Beth was staring at his face. They had been on maybe seven or eight dates. She was pretty—likely too young and pretty for him. She hadn’t touched the cranberry and white chip muffins he had made before she awoke or the nicer coffee he had spent an extra four bucks a bag for at Trader Joes. He wasn’t certain her age. Twenty-something? 

Last night she had slept over. He thought it was going to be the night. She took off her shirt but not her bra. They kissed and pawed at each other, and then she said in a voice that was equal parts sleepy and playful, “Goodnight, Mr. Jose,” and he spent the rest of the evening restless and frustrated. After 11, he stood in his underwear in front of the bathroom mirror. Through the dim light, he looked back at the bed. She had fallen asleep in her jeans, which he thought odd, but he liked the way her jeans rode up her waistline as she slept—how her bellybutton disappeared beneath the hem. The skin on her back was smooth and covered in moles and freckles.    

“What,” he said when he couldn’t take the silence at the breakfast table any longer.  

“Last night,” she began.  

“Was fun.”  

“Sure,” she said. “But last night you said the strangest things in your sleep. You rolled over so your face was right up against mine and said in the clearest voice, ‘Feathers. I have feathers. Beautiful, translucent feathers.’”  

“Feathers?”  

“Yeah.” 

“I said I have feathers?” 

Beth nodded.  

“I’ve been taking these pills. For sleep, I mean. It’s probably a side effect. I’m sorry.”  

“Maybe, deep down, you’re a little birdy,” she said and finally took a drink of coffee. Jose felt relieved to see her do so.  

“I’m sorry,” he said again, though he wasn’t sure why.  

“What time do you go to work?”  

“Soon,” he said. “I have to drop my kids at archery practice on the way.”  

A noisy sip and she said, “I did that once. Archery. At summer camp in Wisconsin.”  

“It’s a big deal in this state. Very competitive.”  

Beth closed her eyes and winced, as if pulling a memory from long ago. “A starling landed on one of the targets. Pecked the straw batting out. Like a scarecrow. I was suddenly upset.  At the starling, I mean. I shot an arrow at it. Missed him by two inches. I was an angry child.”  

* 

“Tonight is not the whole story on who makes the state team and who doesn’t, but it is important that archers do well in the 3D tournament,” said Coach Westhouse. She was half addressing the parents and half addressing the team. Westhouse, a large lady with cropped hair and broad shoulders, rarely smiled but loved archery and her squad, and took coaching as seriously as one could take a middle school sport in the middle of Missouri.  

Jose, as he did, nodded, only partly paying attention. He wished he cared more and could approach archery as seriously (or positively) as Coach Westhouse, or at least as well as the other parents who dotted the red bleachers. On the far end of the gym floor, his two kids—Sofia, age 13, and Mateo, age 11—stood in front of and slightly to the left of him, holding giant plastic bow cases and wearing two-fingered shooting gloves.  

“Hear that guys,” Jose said.  “Tonight’s 3D tournament is a big one. Super important.”  

“All tournaments are important, Dad,” said Sofia.  

“I don’t want you to be nervous is all.”  

“Matty’s the one who gets nervous.”  

“I know. He’s like me. It’s in his blood. Nerves, I mean.”  

Sofia’s long black hair, usually in a braid, was loose. She was wearing her archery tee from two years ago. It hugged tightly to her frame. Tall and lanky. Already five foot six. Her body’s growth rushing out to a huge lead on her diminutive brother. She was still a kid but probably eighteen months away from being mistaken for an adult. She blinked, rocked her head back and forth, and said, “I have the same blood and nerves that you guys have.”  

“I know you do, baby.” 

Jose was struck for a moment at how much his daughter looked like her mom—his ex-wife—how they both had a habit of absently correcting him, as if he were born in a barn in some backwards village or something.  

When he picked the kids up this morning, after saying goodbye to the lovely Beth (still wearing the same pair of jeans), his ex-wife had been waiting in her driveway. She used to smoke cigarettes and drink strong coffee to wake up when they were married.  But she gave all that up after the separation. There she stood, eating a banana and scrolling through her phone. She’d lost weight. Her skin looked younger, healthier already.  

The first thing she said to him was, “The kids have to leave at seven. Not you rolling in at seven. I asked you to be in the driveway at 6:55. I know it’s only five minutes. But it throws their whole day off. You need to care more.”  

