Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (26 page)

If he could’ve left him alone, he wouldn’t be my fox. If Mom and Dad could just let me do whatever I want, they wouldn’t be my parents. I have to find some way that they can live together, somehow, because I can’t give them up, not any of them.

I board with the rest of the first class passengers. By now there are a dozen people watching me. I can’t not see them; I can’t turn off the football reflexes of scanning the people around me and trying to guess what they’re going to do. All I can do is ignore them.

Sitting in first class, I’m flipping through the airline magazine when the stewardess clears her throat. Only it’s not a stewardess, it’s a male flight attendant, a thin, perky fossa beaming at me. “Drink, sir?”

“
Sure, thanks, Barry,” I read his name off the tag. “Just a beer, something not light.”

The kangaroo next to me holds up his paw, but Barry’s already gone for my beer. When he comes back, he’s got an extra bottle along with it. “In case you need another one and I’m not around. I’ll be with you in just one moment, sir,” he says to the kangaroo.

“
Thanks,” I say. He’s still focusing on me, as if waiting for something. “Um, Firebirds fan?” I reach for the pen in the pocket of my jacket, and look around for something to sign.

He shakes his head. “I hate football. But my parents kicked me out too.”

I start to tell him my parents didn’t kick me out, but he’s almost got tears in his eyes, so I just give him a nod. “Well, thank you,” I say. “And good luck.”

“
I’m fine,” he says. “But good luck to you. It gets better, I promise you.”

I sit up straighter. “Did your parents finally come around?”

“
Oh, no,” he says brightly. “But my boyfriend helped me realize that if they weren’t going to accept me, to hell with them.”

“
Oh.” I wrap my paw around the beer he sets down. “I guess I’ve got a ways to go.”

He gives me a big smile. “I hope you have someone special to help you.”

I give a noncommittal nod and a smile back, which gets another wink from him. “Sorry. Don’t mean to pry. Listen, if you need anything else on the flight, just let me know.” Then he turns to the kangaroo, who is supremely uninterested in any aspect of our conversation that doesn’t result in him getting a rum and Coke.

Even though I really don’t want to go where Barry’s gone, his cheerful support makes me feel a little better. Besides, being on a plane has always given me a nice sense of isolation. Coach tells us that when we get on the plane after a road game, we should use that time to gain perspective. He says to look at the game from thirty thousand feet.

I use that now, closing my eyes, leaving the interview and the commercial behind in Port City and thinking about the upcoming game. A week and a half away—seems like forever. My fingers clench and unclench on the armrest, though I keep my claws restrained; I cannot wait to get back out on the field again. All of this crap with my family, with the Today Show, it’s frustrating, hard to get a grasp on. Running plays, blocking, tackling: that I can do. I haven’t gone three days without it since, what, June? Early July maybe? At least three months. I stare out the window at the clouds. The plane can’t land fast enough.

Barry’s so attentive during the flight that I feel like I have to tip him. I don’t know how to talk to him though. Lee would know, would be able to put him at ease and trade jokes with him, and by the time we landed, he’d have gotten a free flight somewhere or something. I look at the kangaroo sitting next to me, crammed into a business suit stretched over his gut, with crumbs all over his pants from the lunch we had, currently absorbed in a book even I know is a waste of time. I hate the fact that he’s not Lee.

I know how Lee feels, that his job could be at stake, that he would be subjected to a lot of media attention, and I can’t fault him for wanting to avoid all that. We got through a year and a half of me being closeted. I can get through another year or two of separate lives. Hopefully all this hoopla dies down in a few months, or a year at the outside, and then we can travel together, be seen in public, and go...

Well, maybe go to
his
home. I shift my weight in the seat and look out the window. The ground’s getting closer.

We land at one-thirty, and I get to the field at five to two. Gerrard’s probably there already. Hopefully I can get a few good hours of practice in, maybe grab dinner with the guys and practice more after. In the parking lot, I find more cars than I thought there’d be. Must be not just the linebackers coming in for practice.

