The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever (22 page)

"You know what your problem is. You're the
kind of guy who wouldn't recognize paradise if he was holding it in
his hand." She took his hand, and placed it between her legs.

He quickly retrieved it. "You're wrong, my
foxy friend, but I am the kind of guy who never goes fox hunting
without a permit."

The Fox moved back to her seat, and moped.
"Ask me if I care. Better a real man in my hand, than you in my
bush anyway."

He grinned at her. "That's the spirit, Fox.
You stick with your wolverines."

Back at the Student Center, the Fox lost no
time in telling Betty-Jo what had happened—at least she told part
of the story. She told how Brad would have killed Jim Bob if a
brave Fox hadn't intervened to save him. She also mentioned that
Brad was a total jerk.

* * *

Betty-Jo took a hard look at the Fox. You're
too mad at Brad, she thought. The only time a woman gets that angry
at a guy is when she has a thing for him.

Later, when Brad told her what had happened,
minus a few of the bad Fox details, she was more certain than ever
that the Fox had fallen for her lover. But she momentarily forgot
about the Fox when Brad told her what Jim Bob had said.

"The nerve of that wart hog. He said he
couldn't believe that I threw sand in his eyes?"

"He's in love with you."

"Whose side are you on?"

"Tawny, ask yourself what you'd do to get me
back if you lost me? I was wondering, as I drove back here, what I
would do to try to get you back if you left me?"

"Oh—I see what you mean."

"That doesn't excuse Jimbo's behavior, but
perhaps it makes it understandable. Actually, I kind of like the
guy."

"Maybe the Fox is also acting up because
she's in love with you."

"I doubt that love is the reason for the
Fox's antics. She just enjoys stirring up trouble from time to
time."

"You don't know the Fox like I do. She never
quits 'til she gets what she wants."

A Hex
on Happiness

"Who'd have guessed that a woman like Tawny
Cat would be unable to get enough of me?" Brad asked PussCat.
"Today, if I were a rabbit, I'd be the envy of every one of those
furry critters. He knew that he was as well known around campus for
being B-J Chance's boyfriend, as he was for his hockey prowess. But
so what? With Betty-Jo in love with him, Brad was confident in his
ability to accomplish anything—to make the impossible,
possible.

"Nothing like a Tawny Cat who loves you, to
make a guy feel special—'give him a sense of the infinite,'" he
told Betty-Jo. But she was more interested in giving him a sense of
the here and now. It wasn't unusual, with almost no time before an
economics class, for her to decide that a quickie would be nice.
And once she decided she needed instant loving, she would
effortlessly convince him that he needed it at least as much as she
did. Then she would crank up Wagner's colossal 'The Ride of the
Valkyries'.

"I'm sure The Ride was written for instant
loving," she said.

"Instant loving?"

"Yeah—jiffy sex. Like now, when there's only
twenty minutes before our two o'clock class, and I've convinced you
that you need to do me."

"Nothing like jiffy sex with you and The
Ride. It's shades of Apocalypse Now—the 10th cavalry on their
helicopter gun ships, coming in low over the Pacific."

"And you're right there with them, Bad Brad,
your heat seeker armed, and about to be embedded in a Tawny Cat,
who's moving ardently beneath you, to the call-to-the-hunt of the
French horns."

* * *

Brad's game was coming along nicely. He was
the second line center, and the number two goal scorer for the
varsity 'Gray Ghosts'. The Gray Ghost name came from the legend of
a young British nobleman who, in 1773, was riding to propose
marriage to his true love when he was thrown from his horse, and
swallowed by quicksand. Later, he appeared to his lover as a gray
ghost, and warned her of an approaching hurricane. She convinced
her family to go inland, and all were spared. After that, before
every hurricane to hit the Grand Strand, the gray ghost had
appeared to a beautiful woman, and warned her of the impending
disaster.

The hockey Gray Ghosts were similar to their
namesake in that they appeared from out of nowhere. But unlike
their namesake of yore, they gave their opponents no warning of the
fate that was in store for them.