“I’m here. Ready to go,” Jose said through the open truck window.  

She looked away, her fingers rolling the banana peel into a little cylinder. “You’re trying,” she said. “I can see you. But you started so far behind. We’re all waiting for you to catch up.”  

The kids in the gymnasium were trained to follow whistle commands. Two blasts: get Genesis bow. One blast: shoot feathered missiles at target. Three blasts: score that crap, as Sofia sometimes said. Center bullseye was worth ten. Outer bullseye: nine. The next ring: eight/seven. The one after that: don’t even bother. The kids shot blunted, competition arrows—fiberglass sticks with neon fletching—quite different than the razor-tipped broadheads used to hunt game. It didn’t matter though. The velocity was there. The arrows could stick right into a human leg, or back, or heart. They didn’t look like it, but they could kill.  

Jose shifted in the bleachers, one of his feet already asleep. He hadn’t slept well next to Beth. He kept getting an inclination to snuggle her like he did his ex-wife, bury his face into her chest, or wake her up with kisses. Something. Anything. But he didn’t touch her at all. He dreaded the fact that an hour after practice he needed to go back to the Verizon store and sell more phones. Another day of dealing with people who had cracked screens and lost data. Folks who dropped their iPhone in the toilet when they stood up. Who watched their Androids tumble down a flight of concrete stairs. Another eight-hour shift. Playing Wordle. Breezing through Twitter and Instagram. Sending memes. A list of boring facts on his morning email. Today was the day of the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak of 1965. A bloody riot in an Ohio prison. Today was the birthday of English songwriter Joss Stone and baseball players Trot Nixon and Bret Saberhagen. Today was the day Kurt Vonnegut died.  

“Dad,” said Mateo, standing at the bottom of the bleachers. He was always the first one back after retrieving arrows.   

“What?”  

“Sofie shot a 50.”  

Jose squinted at the distant row of targets.  His daughter was pulling out arrows slowly and letting them clatter on the gym floor. “That’s awesome.”  

Mateo shrugged.  

“How did you do?”  

“44.”  

“Great!”  

“Not really.”  

* 

The day at the Verizon store was like every day at the Verizon store.  Jose put on at least thirteen screen protectors—he was the only one who could do it without getting bubbles—and he took at least thirteen bathroom breaks. He always drank a lot of water and diet soda at work, usually so he could go to the bathroom more often.  Most of the time he didn’t need to pee at all. He simply stood in front of the toilet and thought.  He liked to be by himself in a little room. It wasn’t meditation exactly. Not praying either, though he did believe in God. In the bathroom stall, he thought about everything going on. All at the same time, and nothing in particular. His ex-wife. The guy with the earring from her office that she was probably sleeping with. The way Beth’s skin contrasted with her red bra and silver jeans. The other woman he went on a blind date with last month who pulled away when he tried to get a hug after taking her to Starbucks. Sofia and Mateo. Their growing up which had seemed slow when they were little but now felt like happening overnight. Whether or not his kids had friends, or if they were becoming interested in doing teenager things, like stealing beers or making out with other teenagers. The health of his mom. The health of his bank account. His truck’s transmission, the way it had made a funny noise when he downshifted the other day. What truths were in the years behind. What came next. What was right in front of his face. And then he’d blink, look down at his watch, and realize he needed to go back to the lobby.   

In the afternoon he texted Beth to see if she wanted to come to the 3D archery tournament. She texted back—Okay?  

The question mark was confusing, but it made him happy that she was interested in seeing him two nights in a row.  

His phone contained another text. This from his son. He didn’t realize kids were allowed to have their phones at school.  

The text—Have u been to steakhouse   

His response—Yes 

Mateo texted back immediately—Was good 

—Yes 

—What get  

—Steak 

—What kind 

—Working  

—Sorry dad  

Jose glanced up at his customer who had been hemming and hawing for the last fifteen minutes about phone cases. Which ones were the most indestructible but still fashionable? The customer kept picking up the cases, sucking their teeth, and sighing. Jose held up a finger and said he thought he saw a shipment of brand-new Otterboxes in the back.  

When he got to the storage room, he sat on a stack of boxes and messaged Mateo. 

