Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (27 page)

“
I dunno if he’ll be able to make it,” I say, as if that’s what I was going to say all along. “He works weekends.” I still get a weird little twinge when I say “he” to the guys.

Gerrard’s ears flick. Relief? I can’t really tell. For a coyote, with big ears and the expressive tail, he’s almost feline in how he keeps himself buttoned down. I can’t get a read on his scent over the ever-present sanitizer and the smell of laundry and shower soap, and, of course, the smell of two dozen guys having just worked out. But whatever Gerrard’s feeling, he says, “If he likes football, he’s welcome.”

The whole way home, I keep tossing back and forth how I feel about Lee coming to hang out with the team. I can only imagine what he’d say to Gerrard and Carson. Homophobia, culture of violence, oh, there’s probably more that he could think of over the course of an afternoon. But all the same, to have him there, to be able to sit next to him in a group of people, like we did when we went out to dinner with Fisher...

I toss my luggage into a corner, sink down onto the couch, and stare out the window, holding the phone. My heart beats faster, thinking about introducing him to the team. It thrills and terrifies me. If he alienated the team like he did my family, I don’t know if I could take it. I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. But Lee wouldn’t do that, not after yesterday (was it really just yesterday?).

Then again, was Gerrard asking because he wanted to? He wouldn’t normally care about doing anything outside of football. For him to be interested in watching with me and Carson, I can see that. For him to include SOs? I can’t figure why. All he cares about is playing the game. So is he doing this of his own volition, and it just feels weird because it’s Gerrard? Or did someone tell him to do it? He wouldn’t ask if he didn’t mean it anyway, so does it really matter?

The problem is that the best person to help me work through this is Lee himself. I can’t ask him whether or not I should invite him to Gerrard’s. Of course he’ll want to come. But I can’t think of anyone else to call, until I pull up the phone menu.

It’s obvious, really. I have a question about whether someone really means what they say. Who better to ask than an actress? I haven’t talked to her since she left the press conference, but she did wish me good luck as we parted, so I don’t think she hates me for ruining our fake relationship.

She picks up after two rings. “I’m only answering because I can’t imagine what you’d need from me, and I’m curious.”

I chuckle. “Hi to you, too, Caroll. How’s it going?”

“
Amusingly enough, your little coming-out party has kept me rather busy with interviews. How long did I know, could I tell in bed, and so on.”

“
Could
you tell in bed?”

She laughs. “I blink my eyes at them and tell them I absolutely could not tell in bed. Which is true.”

“
I’m glad you’re doing okay.”

She softens. “Thanks. How are you doing?”

“
Oh, up and down. Can I ask you something?”

So I lay it out for her, Lee’s tendency to be difficult, my questions about Gerrard. She makes several “uh-huh” noises, and then says, “You want him to be there.”

I lean back on the couch and close my eyes. “I guess I do. I just don’t want it to go wrong.”

“
If you’re that worried about things going wrong, why are you still with him?”

I don’t answer that right away. She goes on. “Isn’t a relationship supposed to be about helping each other out?”

“
Yeah.” I draw out the word, postponing any further explanation.

“
So if he’s not helping you...”

I can’t tell practical, business-minded Caroll. “I just want to know if you think Gerrard really wants me to bring him.”

“
You know him better than I do,” she says. “But I say if he asked, then he means it. And if you want to keep in good with him, you’ll do what he says.”

She has a point. But I’m still not convinced. So I ask her about her agent, and her movies, and she tells me she saw the Today Show and she gives me a few pointers (“always imagine your answers as a front-page headline in a newspaper before you say them”), and we hang up. And I realize, looking out at the stars in the clear Chevali night, that I still don’t know whether I should ask Lee to fly down earlier Sunday.

Maybe he won’t be able to anyway. Maybe he won’t want to come, after this past week. Maybe I can tell him to behave himself.

Yeah, and maybe I can wave my paws and make nobody care that I’m gay.

Phone to my ear, I listen to the rings on his end. He picks up after three. “Hi,” I say.