Thanks to Coach Alister Wylie, Brad could
picture himself playing in the NHL more clearly than ever before.
"My dream is close to becoming reality," he told Betty-Jo. "Now all
I have to do is work like hell for it."

Coach Wylie, or Coyote, as he was known, may
have been nicknamed Coyote because his last name was Wylie, because
he was wily like a coyote, or because he was from the Coyote
State—who knew? What was known, was that Wylie's passion for hockey
was almost a religion. It was a religion that he constantly
proselytized.

The Coyote knew his hockey. He emphasized not
only skill and physical fitness training, but also the cognitive or
mental training that was so necessary at a competitive level. In
the four years of the hockey Gray Ghost's existence, three Ghost
players had gone on to play in the NHL. That was a remarkable
achievement, given that most of the NHL hockey talent still came
from Canadian feeder teams where players saw more ice time than
American college players.

In his practices, the Coyote stressed basics:
skating, passing, stick-handling, shooting, and hitting at game
speed or faster. The players grumbled about working on skills that
they already knew, but the grumbling stopped as their basic skills
improved, and they began to embarrass their opponents.

The Coyote relished a run-and-gun style of
hockey. He loved speed, flow, finesse, and creativity. He detested
the neutral-zone-trap style of play where one forward stayed back
between the bluelines, and obstructed opposing players with holding
and hooking tactics—tactics that Betty-Jo loved. "I love the Trap,"
she gleefully told Brad when she learned about it. "I get to hold
you and hook you—until you score."

"Tawny, you know that's not how the Trap
works. You're supposed to hold me and hook me until I don't
score."

"Not in my trap. In my trap, you always get
to score."

The Coyote believed that the Trap could only
be countered by aggressive skating and checking. "If you're tired,
you can't launch a fearsome Ghost attack, and then forecheck and
backcheck as hard as you gotta to neutralize the Trap. Hockey's a
sprint, not a marathon! I want short shifts!"

For Wylie, short shifts went hand in hand
with conditioning. "The secret to winning hockey games is to work
harder and faster than the dolts on the other team. You gotta be in
better condition than your opponents, or you're dead." To emphasize
his point, he would grab the chrome-plated whistle that hung around
his neck, jerk it upward until the cord was taught, and his head
flopped to one side with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

From the exhausting, off-ice-conditioning
schedule that the Coyote put the team through, Brad knew that none
of its rivals would out-condition the Gray Ghosts.

Wylie also explained the mental part of his
game plan. "The advantage goes to players who are mentally
prepared—it goes to the guys who use imagery. You clowns are gonna
love imagery, 'cause all you gotta do is daydream the way I tell ya
to."

Imagery, Brad learned, is where a physical
activity is not actually carried out. Instead, it is experienced
through the mind's eye. Athletes who use mental imagery improve as
rapidly as those who actually practice.

The Coyote taught his players to use imagery
on their own, on the bench, and in the dressing room. Imagery gave
the Ghosts the advantage of at least one extra practice a week.

"This imagery stuff is unbelievable," Brad
told Tawny. "It's doing great things for my game. Only trouble is,
I'm supposed to be imagining the puck on my stick, but most of the
time, I find myself imagining you on a different stick."

"That's sweet," she gleefully told him. "It's
reassuring to know that you think I'm more fun than your average
puck."

He grinned and hugged her. "Best puck ever,"
he said.

One skill that Coach Wylie taught Brad was
turning him into a superstar. Wylie had given him NHL statistics
which showed that most goals are scored along the ice on the
goalie's stick side, but that most shots are made high to the
goalie's glove side.

"A player is four times more likely to score
shooting low to the stick side, than he is shooting high to the
glove side" the Coyote told him. "Four times! You don't have to be
a rocket surgeon to figure out that low to the stick side is the
place to shoot."

Wylie explained why it was so easy to score
shooting low to the stick side. "Look right along the ice on the
side that the goalie holds his stick. What's there to stop the
puck?"

"Only the front of the goalie's skate
blades," Brad said.

"By God, I think you've got it! That's why
the goalie stands on the stick side of the net and shows opposin'
players a great big hole on his glove side. He knows that if he can
sucker the bums into shootin' for the hole he's showin' 'em,
chances are he's gonna catch their shot."