—Last steakhouse was great meal. Forgot name. Middle floor. Big building. Sirloin, salad, fries, greens, Coke, cherry ice cream. Top five meal in my life.”  

Mateo texted him back a picture of 10 steak and potato emojis, and then one of a face spewing green vomit. 

Jose grinned. He knew what his kid wanted. The other archery parents were talking about it this morning. It was tradition for a kid who made state to be rewarded with a steak dinner. Jose wasn’t surprised Mateo wanted what the other archers wanted. His kid always bent over backwards to fit in.   

He was surprised, though, that his son seemed to be asking him rather than his mother.  

* 

Many of the parents at the archery tournaments were divorced. Jose read once on his daily news brief that the national divorce rate had been falling in the last couple years, but that was probably an anomaly. Marriage was still a coin flip. You could pick out which kids were from broken homes because they would show their score to one parent with their fingers, and then turn to another section of the bleachers and show their score to the other.  

Jose didn’t quite fit in with the other dads. Sofia being the number two archer on the team made the other parents want to know him. Waiting for tournaments to start sometimes, or standing in line for the restroom, they engaged him. They assumed, wrongly, he had a passion for hunting and all things outdoors. That he owned bows himself, camouflage and blaze orange tunics, and likely a small stockpile of firearms. They regaled him with stories of knocking down big white tails with buckshot, or pegging a fat Tom turkey when it raised its gobbler out of the tall grass. Deep down, they presumed, he was one of them. He had to be. Otherwise why would he be there? Why would his kids like this sport if they weren’t cut from the same cloth as the rest of the people in the gym?   

One tournament, a dad had asked Jose for leads on any good pheasant spots. Jose licked his lips as if he were thinking about it, and said, “You know. I haven’t gotten to go. I’d like to. It’s hard to find the time.”  

It’s not that he meant to be an imposter. Jose liked the other parents, and he wanted them to like him. He had never had many friends. Just a few buddies. No everyday companion, aside from his ex-wife. And now she was gone. His kids were the only permanence left.  

“I know exactly what you mean,” the man sitting next to him in the bleachers had said. He was bearded and wearing a tan hat that said Cabela’s and a sweatshirt with the school colors on it. He was also divorced, Jose figured. But a nice guy. His daughter was the same age as Mateo—the sixth graders seeming far younger and smaller than their seventh and eighth grade teammates. Jose could tell this dad was nervous—that he badly wanted his daughter to win medals and break records. When the kids shot, the man constantly drummed his fingertips on both knees as if he were playing a complicated melody on a piano.  

The man said after a while, “Matty will make the team. Won’t he?”  

“The state team?”   

The man nodded.  

“I don’t know,” said Jose. “Maybe. Maybe not. There’s always next year, too. And the year after. He’s young. They’re all young.”  

“Claire’s going to be heartbroken if she doesn’t get in. We’ve worked so hard.”  

* 

Thirty minutes before the 3D archery tournament, Jose picked up Beth in his truck that may or may not have a transmission problem. It seemed fine today. She answered the door wearing a tight sweater with vertical stripes on it, and the same silver jeans she wore last night—all through the night. He almost mentioned her jeans, but then realized how bad of an idea that was. She looked good, though, showered and done up in a casual way. He didn’t have a strong sense of smell, but he could smell lavender coming from her skin. He had surgery for a deviated septum as a teenager, and his smell never fully recovered.  

He kept thinking about the jeans, though. Beth’s naked silhouette in the shower, lathering up. Fogged up mirrors. The jeans crumpled on the bathroom floor. Her putting them back on over wet, freshly shaved legs. Maybe she owned multiple pairs of the same ones. He had no idea.  

Beth said, “Hey there.”  

“You look amazing,” he said. He wanted to say “enchanting” or “mesmerizing” but he thought that sounded ridiculous.  

She smiled and said, “Thanks, baby.” He didn’t know if she meant to call him that or if it had slipped out. She looked embarrassed by the word, or maybe his face when she said it. But then, as soon as she got into the truck, she leaned over from the passenger seat, grasped his ears with both hands, and stuck her tongue in his mouth.  

It was all so unexpected. He had thought before he pulled into the parking lot that tonight could easily be the last night of their relationship. He didn’t anticipate this. His entire body tensed, but then he remembered what to do. His ex-wife, when they first started dating, taught him how to properly kiss. To relax his lips and control his tongue. To keep his eyes eighty percent closed. To straighten his spine and let his neck go loose. To be cognizant of his teeth. To run his hands through the back of her hair.  