Still, the complex is eerily empty. There are a few people moving around, but I’m used to it buzzing with activity. As I get closer to the locker room, I hear familiar voices: Gerrard; Vonni and Norton, the fox and cheetah who start at cornerback; Brick’s low rumble joined by another, whom I assume is Pike.

It’s only the defense, and only starters. Colin and Zillo aren’t anywhere to be seen. Gerrard is in uniform, and so is Carson. The rest are changing. They all stop as I come in.

For a moment, the room’s quiet. Then Norton, the cheetah, wolf-whistles. There’s laughter and snickering.

I sigh and toss my stuff at the foot of my locker. “So, you saw the commercial, huh?”

Vonni and Norton are nearest me, standing in front of their lockers. “Say, Dev,” they say in synchronized, girly voices, “can you get us some Ultimate Fit gear?”

My ears flush, but I force myself to grin. More guys are chuckling now, and I think about how much worse it would be if they were all quiet, pretending it didn’t happen. The commercial really is something of a joke. “Dunno,” I say. “Do you want a lot of gay fan mail?”

They laugh, but a little uneasily. Gerrard walks over. “All right,” he says. “Get dressed and let’s practice. No pads.”

Coach and Steez and the defensive coordinator come in a moment later, with new pages for our playbooks. Coach hands them out to us. “Good to see you all here. Shows a real commitment to winning. We have a lot of adjustments on defense for next week’s game, losing Fisher and goin’ up against Bixon.” That’s Gateway’s star, the wolverine Dad was talking about. “The defensive coaches have been working on a game plan, and I want you all in here working on it every day ’til the game.”

“
Except Sunday,” Gerrard says.

“
Right.” Coach gestures toward Gerrard with the clipboard. “Day off is Sunday instead of Monday. Might be a good day to watch football with each other. Now let’s get out there.”

There’s a lot of tackling dummies, sprints, fitness workouts. Then we get down to changing some of our plays. It reminds me of a few months ago when I was learning a whole new position. Frustrating, because I feel like I’ve just started getting the hang of this one, and now it’s getting all changed up on me. But the fact is, Pike replacing Fisher on my side changes the way we have to protect that line. Fisher, a tiger, was more mobile, able to switch off the offensive tackle to take the running back if they ran it to that side. A polar bear’s going to be a lot more effective at collapsing the running lanes, but if the running back slips past him, he can’t change direction in time to help.

So it’s up to me to back him up, which you’d think would mean I have less responsibility for protecting passes, that they could drop one of the safeties in to help out. But no, the only change on passing plays is that I have to keep an eye on the quarterback more closely if he runs out to my side. We don’t have any offensive players to scrimmage with today, so we’re only being shown the plays and practicing where to start, the scripted parts of the play that take us up to the point where we have to make a judgment about what’s going on. There’s a lot of yelling from the coaches, and the minor tension in the locker room ratchets up further between us. At one point, Vonni yells at me, “Pretend someone’s got a camera on you!”

Once we’re worn out on the field, we get to go to a film session, breaking down the Gateway offense, tracking their formations, taking notes. Coach shows us some plays from the Millenport game, including the one where Fisher got injured. I look at myself on the screen, backpedaling like an idiot while Fisher’s left to handle the bear and boar. Nobody else remarks on it, but I feel the hot flush of guilt and silently promise Fisher I’ll get better. When we switch to film of Gateway, I stare at it, intent on absorbing as much as I can.

After practice, Gerrard grabs the starters to go to Mickey’s in downtown Chevali, as usual. But the mood in the locker room is still a little edgy, and not just at me. Pike is overwhelmed by the changes and the pressure of the starting role, so he’s going out of his way to tell people how easy it all is. Norton is still arguing with Vonni about a play he thinks the fox screwed up, getting right in his face. Vonni stays cool for a little while, but shoves Norton away from him when the cheetah gets too close. I tell Norton to chill out, and he snaps, “Learn your own plays, Ultimate Fit.” I’m thinking I might just bail and get a couple burgers on the way home.

