Brazen Bull by Dylan Janos

A skirmish sluggishly bounces back and forth at the University of La Verne, shots going up, around, and out as its men’s basketball team sharpens up for a late-season push. #99 “Titan” is the assignment of this Lakers scout, the slender scarecrow approaching seven feet tall with little feel for the game. She found her seat only moments ago, so Naomi Hinata has time to be impressed, but the center’s prospects are in the wind as of yet.

Titan faces up and out of the high post, jabs twice with his right, and drives decisively to his left hand for a layup, wait a minute, is this kid alright? He throws up an airball that swings the possession in the opposite direction. A sluggish effort in transition drives Naomi’s attention to his teammate’s suffocating defense at the point of attack, an effort ultimately forcing a rushed cross-court pass. It’s intercepted at halfcourt and shifts the dynamic back to the task at hand; the basketball in a lagging #99’s hands as he goes up for a layup.

A feral bull charges onto the court and takes his legs out from under his hanging body, sending him down to earth in a heap. The crazed creature studies a Titan in anguish and wanders away. Naomi’s imagination quiets as an overzealous opponent is called for the foul, a penalty that ought to be attributed to a figment of her imagination.

***

When the mind recognizes a dream, it bounces. The allusion may survive the first, but when it hits, it’s only a matter of time. A penguin flying over Los Angeles, dinosaurs boarding Noah’s Ark, the rampage of a brazen bull — these images decay when the fiction is recognized. They all start with a memory, and maybe drudging up the past is what Naomi needs.

She opens the door onto her stepfather’s porch to reclaim a seat next to him, handing Jordan an unopened bottle of beer when comfortable. “Thank you.” He studies the Heineken before cracking it against his armrest. Two Adirondack chairs are big enough to make the open space feel small, and a flying cap startles them both. Naomi has overstayed her welcome.

Jordan speaks first. “You didn’t want one?” “How do you think I got here?” She gestures to her car. He finds it to be a reasonable response and changes the subject. "So, some dream, huh… The one you talked about earlier?” Naomi hoped he had forgotten. “Oh yeah, that...”

A road reaches far into the vast countryside, and every step lands harder than the last as a different Naomi wanders its shoulder. She looks back and the street disappears behind her horizon. It does the same in the direction she stumbles, mindlessly shuffling her worn-away sneakers. Something struck her, perhaps the blight of exhaustion. Naomi drags her feet and stops before collapsing onto the gravelly ground in a heap. A cloud of dust surrounds her as breaths turn rapid and eyelids heavy under an unforgiving sun.

“...It isn’t that important; I can assure you.” She begs the question, so Jordan asks, “Was it supposed to be?” Naomi thinks about it but answers weakly, “No, I guess not.”

“What do you do?” His question puzzles her. “The usual, you know.” “What does that entail? Enlighten me.” He never bothered to learn, and now she struggles to hide her frustration.

“Why do you ask?” Naomi stares and waits for him to continue. “Alright, alright…” A Dodge passes in front of his comfy bungalow, a Challenger.” “Your boss drives a Dodge, right?” “He’s not my boss… but yeah, sure. When did I mention that?” He thinks. “I don’t know.”

A Dodge Challenger pulls off to the side of her mind’s road, hazards turned on as its park is engaged. The Lakers general manager is well dressed as he steps out miles from the arena he supplies with talent by himself, at least as the headlines read. Collin De Bellis helps Naomi to a standstill and lets her fall, removing his adjacent anchor of balance by stepping away. In an instant, her body becomes ash, dust tossed into the air by spinning wheels like those passing just in front of Jordan’s porch. Naomi is angry. “How do you think this works? I walk in and ask for a promotion?”

“Yes! Walk into his office, Collin’s right across the hall.” That was her last straw. “Who do you think I am to them?”

“Qualified, a few years of grad school…”

“…Nothing! He doesn’t even know who I am….”

“...You got the job. Somebody saw something, talk to them.”

They bounce back and forth like a dream and a basketball, so Naomi gets up with one thing to say. “Do you think anybody cares about Langston Galloway?” He does not recognize the standout undrafted free agent from years ago, as he did not play for LA. “Who?”

Naomi embitteredly attempts to confront unsaid grievances, “My ‘friend’ is in Vegas, they pried her away last year.” Jordan struggles to remember what she hears so clearly.

Another Naomi drives down a road into the vast countryside, in the middle of a pleasant conversation of mutual concern. Jordan’s voice emanates from its speakers, “Did your friend do that for you?” Naomi’s former scouting director was a friend of a friend, as he understood it.

Her car drives by Collin as he pulls a broom, pan, and jar out of the backseat, placing the glass container where the contours of his Challenger’s hood lay flat. Naomi’s ashes are thoroughly mixed with the dirt, but there was no helping that. Mr. De Bellis does his best to find what’s left of her, empties that into a jar, and throws it in his cup holder. A bronze bull stares at her through the passenger window as he jogs around the car, gets in, and starts his engine.