I have a Thursday afternoon and nothing to do in Port City, so I arrange to go to dinner with Aunt Carolyn, Mother’s sister. She lives in the artsy section of Port City, down near Cottage Hill, and she’s my favorite aunt. I haven’t seen her in months, maybe more than a year. But I want to tell her about Dev’s father, and I don’t want to do it over the phone. I know she’ll be cool.

I do all this while waiting for my room to be ready. I had to get my stuff out of Dev’s room by noon, and when I checked in with his wad of cash, they told me my room wouldn’t be ready ’til three. So I set myself up in the lobby, using the hotel’s wireless to check e-mail. Once I’ve written and sent off my reports from the previous weekend’s games and read up on my assignments for the coming weekend, I decide to check Dev’s e-mail again, to get some reaction to the show.

To my relief, it’s mostly positive. Of course, there are the usual idiots, who make me think, “you went to all the trouble to find his e-mail just so you could tell him you hate him?” But by and large, the people who wrote are all sympathetic. One catches my eye.

Dear Mister Miski, I’m a player at a small college and I wanted to tell you how much it inpsires me that you came out. I’ve known I was gay since I was 17 and I knew if I wanted to play football I could never tell anyone. So I’ve been hiding who I am all through college, and it tears me up. I take out my frustration on the football field and I think that’s why I do so well (I play defensive tackle). I get drunk a lot because I keep trying to hook up with girls so nobody will know I’m gay. I thought there couldn’t be any other football players who were gay. But you gave me hope. I don’t know if I can come out like you did but maybe someday. Thank you so much. Good luck. I’ll be watching and rooting for you, and maybe someday I can come out too. I hope I might get to meet you someday.

Best wishes, Vince

I let the other work languish and read the letter over again. This is actually the second e-mail he’s gotten from a gay football player, but the other was a lot less specific:
Good for you, but don’t expect me to help you.
I don’t even know if the guy was active or retired.

This e-mail grabs me, and not just because he can generally spell (‘inspires’ typo aside). I type up a reply, quickly, telling him that I’m Dev’s assistant and that I’m passing his letter on to Dev. I wish him good luck and tell him that there are a lot of gay football players, and he shouldn’t feel like he’s alone. As the reply is sending, I notice his e-mail address: [email protected]. At first I think it’s a nickname, like he’s the Viking, and then I realize it’s probably just the school’s abbreviation: Vi for Vince, and his last name must be King or Kingston or something. I look up cobblestone.edu and find Cobblestone College, a small liberal arts school about an hour and a half from Port City and two hours from the first game I need to attend on Saturday in Freestone. If things go smoothly this weekend, maybe I’ll stop by and see Mr. King play.

The uplift I get from that letter overrides most of the bad feeling from that morning, if not the last few days. The hand cast makes typing painful, and every time I hit the wrong key because of it, I hear Dev’s father and I feel his paw grabbing my hand again.

For now, we don’t need to make any decisions about what to do. The next big thing is Thanksgiving, but that’s a whole month away. A month ago, I would never have even dreamed I’d have been meeting Dev’s parents, nor that he’d have been interviewed for pieces on just about every major sports network and publication. So who knows what another month will bring, right?

That thought doesn’t make my aching paw feel any better. I take two more of the analgesics so I can keep typing ’til I can get into my room. There I lie down until it’s time for dinner.

Aunt Carolyn is a bright red fox who probably dyes her fur, but I only know that because nobody else in the family has fur that bright. She meets me at Maroney’s, a sports bar owned by the former football star, with a gleaming smile and a suffocating hug. Her earrings jingle next to my ears as she nuzzles me.

“
Wiley, sit on down and tell me what you’ve been—what happened to your paw?” She sits across from me in the booth, her neck surrounded by a cloud of filmy scarves of all different colors, her blue jacket adorned with a lapis and mother-of-pearl brooch.

“
Domestic violence.” I give her a rueful grin.

