” he said. He had the camera pointed at me and was adjusting lens settings as he spoke.
    â€œAgainst whom?”
    â€œNo one,” he said. “We’ll use our imaginations. I’ll tell you what to do.”
    And he did. That was how it began, Léo calling out shots and movements. It seemed ages that we were on the court, Léo directing me—“To the centerline!” “Backpedal, four steps!” “Deuce court!” “Backhand slice!”—me floating across the surface, hitting imaginary shot after imaginary shot, sometimes missing too, heaving my body after a return with too much pace on it, a too-perfect location. My initial self-consciousness fell away as I played. The exertion thrilled me. My body moved naturally and fluidly, responding to Léo’s instructions as its own. I served and drifted to the center of the baseline, found myself pulled left into the ad court, barely able to get the racket on a crosscourt forehand, lofting it for my opponent to put away with an overhead. At first Léo made me repeat strokes until I got them just so, but over time these repetitions became less frequent. I had to put more topspin on the ball than I was used to and Léo wanted a shorter service toss and a more open-faced stance. My body, surprising me, adjusted quickly, gave itself to him as a puppet, and when Léo called out an instruction I felt a thrill of sense pleasure run through me, like when a doctor puts a cool stethoscope to your chest.
    The only times Léo stopped were to change batteries and VHS tapes. This alone marked the passage of time. My body had ceased to register it and I inhabited the moment in a way I never had before, as though a dancer in the pliant liquid of each second’s unfolding. I felt alive. It is a silly phrase, we are always alive , but this is how I felt. It had to do with Léo’s joy, I think, his excitement, his watching . I had never been watched like this and it was druglike, each movement attended so closely. I was bathed