Hangman's Game Page 2

  Jai considers this explanation, and though I am sure he believes himself to be a bigger deal than any ESPN broadcaster, he makes an effort to appear placated by Cecil’s words.

  “That’s cool, that’s cool,” Jai says. “I know about being poor. When I was growing up, all I could afford to eat was pussy.”

  Jai laughs at his joke, as do Cecil and I. Samuel’s nervous smile could, I suppose, pass for an appreciative response.

  At this point, the Stark’s hostess inserts herself into our group. She looks to be in her mid-thirties, which is old enough to qualify her as the den mother of the restaurant’s young female staff.

  “Good evening,” she says. “Are you all joining Mr. Carson’s party? We can pull up another table.”

  “Let’s do it,” Jai says. “I know there’s a lot of ugly motherfuckers in my group, but these are quality people.” He shouts across the restaurant, “Hey, Cheat Sheet. Stand up!”

  The man who rises from Jai’s table is maybe five foot six, skinny, and wearing a bright purple jacket with an orange shirt and pants. He smiles, flashing a full grille of gleaming gold.

  “He’s my pastor,” Jai says.

  Somehow I don’t think the presence of that particular pastor will appeal to Samuel’s country values. But still, we need to accept this invitation, before this potential rift between the defense’s veteran leader and its high-priced rookie opens any wider.

  “Let’s…” I start.

  “No.”

  Samuel says this quietly and firmly while looking at Cecil.

  “I see a table over there,” Samuel mutters, and begins walking into the dining area—not toward the players’ section but to an empty table on the far side of the regular dining room. The hostess grabs three menus and runs out in front of Samuel, attempting to gain control of the expedition.

  Up to this point, I have been feeling sorry for shy, sheltered Samuel, but his refusal is unmistakably rude.

  “Well, fuck me,” Jai says, mystified. Then, angrier: “Fuck me!” For Jai, the phrase is like “Aloha” or “Shalom,” in that it carries many different meanings, dependent on situation and inflection.

  I wish I could tell you that I have never seen anything like this, a simple disagreement that quickly escalates into high-grade hostility, but football is populated by thin-skinned competitors who see every conflict as an urgent test of their manhood. That’s great when it’s fourth-and-goal on the one; less so when you want a peaceable dinner.

  “Later, buddy,” I say to Jai with a shrug, and I hold out my fist for a bump. He looks at me dubiously before returning my bump with a shot that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a punch.

  At our table, the three of us study our menus quietly. “Porterhouse or rib eye, the eternal question,” Cecil says with forced jollity. I wonder if Cecil is thinking about what a disaster that was. I certainly am. Just as a nation divided against itself cannot stand, a locker room divided against itself cannot win. Between Jai’s ego and Samuel’s reticence, it is not clear who will initiate peace talks.

  Soon we are greeted by our waitress, who is quite a sight. I would guess that she is in her early 20s. Like all the waitstaff, she wears a pale pink dress shirt and a short black skirt. She has blond hair that she wears tied up on top, feline green eyes, and round, freckled cheeks. She is the shortest girl on the floor, which accentuates that she is also the most buxom, the lone girl here whose curves dominate her straightaways.

  “Howdy,” she says with a broad grin. “I’m Melody.”

  “Howdy,” I say. “I’m Nick.” And then I introduce Cecil and Samuel.

  “Are you Samuel Sault?” Melody asks Samuel, eyes wide.

  “Yes,” Samuel says quietly. And that is all he says. Though he is making strong eye contact with her breasts.

  After a decent interval of silence, Melody taps pen on pad and asks for our order.

  “I’ll have the rib eye,” Cecil says. “Medium rare. With creamed spinach and mashed potatoes.”

  “Excellent,” she says, and turns to Samuel. “How about you, big fella?”

  “Same,” Samuel says.

  “Very well. And you, sir?”

  “I’ll have the broiled salmon,” I say. “And for side dishes—the broccoli, can they steam that?” I ask.

  “I think so, but I’ll check. You get a second side as well.”

  “Just the steamed broccoli will be fine.”