She narrows her eyes. “Bren didn’t do that to you.”

“
No, and it wasn’t Mother, either.” I order a soft drink, because I shouldn’t be drinking while taking pain pills. She gets a wine that isn’t on the menu, with a smile to the coyote taking our order. “I got to meet my boyfriend’s parents this week,” I say when the coyote’s gone.

“
I gather they don’t approve of their son having a boyfriend. Wolf?”

“
Tiger. In fact...” I hesitate, but not for long. “How much do you follow sports?”

She doesn’t, but Dev’s press conference was big news in Cottage Hill, the gay neighborhood near where she works, so she’s heard of him. She leans forward with a very gratifying smile and says, “You’re the secret boyfriend? My nephew? Oh, wait ’til the gals at the bookstore hear that.”

I flatten my ears. “Uh, I don’t...”

She laughs and rests her paw on mine. “I’m kidding. Seriously, is it a good thing? So what happened with the parents?”

I tell her the story, trying to be as objective as I can, but I can’t resist saying Dev’s father’s lines in the Siberian Bond villain voice. It’s less scary that way, less real. She arches an eyebrow when I’m done. “I’m impressed you managed to learn just enough Siberian to send his father into a violent rage. Not surprised. But impressed.”

“
Certain words stick in my head.” I rub the cast, even though I can’t feel the rubbing at all.

“
I suppose I’m one to talk.” Her eyes focus somewhere over my shoulder. “Someday I’ll tell you about the argument I had with your Gran, about moving down to this neighborhood. ‘Oh, it’s full of slackers and felines,’ she said.” She comes back to me. “That’s the condensed version. It went on for months. But do you think there’s any chance they’ll come around?”

“
His mom, maybe.” I sigh.

“
You’re going to have to do what it takes,” she says. “Compromises and sacrifices. If he’s worth that to you.” One of her fingers toys with her earrings. “Personally, you know, I’m past that whole sacrificing thing. But you’re young.”

“
I don’t know what I can sacrifice,” I say. “I don’t have the money for a sex change.”

“
I doubt that’d help anyway. Though they do amazing things with pheromones these days. Even us canids can’t tell the difference.”

I laugh. “I’ll give up a lot for him, but I’m rather attached to my anatomy.”

She settles back in the booth, the corners of her mouth twitching upward. “I rather suspect he is, too. Well, you know, your father has a sister who went through something like that.”

I straighten up, ears perking. “I have an aunt who was an uncle?”

“
No. Well, maybe. I don’t know all of your father’s family. But I remember Bren telling me there was this kerfuffle when she wanted to marry a fox from overseas. Muslim. Her church didn’t take well to that, but she loved him and she said, to hell with all of you.”

“
Really?” I only know my two uncles on my father’s side. I know that he had a sister, but not much about her.

“
This was before you were born. People find all sorts of reasons to cut other people out of their lives. If I knew how to get in touch with her, I would send her Christmas cards.”

It’s a particularly touching remark, considering I never see Carolyn at family dinners or holidays. “Father still talks to you, doesn’t he?”

She nods. “More than my own sister does. You know, your mom and I and your uncle Jona were all terrible disappointments to your Gran. She wanted us to all be part of the social circles of Port City. I ran off to be a hippie, Eileen moved to the midwest to be boring, and Jona...” She takes a drink of wine. “Made some bad choices.”

I met Uncle Jona once, when I was ten. Before he died in prison. “Yeah. Runs in the family maybe.”

“
You’re not to blame for your parents’ troubles.”

The abrupt shift catches me off guard. “What?”

“
After they met your tiger—Bren didn’t tell me he was a tiger—he tried to talk to Eileen about it.”

“
I’d think he would have better luck than I did.” I try to imagine my father and mother talking about me and my boyfriend. I can’t picture it.

She sighs heavily. “Eileen is stubborn. I think she worries about a lot of the wrong things.” Her eyes meet mine with a sparkle. “If I’d had a son, I would’ve said they switched the cubs at the hospital.”