Reggae played in the darkness. Rogers wondered who had put it on. None of his friends would listen to that sort of thing, not even Gunnar. The sky above was clear, and untold legions of stars cast their light upon him. He pressed the back of his head against the hard wood of the chaise and stared into space. A lot of those stars had gone black already. Someday he would join them.

Two kids sat on the edge of the deck. They comprised the last of the party and Rogers glanced at them. One of them puffed on a hand rolled cigarette and the cherry blazed bright in the darkness. It lit up the smoker’s face. Sweet smoke drifted on the night breeze. They pushed themselves to their feet and bid Rogers good night with a nod. He acknowledged by lifting his chin. The two disappeared around the corner of the house. Rogers heard car doors slam. Beams of light stabbed into the night, flitted down the drive, faded away.

“Hey handsome,” a voice purred.

Unseen hands lifted the hat from his head. He didn’t move.

“What you doing out here?”

He could smell her perfume, a fragrance that called to mind sitting with her beside the river near her house, the two of them wrapped in a warm blanket of tranquility. It mingled with the scent of her heated dancing. He liked that she had found him. He watched the stars while she ran her fingers through his hair.

“Nothing,” he answered. “Thinking about the stars. Wondering what the point is.”

“No point,” she replied. He twisted his head to look at her face. It was a dark spot silhouetted by the even deeper black of night. He could not see her features and it bothered him. There was just an impression of her floating in the darkness.

“Why do anything, then?”

“To get hot chicks. According to your friends.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I mean, everyone acts like everything is so important, but is it, really? Like basketball, you know. I spend all this time and energy on it but what does it matter, truly? The universe does not care whether you win or lose.”

Laura was quiet for a moment. She was trying to read him. It was unlike him to not find meaning and order in life, the things he was saying unlike any she had heard him say before. She was suddenly concerned for him and sad to be leaving him here, without anyone but Lee to talk to. She put her hands on his trapezius and massaged the stringy muscles with her fingertips.

“What are you talking about, Rogers? Everything matters. Every thought. Every action,” she said. “You taught me that.”

He took her hands and he maneuvered her around the chaise lounge and pulled her down to him. She was thin and fit and her back was to him and her hips were between his thighs and her head on his chest. He wrapped her in his arms and held her tight.

“I thought you said there was no point.”

“No point,” she said. “But it still matters.”

“How do you figure?”

“I don’t know, Rogers. But it’s all connected. And if it’s all connected, then how can even the tiniest detail not matter?”

Her head moved against him as she spoke. He did not know if they were there a minute or an hour but, suddenly, he noticed it was still. His cheek rested against the top of her head.

They sat there for some time. She moved a little.

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“I love you too.”

A shooting star appeared in the sky, shedding pieces of itself as it fell. Those unable to maintain their velocity immolated in a fiery streak that burned bright against the dark of night and still the star went on, sacrificing more and more of its heart to the lengthening train that followed until suddenly it exploded in one final blaze of glory that faded into black and was gone.

*****

Rogers woke before anyone, but he had slept much later than usual. Laura had left a little before four in the morning. She was probably asleep in her seat on the train east. It would be more than a day before it reached its destination. The scent of her was still with him.

The alcohol and lack of sleep weighed heavily upon him and for a moment he seriously considered staying in bed. That thought revolted him and he sprang upright and stumbled dumbly to the bathroom. When he returned, he straightened the duvet and stood before his bedroom window and faced east. Drowsiness hung like lead upon his eyelids. The sun was up, climbing swiftly into a clear blue sky. Where Laura would be it was fully daylight. He exhaled forcefully, centered himself, and started his morning routine of stretching, meditation, and yoga.

When it was complete, he moved to a dresser and dug through clothes stacked neatly in a drawer and extracted a weathered t-shirt, an old favorite from one of the countless basketball camps he had attended over the years. He pulled it over his head, completing the ensemble with a hooded sweatshirt from the closet and a pair of socks from another drawer. Everything matched. Success is in the details. The phrase sounded in his brain. He coerced his feet into a pair of trainers and slipped silently through the house to the kitchen.

A French press on the neatly ordered counter beckoned him. He never drank coffee, but this morning seemed the ideal time to start. He stared at it blankly while methodically mixing several large spoonfuls of yogurt with some granola in a ceramic bowl. He ate the concoction like a robot, not fully awake. The metal spoon scraped against the bottom of the empty bowl. He rinsed it clean with water from the tap and then took the stainless-steel water bottle from the wooden dish rack on the counter, filled it at the sink, and staggered out the front door.

“Get some,” he mumbled.

Outside, he paused, stretched. His lean muscular body arched towards the sky. He shivered violently, not from the morning chill, but rather from a last ditch effort by his dormant systems to prepare themselves for action. He yawned, shook his head, rubbing his eyes, then crossed the short distance that separated the outbuildings from the house.

The small, squat building that housed the gym in which he trained lie just to the east of the workshop. Like all the structures Rogers’ father had constructed on the property, it blended neatly with its surroundings. It was low slung, simple and modern in form, made of square timbers and concrete, steel and glass. Landscaping around it tended toward formal. The ascetic betrayed a distinctly oriental influence, but most of the vegetation was native to the area. Rogers had seen it all a thousand times. A majority of days, he was fully present, relishing every detail. Other times, he was totally in his zone. Today he wasn’t even awake.

He stepped through the doorway and paused to slip the shoes from his feet. He left them lying beside the entrance then padded across the floor to a spot where a thin mat covered the hardwood at the far end of the room. Sunlight pouring through south facing windows and diffusers in the roof flooded the space. Images of several famous athletes were hung on the walls beside photographs and other memorabilia from his parents’ athletic careers and the ideograms for balance and concentration. Rogers faced west.