  “And what if they can’t steam the broccoli?”

  “Then no sides for me.”

  “Really?” She eyes me curiously. “You have a beauty pageant coming up or something?”

  Cecil snickers. “Every day, miss. Every day.”

  “For your drink, let me guess … club soda with lemon,” Melody says. “Am I right?”

  That is exactly what I was going to order, but I suddenly don’t want to admit that.

  “Lime, actually.”

  “You really wanted lemon, right?” she says with a grin. “You’re saying ‘lime’ to fuck with me?”

  “Fine,” I say. “Lemon.” Maybe it’s because I’m in need of a distraction, but this waitress’s sauciness feels entirely welcome. I check her left hand to make sure this one doesn’t have a husband. The ring finger is clean.

  “Anyone ever call you Mel?” I ask her.

  “Not if they want me to answer,” she says with a chuckle. “Mel-o-dee. Three syllables. Trust me, I’m worth the effort.” She winks and walks away.

  Samuel unabashedly eyes Melody as she goes. He smiles boyishly, his eyes relax, and I see that he is handsome when he’s happy. His teeth are a little here and there, but in a sweet sort of way. I can picture that smile in an aftershave commercial, or on the cover of GQ, if he wants to make that happen.

  Samuel excuses himself to go to the bathroom. When he is out of earshot, I say to Cecil, “He’s not the most loquacious fellow, is he?”

  “He’s a good kid,” Cecil snaps. “He’s just out of his element. You should see where he grew up. It’s like they got indoor plumbing a few weeks ago. He’s in shock just being here.”

  “If you say so,” I say. I grew up in a small town, too, though I only came to Philadelphia from Upstate New York, and I had always wanted to live in a city, whereas Samuel seems to have been forcibly relocated here by the magnitude of his talent. And when I arrived in Philadelphia, none of the locals knew who I was, and none of them were counting on me to make their Sundays happier ones.

  “Samuel is going to need help,” Cecil says. “I need you to look out for him in the locker room, and keep him on the right track. Can you do that for me?”

  I don’t really think I can help much—Cecil may be overrating my influence—but I owe Cecil my best effort, seeing as I wouldn’t be a Sentinel without him. I came from a small school and had only punted for one season in college, and I wouldn’t have drawn a single invitation to a training camp without his aggressive campaigning on my behalf. He was the only agent who even thought I was worth representing. We made it here together. “Mr. Wilson,” I say. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  Samuel is now walking back from the men’s room, moving quietly but more erect, without the diminishing shoulder slouch from earlier in the evening. I look across the restaurant and see that Jai is staring at Samuel predatorily, tracking his movements. All the guys at Jai’s table are doing the same. Even from this distance I see a distinct malice in their gaze.

  Samuel, oblivious to the eyes upon him, arrives at the table with an amused smile. “They have a picture of me in the john,” he says. Stark’s posts the sports page on a tack board stationed above the urinal, so guys can read while they pee. Today’s headline, if I recall correctly, is “Can Sault Save the Sentinels’ Defense?”

  Jai has no doubt read that story as well—and given that he considers himself the soul of our defense, he surely did not care for the implication that it needs to be saved.

  I know how on edge I have been the last few days, simply because the tea
m signed Woodward Tolley to compete for my job. While Jai’s job is not threatened by Samuel’s arrival, his status as alpha dog certainly is.

  “Maybe we should order a bottle for Jai’s table,” I say.

  “Good idea,” Cecil says. “I’ll take care of it when the waitress returns with our food.”

  A few minutes later Melody is back with their steaks and my salmon.

  “Hi, sweet thing.”

  This is Samuel, greeting Melody as she places food in front of him. Great.

  “Where are you from, Samuel?” Melody asks eagerly. If she can recognize Samuel, the details of his contract—$64 million with a $12 million bonus and $30 million guaranteed—are likely embedded in her frontal lobe.

  “Alabama, ma’am,” Samuel says. “Vickers, Alabama.”

  “Really,” she says. “Welcome to the big city. And just to let you know, those red and green things you see hanging in the middle of the street? They’re traffic lights.”

