Divisions (Dev and Lee) (44 page)

“Right in front of me.” Dev grins. “He said he’s proud of me for my courage and happy to have me on the team.”

“Did you thank him again for using the jet?”

“Oh, shit.” Dev takes the check back, his ears flat. “I forgot.” He half-turns.

“No, no.” I laugh. “You sent him a note after. That should be enough.”

“Did you get to talk to Rodriguez?”

I nod. “Yeah. He said…” I pause. Dev’s on a high, our previous argument filed away, and this probably isn’t the right time to confront him about whether he put the team up to hiring me. “He said we’ll talk later in the week.”

“Good.” He drapes an arm around me. “It’s pretty cool, you know. Maybe you’ll be on the team too.” He looks around. “I feel good with you here.”

There’s four beers behind that, but it’s nice. And I try to enjoy it, and not to think too much about the fact that he likes being here with me when I’m not mentioning Vince King, when I’m not trying to get him to think about equality or anything but football. I try to just relax and enjoy the moment. I almost succeed.

In the end, Lee agrees to come to Hellentown on Friday, stay in a hotel through Sunday night, and then fly back to Chevali on Monday. We’ll hopefully be going on to Boliat on Monday or Tuesday, but if that’s the case, he’ll fly up there that Friday. It’s important for me to have the week to practice.

Thank God he doesn’t mention the Potomac meetings or doing a TV spot again before I leave. It’s bad enough that I’m worrying about him hanging out with Brian and those guys without him distracting me with what I should be thinking about if I were a good person. I’m a football player, and that’s hard enough to keep in my head. He spent years getting me to focus on that, so now this departure is confusing and I’m worrying that it’ll cost us another game if I keep stressing about it. God knows we don’t have another one to lose, not now.

We stop for burgers on the way home. Unlike the glow from the playoff check, the beers have mostly worn off when Ogleby calls half an hour after we get home, while Lee’s checking his e-mail and I’m just chilling. Ogleby’s in full-on squeak mode; I have to assure him three times that I have everything I need, I am totally prepared for the commercial shoot tomorrow, I’m going to be on the plane with Strike and all the other stuff that goes with it. Finally he calms down enough to talk about the playoffs and the people who have called to ask for some time with me in the next week. Not the reporters; they all have my number and call me or text me after games now. I don’t see my quotes show up all that often, which tells me I’m getting better at being bland and uninteresting, just the way Gerrard would want it.

“Women’s channel wants you to call in for this roundtable show they have. I don’t think it’s that big a deal, probably not worth your time but I told them I’d make sure.”

“Pass.”

“Okay, and got a contact from some guys doing a documentary on gays in sports. They want to interview you sometime in March.”

“Fine. Anything after the playoffs is fine. Until then, I’m a football player.”

“That’s okay, the gay people stopped calling a couple weeks ago. I told them you were concentrating on football and we’d contact them when your time freed up.”

That might be the first thing Ogleby’s done right in a month. “So it’s just football stuff and endorsements?”

“Mostly, yeah, but Dev, we got a chance to work on some big stuff this off-season, I don’t know if you saw but there’s already buzz about Van Near renegotiating his contract and he’s the same year you are, so—”

“Lion Christ, he was Rookie of the Year last year. Not the same situation.”

“I’m just saying, it’s happening, and we should start thinking about where we can shop you if Chevali doesn’t renegotiate with us because your value is clearly much higher now than—”

“See,” I say, interrupting, “this is exactly the kind of thing I don’t need right now. I want to be a football player.”

“Honey, this is a football contract, it’s not a gay contract.”

“It’s not about the game. That’s what I need to spend all my time on.”

Whether he’s actually getting better or just on sort of a mellow high from the million-dollar commercial, Ogleby actually settles down. I do a couple of post-game chats with two of the sports reporters, saying a lot of the same things about how disappointed I am that we didn’t win the division, but I believe in our chances during the playoffs. I’m all ready to tell them that the fox calling me ‘homo’ was no big deal, that my teammates stuck up for me, but they don’t even ask. They do ask about the guy with the Jesus quote, but I just say that I didn’t see him, we were never on the field together, it didn’t come up. And that’s it.

I feel this sense of triumph almost. They treated me like a football player. Not “that gay football player,” but a linebacker, one who contributed to his team, who was affected by the loss, who shows resolve going into his first playoffs. I put the phone down and wonder if this is a corner turned, if there can be gay comments going into a game without me having to be front and center about them. It feels a little liberating.