The wall before him was bare, washed in white. He planted his feet shoulder width apart, lowered himself into a basketball stance, taking a defensive posture. His palms were up, his arms spread wide. To the right, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the squat rack and an assembly of iron weights. Sunlight a bright glow to the left. He inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled slowly out of his mouth, focusing and trying not to focus all at the same time, his vision affixed to a tiny black dot on the wall that to most was nearly indiscernible. His eyes locked on the spot, consciously breathing, losing it and finding it again, watching it pulse and swell.

Suddenly, the black spot began to expand, enlarging until it obscured his vision. It pushed out from the center to the edges until all that was left was a blurred silhouette. Then, all at once, Rogers saw it. Before him, threatening to engulf, was the unmistakable image of a whirling black hole.

“In this mark,” his father said as he completed his work, “exist all potentialities. Reflect upon it deeply.”

The man took a step back from the whitewashed wall of the small dojo he had only recently finished building and examined the tiny mark he had just painted there. A slender brush was in his hand.

Rogers stared at the minute stroke, an almost perfect circle, stylistically oriental in its rendering, ancient in its depiction of the cycle of life, the serpent devouring its tail. His father carefully gathered his painting materials. He was relentless in his pursuit of perfection, deliberate in all things, even the gathering of mundane objects. He paused, turned and smiled at his son. Dark eyes, soft and almond shaped, begged the boy voice the concern written plainly on his face.

“I do not see anything,” Rogers said finally.

Rogers’ father placed the brush in the small cedar box, tucked it neatly between the ordered paints and closed the lid. He placed a warm hand on his son’s shoulder and gazed intently at his handiwork.

“You will, son, you will. When you do, you will see that it is marvelous.”

“What?”

“The whole universe. Do you not see it?”

Rogers searched the wall. Now he couldn’t even locate the mark.

“No.”

His father chuckled and gave the boy’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. His stolid confidence was always heartening.

“You will, in time. Those who seek shall find, eventually. But first, we must practice.”

A drop of sweat burned in the corner of his eye. The sensation brought him back to this moment, and Rogers blinked at it. The black hole he had imagined arising from the symbol his father had painted had disappeared, and now he saw only the small black mark on the wall before him.

Just how long he had stood there maintaining the posture he was not sure, but his entire body was bathed in a beaded sweat, his quadriceps quivering. Gracefully, rhythmically, he relaxed the pose and rose to his full height. He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet and shook the kinks out of his wrists, shoulders, and neck before moving back towards the door. Faces on posters roused him. A legendary Olympic steeplechaser in mid-leap graced one wall. The images, accomplished athletes, basketball players and track stars, captured in moments of intense determination, inspired him. Rogers lifted a jump rope from a peg on the wall beside the image, stuffed his large feet back into the trainers, and stepped outside.

The air had warmed several degrees and he noticed immediately. He dropped the loop of rope on the ground at his feet, stepped across it, and then flipped it overhead with a flick of his wrists. When the rope came full circle, he hopped into the air. The rope slipped beneath the soles of his shoes and kissed the pavement before continuing through its arc. Rogers spun the rope, springing over it as it passed, allowing the operations to merge, to become one. He found the rhythm, timed his breath to it, and soon lost himself in movement.

Laura was gone. The thought drifted past. He grabbed at it aimlessly. She had been accepted to an elite eastern college on scholarship. Besides Lee Harper, she was the only friend with whom he truly could relate. Rogers sprung into the air and spun the rope hard, passing it twice beneath his feet, two complete revolutions covered with one perfectly measured leap. He returned to his original tempo. Easily, he bound high into the air, seeming to hang in space as the braided fiber flowed through its fluid track.

He would miss her. They had ceased dating a year ago, when Rogers left to begin his freshman year at the University of Montana, but they were still close. Always far from lovers, they remained good friends, and this summer had found them spending long nights together again, just like the high school days, trading hopes and fears. She was his sounding board. Her support had helped him through the trials. A twinge of emptiness, loss, regret pulled at his psyche. He shoved the sensation away and punctuated it with a bound and another double rotation of the rope. He jumped rope double-time, bouncing up and down like a pogo stick, each jump perfectly timed, each circuit of the cord exactly equal in duration to the last. After ten minutes he slowed. An easy even pace reined in the pounding of his heart and tempered his heavy breathing. The rope came around again and he landed on it abruptly with both feet.

He looked around the grounds and noted the way in which the morning shadows fell. They were longer than they were yesterday. The sun was already blazing its way across the sky. Birds called from perches in the trees. Rivers of sweat rolled down each temple.

Before he had collapsed on his bed Rogers had gulped down a liter of water, but lack of sleep and dehydration hit him hard like a race car going nose first into the wall and his vision tunneled and he felt light headed and dizzy. He bent his knees, hands on his hips, working to maintain his balance. He gasped, struggling to force air into his lungs.

His vision returned in a flood and the ends of his toes and fingertips tingled. Jeez, he thought. Pull it together.

He shuffled back through the door of the gym. He had left it ajar. He kicked off his shoes once more and hung the jump rope on its peg. His water bottle stood beneath an image of a point guard directing a play. He couldn’t recall having left it there, but he retrieved it and guzzled half the contents.

He sat down on a wooden bench, elbows on his knees, head hanging. Limp fingers maintained a slack grip on the bottle. It felt cool in his hand. Eyes the color of glacial ice stared blindly at a speck of dirt lying on the hardwood floor.

He sat there for some time, in limbo, and then rose. He pressed several controls on a touchscreen interface in the corner and strains of music issued from speakers in the ceiling. He went to the floor and waded through one hundred perfect sit-ups. He paused briefly and then added another twenty. His stomach muscles burned and he felt nauseous. It made him angry. He snarled past his knees at a well-known image from a dunk contest and forced out eighty more.