Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (28 page)

I smile back. She has, in fact, said this in the past, but she knows I like it. “We don’t get to pick our family,” I say, as usual.

“
But we do get to pick who we’re with.” Her ears flick forward toward me. “So what are you going to do?”

I sigh. “What can I do?”

Her eyes glint at me. “You can say, to hell with all of you. Come live with me in Port City.”

“
I don’t think he’d go for that. Even if I tell him how awesome you are.”

“
You sure? We have a football team here, too. I think they’re pretty good. They keep having parades every few years.”

I stick my tongue out. “Everyone else in the country hates them.”

“
Oh, well. The invitation’s open.” And, as our food arrives, she reaches over to squeeze my paw. “The other thing to remember is I’ve had a dozen serious boyfriends in the last eight years. If it doesn’t work out with this one, there’ll be another one.”

“
I suppose so,” I say. For once, I can’t say what I really want to Aunt Carolyn. To tell her that there aren’t any other ones like Dev would sound soppy and foolish and not at all like her clever, worldly nephew. But dammit, it’s true.

?

She drives me back to the hotel; I won’t pick up my rental car ’til tomorrow. Morty probably wouldn’t care, but I can’t bring myself to charge an extra day if I don’t need to. We kiss good-bye, I promise to be in touch more often, and she tells me to make sure I take care of myself.

I’ve just gotten undressed and stretched out in bed with the TV on when my cell phone rings. I’m tired, but I never turn down a phone call from Dev. It’s good to hear his voice again, even though I just saw him that morning. He tells me about his day of practice; I tell him about Aunt Carolyn, and though I don’t tell him everything, I do tell him that I told her about him.

“
So do I get to meet her?”

“
Sure.” I go through the calendar in my head. “You’re playing here in what, five weeks? I’ll find a discreet place where we can have dinner with her. I’ll go in drag. She works for a theater. She’ll love it.”

He laughs. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

“
Hey,” I ask, because Aunt Carolyn made me think of my father. “Talked to your folks at all?”

I expect the silence. “Talked to Mom,” he says, his voice flat. Just as I’m about to ask, he goes on. “She says she asked Dad to apologize.”

I give him a few seconds before I chime in. “I’m guessing that didn’t go well.”

“
I apologized to her. I told her we didn’t do anything with the lube, that it just fell out of your suitcase.”

I start to protest that that’s a lie, because we did do something, but technically he’s right, I guess, we didn’t do anything with the lube. Then I want to know if he actually said the word, ‘lube.’ That’s not important, really. But I still want to know. “And?”

“
I think she felt better. She asked about you. I told her your thumb was going to be okay.”

“
In eight to ten weeks. It still hurts.” Just talking about it makes it twinge, frustratingly.

“
I know.”

I want to ask him more, to find out what else he talked to his mom about. I want to know if he’s going to talk to his father later. I can’t think of a way to ask him that won’t result in him clamming up tight. So I just say, “I hope it works out,” and he says, “yeah,” and then there’s a bit of silence.

He finally breaks it. “Um...”

I yawn. The day’s catching up to me. “What?”

He pauses. “Anything interesting in e-mail?”

“
Oh, yeah. There’s a kid at a college near here who’s a defensive tackle and he’s gay. I think I’m going to try to see him before my first game. Or maybe between games. The second one’s just a small school anyway.”

“
Defensive tackle, so he’s a tiger?”

“
Or a bear. I don’t know, though. I’ll tell you Sunday night, right?”

“
Sure.” He takes a deep breath and pauses, so long that I would interrupt him if I didn’t feel he was about to say something. So I wait, and he does. “Hey. Gerrard and a bunch of the guys are getting together Sunday to watch football.”

“
Okay. At night? Should I get a cab?”

“
No. He, uh...he told me I could bring you.”

I stop to digest that. Meet the other guys on the team? “Just me? Or are the other wives—I mean, the wives—”

He talks quickly. “Yeah, everyone else can bring their SOs, that what he said.”