The kiss went on and on. This is a surprise, he thought. This is a very good surprise.  

* 

Coach Westhouse was in a serious mood when Jose and Beth arrived at the 3D tournament. She wore slacks, which she never wore, and a school polo that actually fit. Her short hair was fluffed just so, and hoop earrings dangled to the hinge of her jaw—which was set like a closed trap.  

Last year, rumor was that Coach Westhouse’s nerves got the best of her at the overnight competition in Branson. The team would end up finishing in ninth place at state, which was a disappointment given the caliber of archers on the squad. Unable to sleep the night before the big shoot, Westhouse ordered room service and bought a bottle of schnapps from a local gas station. Just to keep her head above water, Jose assumed. But she had messaged the archery group chat throughout the evening, making less and less sense as the night wore on. Her final text being an entire paragraph about the importance of keeping a jersey tucked in—how that separated the serious people from the people who were just happy to be there. The parents said they could tell how lonely the coach became after the sun set.  

“Oh my god,” said Beth. “That’s Dorothy Westhouse.”  

“Coach Westhouse? No. Her name is Diana.”  

But Beth wasn’t listening. In seconds, she was down on the orange gymnasium floor, wrapping her arms around the archery coach. The two women were holding each other with eyes closed. When they let go, Coach Westhouse wiped away tears, and then grabbed Beth in for another never-ending hug.  

Jose, having followed his date down the bleacher stairs, had no idea what was going on. He stood, feeling foolish, next to the heartfelt reunion. “Oh, Dorothy. Dorothy, Dorothy,” Beth was saying.  

Finally, unable to stand there any longer, Jose sat in the front row of the bleachers and stared straight ahead. There were officials in bright yellow shirts setting up foam animals for the 3D shoot. A turkey. A coyote. A mule deer. A bear. A ram. An antelope. The officials were placing them in predesignated spots around the gymnasium, measuring the distance between with a tape.  

The animals were about to be skewered by a thousand arrows, Jose realized, and he nearly laughed.  

* 

Beth would not shut up about Coach Westhouse after she sat down. About how Coach Westhouse used to be Dorothy when they were in high school, but now she was Diana. Why? Because Diana could do everything that Dorothy couldn’t. Diana was somebody. Somebody that could shoulder the weight of a major American city. Explore foreign lands. Accept challenges. A person named Dorothy wanted to hang around Kansas. Like a string was tied from her waist to the middle of the heartland. The Wizard of Oz jokes started even before she introduced herself.  

After a while, Jose said, “So her actual name is Dorothy?”   

“No, it’s Diana. But she’s always going to be Dorothy to me. A part of her, at least.”  

Beth squeezed Jose’s hand and said, “I’m so happy I came with you tonight. I was on the fence, but I made the right decision.”  

She smiled and added, “Little birdie.”  

Jose didn’t know how to respond.  With his free hand, he pointed and said, “That’s Mateo by the bear. Sofia is shooting at the ram. We need to be quiet during the rounds, but we can talk in between.”  

There were maybe 50 archers spread throughout the gymnasium for the 6 o’ clock flight. Each lined up in front of a foam animal. After each round, the archers rotated one animal to the left. Both of his children were excellent marksmen. They peppered the animals with arrow after arrow. It was hard to tell from the bleachers where the maximum scoring areas were, but they usually corresponded with a shot to the heart. From the looks of it, Sofia was shooting each foam creature right in the ticker, over and over again. Mateo’s shots were more often landing in the belly or shoulder. The son’s body language showed complete frustration after the second round. Sofia looked, as she always did, unfazed.  

After a while, Beth rested her head against Jose’s shoulder.  

* 

Mateo was crestfallen at the tournament’s end. Jose waved him over after the final round so he could make introductions with Beth, but Matty walked directly to his mom (who had attended solo and had sat on the other side of the gym). When Jose stood on his tiptoes, he could make out the image of his son, trying not to sob against his mother’s shoulder but doing it anyway.    