So Brad practiced shooting low to the stick
side. Ghost shots he called them, because the goalie never moved to
stop them. At first it was difficult to keep the puck on the ice;
he found himself fighting an almost overwhelming desire to snap his
wrists and raise it. But the purchase of a new stick blade that sat
straight up and down, and a conscientious effort to make his
follow-through low, soon paid off. He became the team's top goal
scorer.

"It's impossible," he told Betty-Jo, "but my
scoring percentage has soared from twelve to twenty, and my goals
per game have gone from about one to almost two."

That was a remarkable achievement, and the
National Hockey League scouts took notice. They began to show up at
Coastal Carolina games.

The combination of superb basic skills,
excellent physical conditioning, quick line changes, and mental
preparation made the Gray Ghosts a force to be reckoned with in the
eight-team SCHA league. And for the first time, the winner of the
Southern Grapefruit Cup had been invited to participate in the NCAA
Invitational, the Super Bowl of college hockey.

Brad was excited about playing the best of
the northern universities. He was confident that the Gray Ghosts
would appear from out of nowhere and kick butt.

The Gray Ghost's hockey season flew by.
Almost too soon, it was over. The Florida Panthers had taken Brad
as their third round draft pick, but the Leafs and the Red Wings
were trying to acquire his rights. The intense interest in Brad had
begun when the Gray Ghosts did kick butt at the NCAA Invitational
Tournament, and Brad was the tournament's star. His eight goals and
eight assists won him the Herbie Miller award for the most
outstanding player. In America, Brad Raiden was becoming known in
hockey circles.

The Florida Panthers had Brad out to a few of
their practices, and he fit right in with their new run-and-gun
style of play. The clutch and grab, grind-it-out defensive tactics
of the Trap had worked well for the Panthers in their first season
as a NHL expansion team, but their fans were bored. They wanted
action. So midway through their second year, the Panthers decided
to emphasize offense, and nobody was more offensively minded than
Brad Raiden. The Panthers offered him the third line center
position, and a one million dollar signing bonus.

* * *

After all the years of working, and dreaming,
Brad had arrived; the beer flowed as the celebration party ran into
the early morning hours—and it was a fine party, because Tawny Cat
was being especially naughty.

"How often," he asked her, "does anyone get
everything they've wished for from life, and more? You've divided
my life in two—LBT and LAT."

"LBT and LAT?"

He grinned at her. "Life before Tawny Cat and
life after Tawny Cat. Before you came into my life there was a huge
empty hole. You've filled that hole, and now what used to be an
empty hole is the best part of my life." Betty-Jo wound him in her
arms, and started to misbehave. "Now my only serious goal is to be
with you. I've discovered that time not spent with you, is a part
of my life that's been wasted."

Betty-Jo gave Brad her best full-bodied kiss.
"You know nothing about goals, my friend. Goals are supposed to
have only a fifty- percent chance of success. Your number one goal
is a certainty."

"Don't say that! You might put a hex it!"

And maybe she was hexing it, because Brad's
love for Tawny and his NHL dream were on a diverging path.

* * *

On Olympus, Venus was in a foul mood. "I have
to do something to cheer myself up," she said, as she dumped a
bucket of piranha infested water on a catnapping Old Hairball. The
aging pussycat let out a cry of anguish, and tore across the great
hall.

Venus laughed sadistically. "What's the
matter, Hairball, the cat and fish game getting you down?" She
ripped a piranha off Hairball, and tossed it back into the piranha
pool. Then she dug her nails into the back of her hand, until she
drew blood. Pain always made her feel better. "The American
Princess and her Bradley are much too happy. But not to worry, you
ugly puss, their happy days are about to end."

Drifting on Dreams

Brad was on Betty-Jo's mind constantly. Her
tennis was suffering, but she didn't care. She was
can't-stop-thinking-about-him in love. Half the time the lights
were on, but she wasn't home. She was drifting on dreams or loafing
on love. Everything was perfect—everything except for the vile
Tooth Fairy.