“
Wow. Okay.” I look down at the cast on my paw. “Do you want me to come?”

“
Hell, doc,” he says. “I want you to, but...”

He doesn’t finish. “I know,” I say. I close my eyes. “You and me in a room full of football players. Do I have to wear a dress?”

“
I want
you
there.” He presses the word gently. “Gerrard says all the guys will be cool.”

But can I be cool with them? With the macho posturing I’ve spent most of my life hating? Well, I do it for work every week. Maybe it’s time I gave it a try with people who are reaching out, trying to be my friends. “Will Fisher be there? He knows me.”

“
I don’t know. Haven’t heard from him.”

“
You jocks,” I say lightly. “I’ll call Gena. I haven’t talked to her since the day of the injury. How about Aston? Will he be there?”

He laughs. “You want an autograph?”

“
I’ll get an autograph from Gerrard. I want to ask Aston if he’s really sucked off Billy Joe the ferret.”

He takes a moment to think about that, or to let the comment sink in. “You’re staying home, fox.”

I smile, knowing he can hear it even if he can’t see it. “I’ll be good, hon. I promise. I only got one good paw left. I’m not gonna do anything to risk it.”

“
What if one of them starts being all hetero at you?”

“
What does that even mean?”

The couch creaks as he resettles himself. “I don’t know. I mean, what if one of them gets obnoxious?”

“
I thought you said they were gonna be cool.”

“
There’ll be beer there,” he says.

“
Ah. Of course.” I rub a paw down my stomach. “I can take care of myself.”

“
I know you can, but...”

There’s no more words necessary. We can take care of ourselves, we both know that. But can we be ourselves outside of our apartments and hotel rooms? Before this week, we wouldn’t have felt the need to pause for that little silence. So I gather my courage and break it. “You know, I’ll...I’ll do my best. I tried, you know.”

He breathes softly into the phone. “I know you did,” he says.

?

Fall in the northeast is different from the Midwest. Not really prettier or anything, just different. All the buildings are older, but they look more dignified: the old buildings in the Midwest all look like they belong in retirement homes. Here in the northeast, they’ve been standing two or three times as long, and they were built in a different time, a time of personal craftsmanship and expression, not the get-the-buildings-up-before-the-next-wave-of-immigrants-arrives rush of so many places back home.

That said, there’s some aloofness to them, too. At home in Hilltown, I can walk around the venerable old Public Library and not feel like it belongs to a totally separate time. It’s still family. The Public Library next to the Cobblestone College campus in Haiwatset (the town names out here are even weird in just slightly different ways), by contrast, was clearly built by Important People. Just walking past it, I get the impression that I’m being suffered to occupy the same block. It’s all red marble and Doric columns and big gryphon sculptures clearly trying to be as important as the Port City Library gryphons.

Cobblestone College itself is not quite as pretentious, but many of the well-dressed students do fairly radiate smug. I feel their condescension at my off-the-rack business suit as I search out the football field Saturday morning. On most of the campuses I visit, you can find the football field the day of a game just by following the crowds, but here at Cobblestone, football is clearly a diversion for the plebes. I follow a trio of weasels in sweatshirts with the double-C logo, and find myself at a surprisingly charming small field, with only a couple thousand people in attendance.

I buy a program and prepare my scout credentials to get a sideline seat, but it turns out not to be necessary. The students on the bench scoot over happily to let me sit down, and pepper me with questions about my PDA until I ask them to wait for breaks in the action. Then I tell them I’m a college scout, though I can’t tell them whom I’m here to observe.

It does explain the paw-sized video recorder I use to get game film, which fortunately I can rig up with a strap to fit around my cast. I can’t see any TV cameras here, not even the college TV station, if there is one. I feel like Cobblestone might consider TV too lowbrow for them. And yet, they scraped together thirty-odd guys to play football.