Sofia had come in second place overall, and when she walked up she was swinging her medal like a hulu-hoop around her forearm. She said hello to Beth and shook her hand. Beth smiled at her but Sofia didn’t smile back. After several moments of awkward silence, Coach Westhouse walked by. Beth jogged after her, saying, “Dorothy! Hey! Don’t leave yet.”  

Sofia looked at her dad and said, “That water bottle you bought her from the vending machine. It has plastic particles in it.” She meant Beth when she said “her.”  

“What?” said Jose, rising to his toes again. He wished Matty would stop crying. He didn’t like it when his son made a scene, or when he acted like small things meant the universe was ending.  

“Like microscopic particles, Dad. We eat as much plastic as is in a credit card every week. Most of it comes from bottled water, fish, and salt.”  

“I don’t like fish though.”  

“You eat salt. And you like junk. There’s plastic in that too.”  

Jose rocked back on his heels and looked at her. “So what you’re telling me is that I use my credit card to eat a credit card?”  

“Every week.”  

“You know you were great tonight, right?”  

Sofia sighed. “I could have won, probably. I screwed up on the coyote.”  

“Nah. You shot him dead, partner. You massacred the whole zoo, buckaroo.”   

“God, Dad. Just stop.”  

His daughter’s eyes were elsewhere, watching the other archers flit like song birds around the gymnasium. He patted her head and said, “Go on, babe. Hang with your crew. I’m going to check on Matty and then split. Wait, though. Tell me what you think of Beth first.”  

“She’s fine, I guess.”  

He thought about following up with something snarky and laid back. Catch his daughter off guard. She’s prettier than your mom, isn’t she? Instead, he said, “You let me know right away if you don’t like somebody I’m dating. I’ll send them packing.”  

“Sure, Dad. Like you would do that.”  

“I’ll pick you up on Friday. And I’m dead serious. You’re the boss of my love life from here on out.”  

“You’re so weird,” she said, and then she was off, sprinting toward a group of other tall, lanky girls in hooded sweatshirts.  

Jose exited the bleachers and stood with pocketed hands on the gym floor. He thought about taking one of the school bows from the hanger and taking a couple shots at a foam deer. Just to see what it was like. He felt good about Sofia. She was great at everything. It all came naturally to her. She had friends, too, and she would likely turn out to be beautiful, which would make her life easier in many ways.  

On the far side of the gym, Coach Westhouse was talking to Mateo, who was still blubbering about the tournament. The coach’s broad hands were on his shoulders. She was leaning in and saying something directly into his face. Trying to settle him. Or make him understand that he was only a sixth grader. He was still one of the youngest on the team. Still a kid. The eighth graders were kids, too, but they were older—teenagers. They were nearly high schoolers. Matty was, last year, an elementary kid who carried an Avengers lunch box and went to birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese.   

After a few minutes of serious conversation, Mateo’s eyes lit up. His troubles seemed to instantly melt away. And then he and the coach embraced. Smiles all around. Nervous laughter.   

Even from across the room, Jose could tell what had happened. Westhouse had felt sorry for his kid—the way he was crying and how badly he wanted to go to state—so she had given him a spot on the team. Even if another kid had better scores. The roster spot was going to Matty.  

Jose didn’t know how to feel, let alone what to say. He thought about how his own dad would have reacted in that situation. Maybe what the old Jose might have done. He was certain: His dad would have made him give the spot back. You don’t leapfrog some other kid because you cried like a baby, his dad would say. His dad wouldn’t have said baby either. He would have said little girl. Or something worse. Likely, his dad would have cuffed the side of his head.  

The thought of his father hadn’t crossed his mind in years. His dad had disappeared when Jose was Sofia’s age. He left the country and started a new family with somebody else. A woman Jose didn’t know. His mom couldn’t understand what had happened. Nobody in the family did. They simply moved on with their lives, pooling whatever money they had to keep going—keep living. Jose hated to think about his father. He hated to feel like he had come from something so broken.  

Beaming ear to ear, Mateo jogged across the gymnasium toward him. His ex-wife trailed a few feet behind the excited child. And, in the background, Coach Westhouse had her left arm linked to Beth’s right, who was still wearing the same jeans.  

Jose understood he needed to be excited. To say something about a big steak dinner. It was the right thing to do. And if he did the right thing a thousand times in a row, he will have lived correctly. 

If he did the right thing a thousand times in a row, that would be him.