When I come back into the living room, Lee’s put his laptop away and is watching a local sports highlight show, WSN, ears still perked. “Tough round of interviews,” he says.

“Just football,” I say. Alongside the pride of being a football player, guilt crawls up my spine and down my tail, which curls. To distract myself, I point at the screen. “Hey, those guys called me.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“The usual.” I plop down beside him. “Tough game. Good team. Get ‘em next week.”

He doesn’t put a paw on my leg. I pull the check out of my pocket and stretch it out. “So,” I say. “I’m going to leave you in charge of this. You figure out what to spend it on, and whatever it is, we’ll do it. Vacation to an island, ski resort, new car. Not a motorcycle, though. I don’t think I’m allowed.”

He turns to look at the check. “What if I want to save it?”

“Sure.”

“What if I want to donate it?”

I sit and look at the TV screen. Over the highlights of our game, I can see Lee’s reflection, sitting with his tail curled around his legs, watching the screen—no, he’s looking at my reflection, too. Our eyes meet in the TV, and then he looks away.

I drop the check in his lap. “That’d be great. I’d love to have my money help out. Just don’t publicize it ‘til after the playoffs, okay?”

He takes the check, folds it up, and gets up to put it on the end table beside the TV, then sits on the couch. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll think about it.”

“So what happened with your mom?” I ask, and he hesitates, and then he tells me everything. It unfolds like a horror show, the escalating anger, the lock on the door and the burned things. I want to ask if his mother’s possessed, if this otter is like one of those evil spirits you see in horror movies who take over the lives of otherwise ordinary people and make them do terrible things. But I know she’s real, I know that people can influence other people.

So I hug him, and he says it’s okay, he’s dealing with it. “Hope you understand that’s why I was so upset about the activism stuff yesterday,” he says. “I just feel like I need to do something to balance her out.”

Giving him the playoff check should at least be a sign to him that I care. Because I do. If it’s just a question of money, hell, I’ll take half—okay, maybe a tenth—of what I get from the Strongwell commercial too. I’ll support him if he wants to be a full-time activist, as long as I don’t have to talk to that fucking skunk.

I point to the check. “That’ll go a long way. And look, you still have your father. You have your aunt, most of your family. You haven’t talked to your mother in years anyway.”

He nods. “I don’t want to go back, but it feels weird to know I can’t.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I just put my arm around him. We sit and watch the highlights of the game on the sports channel as the anchors show stats for how long it’s been since the Firebirds were in the playoffs, having fun with it: this person was president, this person wasn’t born yet, this quarterback was in his last year, nobody knew what the Internet was except for people in universities, and so on.

“I am proud of you,” he says. “You’re doing great. The whole team is great.”

“I know,” I say. “It’s thanks to you. You taught me to keep working at football. Gerrard’s been a great mentor, but you’re my motivator.”

He nods. “Seems like you’ve been doing a good job motivating yourself these days.”

“I still feel you watching me every game.” When he doesn’t respond, I put a paw on his leg. “I still need you.”

A second goes by, then two, and he says, “I know.”

“Seems to me,” I say, “like I need to prove it.”

That finally gets a smile out of him. He rests his paw over mine. “Stud, you don’t need to prove anything to me.” I start to protest, and then he says, “but if you want to, well, I’ll always be glad to hear your penetrating arguments.”

I lean over. “Gregory’s the one who makes arguments,” I say. “I’m the one who fucks you.”

“Well,” he says, his ear flicking with a shiver, “I certainly wouldn’t want to get those two mixed up.”

I know everything’s not okay, but it’s as okay as it can be until after the playoffs, I think. So I take him into the bedroom and prove I need him, and in the morning I prove it again until we’re both satisfied.

That makes the awkwardness of leaving to film a commercial a little easier to take. It’s awkward for me, at least, because I know he said he had until the first to respond to Brian about that Potomac meeting. He hasn’t talked to me about it, which means one of two things. Either he’s accepted that I’m not going to do it, or he’s desperately hoping he can change my mind in the next two days.

I hope to God it’s not the latter. We’ve had a really nice fall, at least when Brian wasn’t trying to poison my fox’s mind against me. If he just lets it go and lets me get through the playoffs, then I feel sure we can figure things out. He’ll see how little it means to just wait one damn month.

And the playoffs—wow, I am actually nervous about them, getting to the airport, because I’m going in the opposite direction from my team. I know I have Coach’s permission to do this commercial, but this feels wrong. I should be with the guys, because I finally proved I’m one of them, and we have to bear this pressure together. When I went to the D-II playoffs two years ago, barely anyone noticed. There was a score update on SportsCenter, and that was about it. Now, if anyone’s five minutes late to a team meeting or misses curfew, there’ll be articles written about what it means and whether the team is handling the pressure.