  Samuel titters and then goes silent. Melody waits with professional patience for the next beat in the conversation. Meanwhile, steaks in the kitchen go from medium to well.

  “Miss, I have a request,” Cecil interposes. “Please send a bottle of champagne to Jai Carson’s table. Cristal if you have it.” Look at Cecil, name-checking champagne brands. “Tell them it’s from Samuel.”

  “I’ll get on it right away,” Melody says, placing her hand on Samuel’s shoulder. “They’ll be very impressed.”

  She walks to the back, without having looked at me once.

  As I fork my way through my salmon and steamed broccoli, I glance back and forth between the kitchen and Jai’s table, hoping to see Melody return with the champagne before Jai and his friends leave. I can see Jai studying the bill, unsheathing his wallet and dropping a pile of cash on the table. Then he and his guys all stand up and begin to move out. The path of their exit steers them closer to us.

  “Bye-bye, motherfuckers,” Jai shouts as he passes the nearest point to our table. “Don’t nobody take my shine. You don’t know who JC is, you going to find out real soon.”

  Sigh.

  Back in college, I had majored in anthropology, and last season I could have written a master’s thesis entitled “Constant Defeat and its Effects on Inhabitants of a Closed Society.” As the losses accumulated, I could see players blaming one another, tuning out coaches they no longer respected, concluding that fate was against them, and anesthetizing themselves to the weekly ritual of failure by deciding that all that mattered was finishing the season without getting hurt. If Samuel and Jai’s first meeting is any indication, this year promises to be yet another chapter in an ongoing study in the behavior of losers.

  And of course, now that Jai has left the restaurant, Melody emerges from the back, bottle in hand, only to discover that there is no one to whom she can deliver our conciliatory gesture.

  She heads our way, grimacing and shaking her head.

  “I’m so sorry,” Melody pleads. “I had a big order that was running late, and then it turns out I had to go back to our storeroom to get your Cristal. And the storeroom was locked, and I had to find the manager, and then he had to find the key, which wasn’t where it is supposed to be…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cecil says politely. “It happens.”

  “Do you still want the bottle?” Melody says.

  Cecil considers the question. Did the former hardware store manager, however newly enriched, want to blow five hundred dollars on booze he never wanted in the first place?

  “Keep it for yourself,” I say to Melody. “My treat. I’ll even autograph it for you.” I take the bottle from her hand and write my name and my phone number, on the label. There is another player at the table, even if he doesn’t have a $64 million contract with $30 million guaranteed.

  “Give me a call sometime,” I say as I hand the bottle back to Melody.

  “Nick Gallow,” Cecil says, amused. “Going for it on fourth and long.”

  Melody’s cheeks flush—in excitement, I hope.

  “Well, thank you,” she says, sounding confused but also pleased. “I have always appreciated the kindness of strangers.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say. “But isn’t the line, ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’?”

  “I don’t depend on it, I’m not that dumb,” Melody says, cradling the champagne affectionately. “But I do appreciate it when it comes along.”

  Afterward, I assure Cecil that I will reimburse him for the champagne—and then to shut him up I pull out my wallet and hand him $500.

  We carve through the rest of our meal with quiet efficiency. The conversational highlight is when I ask Samuel about his training regimen.

  “Cars,” he says, not looking up from his plate. Samuel has cut his steak into tiny pieces. Before he picks up a bite he drags it around in a pool of steak sauce on his plate. With this latest piece he appears to be tracing the letter K.

  “Cars?” I ask, confused. “You race them?”

  “No,” he says tersely, as if my remark was made out of condescension, not confusion. “I push ’em.”

  “I’ve seen him do this,” Cecil says, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I keep telling Samuel it could be a great ESPN feature, it’s very visual. He pushes a car from one side of a field to another. It’s a perfect workout for a lineman. He stays low, it builds leg drive, and it’s all short bursts, just like he’s in a game.”

  “How’d you come up with that?” I ask Samuel.

  “I dunno,” he mumbles. “Just did.”

  “C’mon, Samuel,” Cecil says. “Tell him the story.”