I start to tell Gerrard as much, on our way out of the facility, but I’m interrupted by Charm’s elbow, smacking me hard enough to knock me to the side. “You sexy thang,” he says. “Hope I look half that good at your age.”

“
I didn’t know what they were doing with the commercial,” I protest.

“
You can’t tell when they got a camera pointed at yer junk?” He raises an eyebrow. “’Cause me, I always know when someone’s lookin’. You comin’ to dinner?”

“
What, with you?” But Gerrard is standing there, one eyebrow raised. “You’re coming with them?”

“
Yeah. Come on.” Charm slaps me on the back, and Gerrard jerks his head for me to follow him. I shake my head and head over to Mickey’s.

We get a big table in the back. The beers keep coming, the burgers and onion rings disappear fast, and the stories shoot back and forth across the table. Slowly, the locker room tension dissipates. I get asked about the Today Show, but all questions about how good the food is backstage, and whether the vixen is as pretty in real life. “Ask him about the stag,” Charm calls down the table.

“
He was an ass,” Norton says. The cheetah and I are sitting with the jaguars Carson and Pace, with Gerrard and Vonni next to us.

“
They’re just trying to be controversial,” Gerrard says. “It’s their job. Just stay away from them.”

“
Not all of ’em.” Norton’s been in the league ten years, hasn’t lost a step. “Not the ones who know our business.”

“
They all just want to sell airtime.” Gerrard points a finger at the cheetah. “We can’t let it break up our team.”

Norton shrugs, and that’s the end of it. To my great relief, nobody asks me about Lee. Nobody asks me about my parents. The teasing about the commercial is softer, with an undercurrent of congratulations. Only Gerrard and one of the D-linemen has been in a commercial before, and neither of them was in one by himself.

We sit around for an hour after we finish the food, just shooting shit and relaxing. Gerrard warns me to stop drinking ’cause he wants to do more work after dinner, and I don’t complain about how long a day it’s been. It’s not the whole team, but just seeing the change in attitude from the locker room to the dinner helps take my mind off everything. I’m recharged when Gerrard grabs me and Carson to head back to the field.

Chevali in mid-October is nice and warm, comfortable as we go over plays and go out on the field to work on spacing and communication. Since there’s nobody else lining up opposite us, we’re limited in what we can do, and I have to imagine the formations as Gerrard barks them out. It gets me and Carson used to listening to his reads. Sometimes he’ll shout out a formation and then change to another one, and I have to imagine the offense shifting, boars and bears, the wolf dropping back behind them with the football as he calls the snap. Now, when I look in my imagination for the running back, I see the Gateway wolverine charging toward me.

For two hours, I endure Gerrard yelling at me. “Skip double right means they’re pulling left!” he yells. “You need to break left right away at the snap!” Or “It’s a passing down! Drop back first,
then
wait for the slot receiver!” Carson, much more in tune with Gerrard, doesn’t get yelled at nearly as often.

Even though there’s less physical work in two hours than we did in fifteen minutes that afternoon, I’m exhausted by the time Gerrard calls it quits. “Again tomorrow,” he says as we head in, and it’s not a question.

“
Sure.” I nod, gathering my things. My phone has the usual assortment of missed calls and texts from reporters. I wonder briefly why Ogleby hasn’t started using text messages and then thank God he hasn’t, because my mailbox would be full within two days. I’m scanning them when Gerrard comes over, Carson behind him.

“
Hey,” he says. “We’re getting together at my place to watch the games Sunday. You want to come?”

“
Sure.” I should be done in time to get Lee from the airport. I thumb through a few more messages. “Thanks.”

“
It’s gonna be the three of us, maybe some other guys from the D,” he says. “Significant others welcome.”

That gets me to look up from my phone. “Huh?”

“
Yours, too.” He’s not really smiling, but then, I don’t know when he ever does just for the heck of it. His voice is a little stiff.

“
Okay,” I say. “Thanks, uh, but I don’t know...”

“
Nobody there will have a problem with it,” he says, with very typically Gerrard-ish determination. His ears are confidently up and his jaw is set.