I know this because Lee told me there were articles about me and Strike filming this commercial in the middle of the playoff run, and whether it’d be a distraction, and so on. He told me not to worry about it, and I’m trying not to, but part of this media attention that I still haven’t gotten used to is the enormous weight of everyone judging you. It can make you second-guess yourself even when you know you’re doing the right thing. Especially when the person closest to you might not think you’re doing the right thing.

Well, Strike is, if anything, more dedicated to the game than I am. Gerrard approves of that in him, and so I don’t feel so bad, getting on the plane to go to Crystal City. Because he’s a football player, and so am I.

And that’s thanks to my fox. Maybe like that otter changed his mom for the worse, he’s changed me for the better. I’m more passionate—well, no. He’s focused my passion for the game. I still look for him every game, feel his eyes watching, think about how he’ll analyze my performance. I love him, more than I ever thought I could love someone, much less a guy, and having him around has made all the difference in the world.

Junior year of college, I figured I was on track to work in Dad’s auto shop. Maybe get a job at the high school as an assistant football coach if I were lucky. Lee changed all that. He opened the door to this life, and I’m not going to let it slip away, because that would be letting him down. I know he wants me to be more outspoken about gay rights, but this Vince King guy has nothing to do with us. My Dad used to say that he can’t fix all the cars, only the ones they bring into the shop, and not even all of those. Vince King is one of those cars you feel bad for, but he’s not in our shop. I have to pay attention to the things I can fix, and those are me, my fox, and my football team.

I spend most of Sunday night thinking about Dev and the conversations I had with him and Rodriguez. It all kind of comes together for me, and I try to push it aside so I can at least see Dev off without him worrying about me, but I know he senses something. When you live with someone, you can’t really hide your worries. You can only hide what they’re about. Hopefully he thinks I’m just wondering what to do with that big check he gave me.

Rodriguez was upbeat and businesslike, but clearly had no idea what to do with an outreach person, no plan in place. That’s fine; part of the job could be to come up with an outreach plan, and I got kind of excited about that. Except that I also realized that what that meant was that Dev must have called them to get them to hire me. And I’m sure he did it with the best of intentions, trying to get me a job. But I can’t help thinking that he also did it to distract me, to keep me away from Brian, to keep me under the control of the team and not doing things that would inconvenience him.

Which are not good thoughts, and I know that with my head, but my heart sours on the whole Firebirds job. I don’t want to take it just to be shuffled out of the way, and I have to remind myself that it might be a good opportunity just to talk to people in the organization and give them a good direction to go, whether I move to Yerba in February or not.

If they offer me the job, though, I have to go, don’t I? Dev would probably support me whatever I do, but if the previous day has shown me anything, it’s that he and Brian are oil and water. Or, like, fire and gasoline, maybe. I could keep working with Equality Now, but it would be a friction between us that wouldn’t go away.

The thing is, I worry that doing anything activist on my part will cause friction. Because I still feel that he should be using his unique position to make more of a difference, and I can’t see myself giving up that belief in the next month. And I know myself. I’m the guy who came out to his boss on a football team because he made vaguely gay slurs for ten minutes. Not exactly the model of restraint.

I can try to change, but it won’t happen soon. It took Mother two years or more to change from a slightly standoffish but caring mother to someone who burned her son’s things because they looked gay. Father accepted my life, but he hasn’t really changed. Dev hasn’t changed that much; he was energy in search of a direction. And Brian…Brian changed in one violent night, a sharp angle like a fracture in his life, and he’s never changed back.

Or maybe he was always that way, always personally driven to get what he wanted, and with his silver spoon background, he never encountered resistance like he did that night the Forester football players beat him up. The bitterness and fear from that night is partly what drove me away from him. I thought it was gone, thought that maybe the Equality Now work had healed him. But it hasn’t. I’ve seen it showing through the cracks in my conversations with him, and especially in his confrontation with Dev, the threats, the way he views football players—still—as the enemy. If he doesn’t want to be my boyfriend specifically, then he wants me not to be Dev’s. He’s just smart enough to know that he can’t say that out loud to me.