I don’t need the program to pick out Vince King, though I did need it to confirm that that is his name. When Cobblestone’s defense comes out, there are three bears on the line, and one stays aloof from the others. But when the play starts, he’s vicious, getting to the opposing quarterback twice for sacks and three more times for pressures, dropping the running back in the backfield six times, disrupting plays right and...well, he plays right tackle, so mostly to the right.

There’s no question he’s got motivation. It’s hard to judge his ability from one game, though. His play is pretty sloppy, relying on his speed and muscles to get results. And there’s no question that he’s got both of those. Probably channels a lot of his frustrations into the gym, besides the obvious attraction of being able to ogle other guys in t-shirts and shorts. So the question is: is he just poorly coached, or does he not learn well?

I start watching the other players. Only one of the safeties really stands out, but again, he’s got lots of raw talent and awareness on the field. I remember how Dev used to play corner, how that anticipation and understanding is what’s serving him well at linebacker. The plays these kids are running are really basic, which is funny because generally the kids at small liberal arts colleges are pretty smart. Your average Cobblestone College doesn’t have athletic scholarships to admit kids who don’t meet the academic standards. Maybe they’re just not interested in learning football.

The defense gets a stop, and comes to the bench. I keep filming the game, but watch King on the bench. He jokes with teammates, but quietly, while they laugh boisterously. He takes water from a cooler, and then sits apart from the rest of the team and stares at the field. That little slump to the shoulders, the hunched-over back, it’s all telling—if you’re looking for it. I want to go pat him on the shoulder and tell him it’ll be okay, but I can’t.

Maybe if he’d answered my e-mail, it’d be different. But it’s been two days, and the silence feels to me like a kid who panicked, who sent the e-mail on the spur of the moment, and when someone responded, when someone reached out to him, he shrank back. On the way here, I replayed the last two sentences of his e-mail in my head.
Maybe someday...maybe someday.
Clearly, that ‘someday’ is not now.

So why am I here, four hours out of my way, taking film that I’ll maybe show one of the other coaches before it gets filed in the archives and never looked at again? I’ve been asking myself that all afternoon. I don’t know. All I know is, there’s something sad and yet reassuring about watching him hunched over on the bench. I know intellectually that there are other gay football players, but watching one in the flesh makes it more real, and that makes me feel like Dev isn’t alone.

The other students in the section are really friendly, even before they find out I’m a scout. They try to figure out who I’m watching, and a couple of them know enough about football to make good guesses. It helps pass the time while Cobblestone is getting demolished by River Heights University, which the students tell me is about half an hour up the road. They’re better at football, but apparently their theater department sucks.

Driving to my next game, I munch on the onion rings the kids bought me on the way out and try to clear my head. There’s got to be a hundred, two hundred kids like Vince King all over the country. Am I going to drive around and see all of them? What good would it do if I did?

A few years ago, I probably would’ve gone up to the kid anyway, just for the chance to right a wrong. Now, it would be hypocritical of me to drag someone else out of the closet. The best thing I can do, I guess, is continue to let Dev be a good role model. Answer the e-mails when they come in; eventually one will write back. And work on my own relationship.

When Aunt Carolyn mentioned sacrifice and compromise, last Thursday, the only things I could think of to sacrifice would be my cock or my pushy-fag attitude. I’m sort of attached to both of them. I know there’s got to be something we—I—can do, if only I could figure out how. It has to be me; Dev still reverts to being a son when he’s around his father. But this morning, I realized that there is someone else I can ask for help.

I’ve been putting off that phone call until after the first game. Now I figure I’ll wait ’til after the second game.

This game, the one I have to watch for work, is crammed full, forty or fifty thousand people in the huge stadium. Even though the dry fall air, cool and crisp, doesn’t carry scents well, I still have to wade through thousands of scents, flashing my Dragons credentials to get to the press area. Neutra-Scent tissues appear and disappear in the crowd, white against the noses of people who don’t like the more discreet perfume sticks. The specks of white are like static in the black and gold of the home team all over the stands. I head for the small island of neutral beige and light blue where the press sit.