Hangman's Game (3 page)

“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 team 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 early.”

“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.

As Cecil disappears Samuel kicks at the chain-link fence with his high-tops, setting off a metallic rattle. I am guessing Twitter was not his idea. I am also guessing that this photo op is the reason Cecil, that budding media impresario, wanted to come to the stadium. If only he could find his phone. He searches under the car seats with one loafered foot on the sidewalk and the other in the air.

Samuel stands by the fence, chin jutting out, eyes closed, fingers curled around the links, looking imprisoned.

“Hey, Samuel,” I say. “Just take care of your job, you'll be fine. Better than fine. You'll own this city.”

Samuel opens his eyes and studies me.

“I know,” Samuel says softly. “I will.” Whether he means that he would do his job or own Philadelphia, I am not really sure.

Cecil comes back, grinning, holding his phone up like a trophy. I am thinking that I don't need to be in these pictures; Cecil seems to have the same idea. He leads Samuel a few steps up the sidewalk, positioning him to get a better angle of the stadium in the background.

“How about a smile?” Cecil says. And after that request is not immediately granted, Cecil adds, “Think of something happy. Your parents and your sister will be up from Alabama in a couple of days to help you look for a home. That's going to be fun, right?”

Right. While Cecil continues to try to coax joy from his model, I respond to Jessica's earlier text message.

If your thighs are tight, I think Troy has a tool that might come in handy.

I don't like a single one of the words I've just typed, but I don't want to improve the message either. Maybe my halfhearted effort will tamp Jessica's enthusiasm and bring this riff to an early end. Not that I don't enjoy silly double entendres every now and then. It's just that ironically cheesy, two-bit innuendo, when you're not really in the spirit of it, can feel incriminatingly like plain old two-bit innuendo. I am thinking that Troy needs to meet an unhappy accident, and soon.

I hit the Send button.

Then, as if timed to the depression of my finger, I hear a thunderous crack, which is accompanied by a flash. The crack rattles from my ears down to my feet. I drop instinctively into a crouch.

Then another crack, and I hear the screech of a car racing down the street.