And no matter what else is going on in my life, I can’t have that be part of it. So I’m going to have to break up with Brian, and Equality Now. I’m going to have to say good-bye to thinking about a national campaign against Families United, bringing Vince King’s story to the national press, showing my mother the true nature of the company she’s keeping. I can maybe help some college athletes if I sign on with the Firebirds for a month, but I’m not even sure that’s a good idea right now.

Dev calls in the middle of my deep thoughts and distracts me, for which I’m grateful. He says the commercial shoot is weird, much more elaborate than he had with Ultimate Fit (who basically came to the stadium and filmed in the parking lot). He might have to go any minute, he says. He’s in a studio with a catering table (he describes that to me twice) and the guy he has to put his arm around on camera is a cute wolf. Don’t get attached, I say, and he laughs. I ask how Strike has been, and he says Strike’s been Strike, but not intolerably so. I tell him I love him, and to let Strike be himself.

Let him be himself, I think when I hang up. I gave Hal that advice; I should take it too. Let Dev be who he is, because after all, that’s the tiger I fell in love with. I can’t force him to care about gay rights the way I do. He has enough trouble keeping his football life and his media presence in check (and he really needs to fire Ogleby already, but I’m not going to push him on that either). And he cares about me, that’s the important part.

I’m glad I got to meet his Auntie Za and see that fire in her to
do
something, where it wasn’t in the rest of his family. I wonder how she’s doing, over there in Moskva, wonder if it’s satisfying the activist side of her. I wonder as I call Brian if she’d understand what’s eating me inside, why I have to do what I do that evening.

Brian is only too happy to meet me for dinner, tossing out a couple “it’s about time” lines at me, which I ignore. I dress up nicely, put on that tie that Dev got me, and head downtown to the bistro I went to with Hal. I’m apprehensive the whole way down, because it would have been so much easier to have this conversation over the phone, and I know I’m putting myself in line for a not very fun night.

“So honored to be invited to dinner,” Brian says when I arrive and sit down at the table he’s already occupied. Not only is he early, he’s already made his way through half a glass of wine. Red, of course. “It’s always a delight to see you.”

I ask for a chard and then arrange myself politely, and smile. “Well, you know,” I say. “Awfully rude to break up over the phone.”

His smile wavers, but doesn’t disappear, though his ears do flick back, momentarily hiding the scar from my view. “Is that what you think this is?” He takes a sip of wine, and the fur around his lips glistens. Easier for him to drink red wine, with black fur all around his muzzle. When I spill red wine on my white fur, it shows all evening.

“Seemed the best comparison,” I say.

“So you couldn’t get your boyfriend to spare a moment of time for a good cause.”

I shake my head. “Didn’t try that hard, to be honest.”

“Should have known a jock wouldn’t ever care about
us
fags.” He fixes me with his gaze, and his ears are back up, the notch now clear against the tan walls.

“It’s not about that,” I say.

“No. It’s not.” And his eyes hold mine. I don’t want to be first to look away, but I am.

The waitress, a tall mare, brings my wine and takes our orders. Brian gets a steak; I get a trout fillet and a salad.

“Too bad all that focus didn’t help him win the division,” Brian says, after a few moments of silence.

“He played well.”

“They all played well. They needed to play great. Looked like he was having some words with Jennings.”

“The fox? Yeah. He didn’t tell me what it was about.”

He looks over his wine glass at me, eyes bright. “On TV it looked like Jennings said ‘homo’ a couple times.”

I force myself not to rise to his bait. “Possible. Like I said, he didn’t tell me.”

“Media doesn’t even care about it now. It’s like he never came out.”

“It’s not like that at all.”

“So what about you, Tip?”

Off-handed, casual. I lean back in my chair, trying to match his attitude even as I fiddle with my tie. “What about me? I’ve got a lead on another scouting job. I’m watching the college bowl games, keeping up with the league. That’s my career.”

“That’s not your life.”

Still casual, still easy with the weighty pronouncement. I flick an ear and look amused, and keep in mind my advice to Hal. Brian is who he is. “It’s not
your
life,” I say. “I’m really glad you’ve found a purpose.”

He leans across the table and loses the amused look, and I hold up a paw. “Spare me the whole lecture about how activism is my life, okay?”

That shuts him up. He leans back, the gleam in his eye less friendly now. I go on. “It’s still important to me, and I’m thrilled that you and Paula and all the people there are doing so much, and I hope that meeting with the senators goes great and that Derrick and Maria—”

“David,” he says.

“—can live with their partners here and all that. But my life is bigger than that now. I have to weigh the things I want to do with the things I have to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” Brian signals for another glass of wine as he finishes his, and the waitress brings it over just as my salad arrives. “So all that means is what I’ve been telling you ever since you met him. Getting laid is more important than doing the right thing.”