Jordan suddenly understands why she’s upset. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I told you, and what do you do? You rub it in my face.”

“Naomi, I didn’t mean it.”

“You have to realize how insulting that was…”

“…I do, trust me, I do…”

“…and why do you act like you’d do any different? You wouldn’t, I know you wouldn’t.” Naomi opens the door and leaves her stepfather to stew; he will and for as long as she chooses.

***

Jordan’s neighbors come home to receive the drinking man’s salute as he raises his Heineken. A man with an impressive mustache reciprocates the gesture by briefly waving before returning his attention to his scattering of children.

They leave a Ford Escape in their driveway, leading the bored ex-parent to take the mental notes he’s been taking of passing vehicles and record them into the “notes” application on his phone. His daily catalog of passing builds and models goes back months.

Naomi rejoins him on the porch with a cold bottle, a drip of gentle perspiration blown off by the cool California breeze as she sits. “Did you want one?”

“I still have…”

“...well you can’t have it.” She is satisfied but does not open nor drink the beverage. He accidentally types “Dodge Challenger”, for he did not see the vehicle on the road that night, but it is one that Naomi has seen in her mind’s eye times before and to come.

A Dodge Challenger drives down a lonely California roadway, somewhere she has been before, though the road and exit signs remain without labels. Evidence of civilization is sparse in this part of the country, and Naomi has no eyes to see its vastness. Collin is emotionless as his focus darts between a speedometer balancing on the lower end of 70 and 80 miles per hour and the oncoming traffic, or lack thereof. Every bump and indent no matter how small jars loose the pieces of her body. She is pressed firmly to the left side as he takes an exit.

They slow, stop, and park. He grabs the jar and swings open his door in a panic. Her boss’s demeanor hasn’t changed at the automatic hospital doors. “Doc, Doc. Help.”

The doctor has a quick diagnosis. “It’s not good.” Collin interrupts him, “You have to save her doc!” He sounds just like Jordan. “I’ll see what I can.” The doctor unscrews Naomi’s jar and dumps what remains of her onto the nearest table. She is wheeled into the operating room, her boss follows worried like he has never been before. An anesthesia mask is placed on her pile, and that is it. The next day she woke up, dressed, worked, and came here.

Her racing thoughts bounce no more but are yet to leave without a conclusion, what became of the ashes? Was she ground to dust, why? Naomi steps out with a purse at her

side, but it is not time to leave. They sit again in mutual silence, but Jordan wants to make peace and say a few more words. For now, he asks “Where do you like scouting?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your favorite stadium, gym, arena, I don’t know, for your job, you know?”

“Has to be around here? Okay, hmm…” She thinks for another moment. “Caltech.”

“Really?” She knows that’s his alma mater.

“Yeah, I don’t hate it anymore.”

“Well, what do you like about it?”

“Part of me still wishes I went there.”

“Still?” He takes a satisfied swig of beer, reminiscing.

Naomi still wants to leave. “I dreamt of dying, burnt to death by a brazen bull.” Her visions coalesce, seeing its oven again, smoke coming from the creature’s nostrils. She hopes it buys time to leave, but Jordan does not know of the device, nor how to react.

“Oh” is all he can muster.

“You should look it up.” She points at the phone on his armrest, and a quick search has him glancing up and down with gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry.”

“It didn’t hurt me.”

“Did it end?”

“I’d rather not say.” The sun sets in front of them, and he gets up to go inside for another bottle. “Let me know when you’re leaving. I don’t want to hold you back.”

When a dream is forgotten, it becomes a memory to recollect and learn from, something core to her being. Naomi’s unconscious mind is trying to say something, and her conscious one has broken apart and rebuilt it enough times that it may as well have happened.

Who put her on that country road? It must have been her boss. He knew where she was in the blink of an eye. Did she do it herself? It might mean nothing, she did read about the ancient torture device between film sessions. Was she slacking? Where is Jordan?

He's been gone for an obnoxious stretch, but she can keep herself occupied. Naomi reaches into her purse and pulls out a speaker. It’s charged, not her phone. She scavenges again for a charger, but this she does not find. Her impatient eyes follow a leaf as it blows down the driveway to her car, a tempting yet distant escape.

A door opens behind her, and her stepfather returns with a fresh drink. Jordan sits down quietly like before, but this time doesn’t speak first as Naomi concludes, “My boss put me in the bull. It had to be him.” He processes the appropriate response, “The nerve...”

She places the speaker on her armrest. “Can you connect to this?” “Sure.”

They sit in the ambiance of an approaching night, and he connects to the Bluetooth speaker. “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys is the first song he plays this late October evening, his choice to end the turbulent day. They burst out laughing, father and daughter once again. She never tells him the full extent of her nightmare or his role.