Ponitka's Pierogi by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

1 – That Memory Intrudes Again

The building had that strange, suspended quiet that only happens in the final seconds of a close playoff game; 20,000 people making noise but somehow holding their breath at the same time. The Celtics huddled around Joe Mazzulla, who was drawing something up that looked clean on the whiteboard but would inevitably turn into a wrestling match in the paint.

The 76ers led the Celtics 104-102 with 4 seconds left. Boston’s Horford will inbound the ball from half court after the time out. Horford walked to the sideline, palms out, telling everyone to calm down. They didn’t. In fact they seemed to scream louder. The Sixers had Embiid shading the inbound, arms spread like a wind turbine. Boston stacked Tatum, Brown, and two decoys at the block, all shoulder to shoulder, like they were about to run a rugby scrum.

The whistle blew and those near courtside may have heard it.

The stack exploded in four directions; Tatum curling toward the rim, Brown sealing his man, the decoys crashing into bodies. It was chaos, exactly as designed. And then, from the back of the pack, Ponitka slipped free. Not fast. Not dramatic. Just a clean, quiet release into open space, like he’d stepped out of a subway car.

Horford saw it instantly.

He fired the pass over Embiid’s reach; one of those looping, high arc deliveries that feels like it’s in the air for a full second too long. Everything seemed to slow down, as it often does with pot. Why a defender didn’t get there first is one of those weed answered mysteries. But, Ponitka caught it on the hop, drifting backward, his heels brushing behind the three point line. He didn’t square up. He didn’t hesitate. He just rose.

The shot had that perfect, soft rotation; no wobble, no panic, no correction. The kind of shot that tells you the shooter knew it was good before it left his hand.

Swish.

TD Garden detonated.

Mike Brteen’s voice cracked over the roar; “Bang! Bang! Bang! The Celtics are going to the Eastern Conference Finals!”

Fans spilled over the railings. Security tried to hold them back and immediately gave up. Horford sprinted to Ponitka and bear hugged him so hard he nearly lifted him off the ground. Tatum was laughing, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe the universe had chosen that option.

Ponitka, for his part, looked like a man who had just remembered he left the oven on.

Announcer Mike Breen found him in the chaos.

“Wlady, Wlady. Come here. Can we get a word with you?”

Ponitka leaned in, still breathing hard.

“Sure, Mike.”

“What happened there? It looked like you were packing in for the tying two.”

He nodded. “Yeah, Mike, we were. We were looking to get it to Jayson or Jaylen down low. But that got all gummed up. Option two was what you saw. That low packing formed a natural screen for me to break out to the middle. Al threw the perfect pass with Joel right in his face.”

“And you nailed it.”

Ponitka made a tiny shrug. “Yeah.”

And that was the whole thing. No chest thumping. No theatrics. Just a role player who understood geometry, timing, and the moment’ and who happened to hit the biggest shot of his life because the defense forgot he was there.

Wladyslaw Ponitka woke up on his living room’s plush sofa; alone, facing the blank TV. Ada was off for a few days, visiting her mother in Albion. The house had that particular silence it only achieved when she was gone; less absence than a kind of acoustic neutrality. No hair dryer humming down the hall, no soft commentary from the kitchen, no footsteps crossing the hardwood with purpose.

He sat up slowly. His back and legs reminded him he was no longer twenty-five. The throw blanket slid off his shoulder and pooled on the floor like a deflated mascot.

The remote was still in his hand.

He clicked the TV on. Nothing but the menu screen. He must’ve fallen asleep before choosing anything.

On the coffee table sat a half finished bowl of cereal, the milk long since evaporated into a sugary film. Next to it, his phone buzzed with the kind of morning notifications that felt like a committee meeting; missed calls, texts from former teammates, a link from an old assistant coach titled “Remember This?”; almost certainly the clip of the shot.

He ignored it for now.

He stood, stretched, and walked to the window. The yard looked different without Ada’s commentary; no running critique of the “free formed” bushes, no gentle reminders about the gutters, no offhand remark about how the maple tree was “leaning like it’s thinking about something.”

Just a yard. Just a morning.

He wandered into the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed with the same indifferent confidence it always had. He opened it, stared at the contents, and closed it again without taking anything. The house felt too big for one person, but not in a tragic way; more like a hotel suite he hadn’t fully checked into.

On the counter sat a note Ada had left before leaving; “Back Sunday. Don’t eat only cereal. — A.”

He smiled at the period after “Sunday.” And “A.” Ada always punctuated her reminders like legal documents.

He poured himself a glass of water and leaned against the counter. The quiet wasn’t unpleasant. It was just ..... unstructured. A kind of intermission in the middle of his own life.

He picked up his phone again. This time he opened the clip. There he was; breaking out of the pack, catching Horford’s pass, stepping back, releasing. The crowd erupting. Mike Breen’s voice cracking. His own face afterward; not triumphant, not overwhelmed, just faintly bewildered, like a man who had been handed the wrong bag at the airport.

He watched it twice. Then he set the phone down.

The house remained still. He took another sip of water.

For the first time all morning, he spoke aloud, to no one in particular; “Yeah.”

And the day began.

The whole thing wasn’t really much of a thing for Wlady Ponitka. It kind of happened, or maybe didn’t in reality; but was now continually resurrected in net messages that for all he knew, could have been bot generated. Why the bots might do that was for the bots to answer, and they are elusive when confronted with anything their libby owners find inconvenient. For his part, Wlady kind of went blank at the great moment, not an uncommon phenomenon. The big game, which Wlady has no personal memory of, may as well have not happened; or maybe it happened in a way not currently recalled. His reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. No matter; as he didn’t see the question as his problem; just a possibly false memory provided to net addicts in search of fake thrills. The seriousness with which the supposed event was approached, was a good, personal source of amusement.