  Samuel takes a bite of steak and doesn’t say anything. So Cecil begins.

  “One day, Samuel’s mother is out at the Walmart down the road and her car breaks down,” Cecil says. “A Chevy Malibu, I believe. So she calls a tow truck. But then it turns out the tow truck costs like a hundred dollars…”

  “One-fifteen,” Samuel mutters.

  “… a hundred and fifteen,” Cecil continues, his thick fingers interlaced on the table. “Which is more money than she has to spare. So Samuel pushes the car to the repair place himself. And remember, this is in August, in Alabama. It’s sweltering. Samuel’s father—he’s a long-haul trucker—is away on a job. And the repair place is five miles down the road.…”

  “Four,” Samuel says. He has a new piece of steak on his fork and he is tracing the numeral “4” in the sauce.

  “Four miles,” Cecil says. “That’s still a lot. And how many days does it take you to push it down the highway, all by yourself?”

  “Two,” Samuel says, changing his drawing pattern to a “2.”

  “After two days he gets it to the shop, and they get the estimate, and they can’t afford that either. So Samuel pushes the car back home. Then football season starts, and Samuel is tossing aside offensive lineman like they are cardboard cutouts.”

  “I’ll have to try it sometime,” I say, genuinely impressed. I wonder why Samuel wouldn’t want that story told. Maybe he thinks it makes him sound poor and backwoods. Or perhaps he has an instinctive resistance to his uncalculated actions being transformed into myth.

  We clear our plates within minutes. At one point I look up from my food and catch Samuel staring at me, and his eyes quickly return to his steak.

  I had woken up this morning thinking that I would spend the evening with Jessica, whose husband left tonight for a business trip to Switzerland. But I canceled out on her when I received Cecil’s invitation. If I could go back in time, I would stick to my plans and send Cecil a particularly thoughtful e-card.

  * * *

  After dinner Cecil suggests that we drive to the Sentinels’ stadium, operating on the logic that this shitpile of an evening might look more like a sundae if he can somehow place a cherry on top.

  “We’ll be quick,” Cecil assures me when I object. “Just a few minutes at the stadium, then it’s back home. Samuel likes to get to bed ear
ly.”

  “As do I, Cecil,” I say. “As do I.”

  I am tucked into the backseat of Cecil’s Escalade like a child. Samuel sits mutely in the front passenger seat, staring straight ahead. A smaller man might disappear in his silence, but Samuel looms.

  We arrive at the stadium and the parking-lot gates are closed, and there is no guard to whom we can flaunt our insider status. We circumnavigate the dark metal hulk—opened for business in 2002, capacity 74,000—but we can’t find a way in.

  Cecil pulls over to the curb, quiets the engine, and opens his door. Apparently we are to stand on the sidewalk and genuflect as if we are superfans who have come to the stadium on a pilgrimage. All we needed to complete the picture are some Sentinels banners to wave forlornly in the night.

  We disembark from the Escalade and stand three abreast by the chain-link fence, looking up at the stadium, its halves curving inward like the mouth of a Venus flytrap.

  “Kind of ugly, isn’t it?” Samuel says.

  I laugh. “It sure is.”

  My phone buzzes. I have a text from Jessica, who, after my cancellation, apparently hasn’t made any other plans for the evening.

  I’m feeling tightness in my upper thighs. I think I need my trainer friend Troy to come by and loosen me up.

  Her note is a reference to our first meeting, which took place three years ago at the Jefferson gym. Jessica and her husband stayed there for a month when they were relocating to Philadelphia for his job with the Federal Reserve. She and I were in a spin class together, facing each other on opposite bicycles. After the class we were stretching and she suggested that if we went up to her apartment we would have much more room to splay out. She didn’t call me Troy that day, but she has in subsequent reenactments.

  “Darn it, I left my phone in the car,” Cecil says. “I should get a picture of Samuel at the stadium. Maybe I can send it out on Twitter.”

  “You tweet now?” I ask.

  “I’m managing an account for Samuel,” Cecil says. “He needs one. It is 2009, after all.” He dashes back to the car for the phone.