“First of all,” I say, “reducing it to ‘getting laid’ is insulting. Second of all, are you getting laid?” He scowls. “Then don’t knock it ‘til it happens to you.”

“Plenty of people in committed relationships are in Equality Now,” he says as I eat my salad. “They manage to make it work. Some of their partners are executives, vice presidents in big companies, and they still contribute, still
let
their partners spend time with the dirty ol’ gay activists.”

I let him talk, because that’s what you do in a breakup, you let the other person rant at you. By the time I’m scraping up stray pieces of lettuce through trails of Caesar dressing, he’s calmed down a little and has moved on to bargaining. “You know, we can find something for you to do. Stuffing mailers, cold-calling, even working with Marilee to craft e-mails.”

“I thought there wasn’t anything for me to do if Dev wasn’t involved.”

“That was a motivational tactic.” He grins at me without humor.

“
Was
it.”

“Aw, Tip, you know I would love to work next to you again.”

“Uh-huh.” They clear the empty plate, and I take a sip of wine to complement the cheese and garlic. “Well, you know, I don’t see that happening.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not something you’d like. Tell me you don’t miss it, those FLAG days.”

I stare steadily at him. “I don’t want it. I miss FLAG, but not at the cost of what I have now.”

He searches my eyes. “So,” he says, “this really is a breakup.”

“Afraid so.”

“Well,” he says, “nice of you to pay for dinner.”

I know it’s not nice, but I return his grin and say, “Oh, think of it as Dev paying for it. After all, it’s his money.”

He glowers, and doesn’t say another word until our meals have arrived. The trout is good, meaty and flaky, and with a bit of lemon it’s got a nice tang to it. Brian signals the waitress as the steak arrives. “What’s the most expensive wine you have that you’d recommend with this?”

“Well.” The mare looks down at the steak. “Our most expensive red is a Far Niente cabernet sauvignon, but with that steak I would prefer—”

“I’ll take that one,” Brian says. “Whole bottle, please.”

“Yes, sir.” She glances at me.

“I’m fine with the white,” I say. When she’s gone, I shake my head at Brian. “That’s not going to be more than a couple hundred bucks.”

“Might as well get my money’s worth, right?” he says. “You certainly are.”

“Going to drink it all here?”

He shrugs. “If you stay long enough.”

I take a deliberate drink from my glass of water. “Gee, Spot, you don’t have to give me more reasons to leave early.”

Two bites of steak while he stews over that, then, “This isn’t you.”

“Jesus Fox,” I say. “When you don’t have someone writing your lines for you, you just say the same old shit over and over again.”

“I mean it.” He leans across the table. “It’s not going to last. I know you think you’re different now, but I can read you, Tip. I know what’s going on behind those slit-pupil eyes.”

“Really,” I say. “Do tell.”

He chews his steak and swallows. “You called me. I didn’t call you. Something in you still wants this life.”

“I can have both.” I hope those words at least have enough force to persuade Brian.

He’s unruffled. “Principles last longer than relationships. So eventually he’s going to leave you, once he signs that megabucks contract he’s heading for in a year, or soon after. More gay guys will come out and he’ll meet one who plays football. They’ll spend more time together, they’ll realize they have more in common because they understand the life. And then you’ll be left alone, with nothing but the memory of all those years you wasted.” He finishes off the second glass of wine. “Maybe some money. He seems like the kind of guy who’d pay you off to make himself not feel guilty.”

“He’s not going to leave me,” I say.

“Now who’s being stubborn?”

“I think I would know myself and him better than you. But you know what?” I stop for a drink of wine, sweet and sharp all at once. “I don’t care. I know…I know what might happen. I know I’m making a sacrifice. And I’m making it for us.”

“But, Tip,” Brian says softly, looking up from his steak, “does he know? Does he appreciate it?”

“Of course,” I snap, and then we have to stop because the waitress is back with Brian’s expensive West Coast wine.

There isn’t much more to the conversation. I pay, as I’d pretty much intended to even before he assumed it, and even the bottle of wine (at $250, it costs more than the rest of the meal combined) barely makes me blink. Maybe the forty thousand dollar check on the table at home helps. Or maybe it doesn’t.

I toss my credit card down on the bill, and Brian picks up his bottle of wine. “Well, thanks for the parting gift, Tip,” he says. “
I’ll to my truckle-bed. This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.
I’ve no doubt we’ll meet again.”