Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (30 page)

The living room is huge. Gerrard and Vonni are sitting on the long, wide couch watching the muted pre-game show on a sixty-inch or so TV, Carson behind them. Other players—no other SOs that I can see at first glance—stand in groups of two or three talking. Through the wide window, I glimpse a basketball court behind the house for a second before a massive form blocks it. Charm’s bulk is impossible to mistake as he yells, “Gramps!”

He reaches us in three strides and lands a hearty smack on my shoulder. Then he spots Lee. “Hey! Mrs. Gramps?”

I wince. The whole room is turning to look at us, but I’m too busy freaking out about what might happen to recognize names or scents. My stomach tenses up, and I take a step toward Charm, feeling like when you slam on the brakes and throw your arm across the passenger to protect him from the impact. Lee’s muzzle is frozen, his eyes sharp. But his ears don’t flag. Slowly, he grins, and then he holds out a paw. “That’s right. Lee Gramps. And I know you from such game-winning field goals as Millenport, 2006.”

There’s hardly anything he could’ve said that would’ve won Charm over more completely and immediately. The stallion lets out a surprised “Hah!” and claps Lee on the shoulder, nearly sending him flying into Carson. “Hell of a game! I was kickin’ into the wind!”

I wonder how the hell Lee remembers a game between two teams he wasn’t following at the time, and then I remember the film library he has access to. My stomach unclenches and my arms fall to my sides. This isn’t going to be that bad. It’s going to work.

I start to introduce Lee to Carson, but Charm takes over. “Hey! Spots! This here’s Mrs. Gramps, name of Lee, he’s pleased to meet ya.”

“
Mm-hmm,” Carson says, extending a paw.

Lee gets to grasp it briefly. “You’ve been a real help—”

Charm sweeps Lee away. “Hey! Coach!” Gerrard turns his head. “Get over here, meet Mrs. Gramps!”

I shake my head. If anyone but Charm had called him that...but Lee doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he really doesn’t mind, or maybe he’s just acting for my benefit. I watch him shake Gerrard’s paw, getting more words in this time. Whatever he says makes Gerrard’s eyes flicker up to me as the coyote nods once.

“
Hey there,” a voice behind me says. I turn and see Fisher on one crutch, his leg in a bandage, free paw carrying a beer. He lifts it toward me. “Want one?”

“
Fisher!” I start to clap him on the shoulder and then hesitate at the sight of the crutch. Fisher grins and presses the beer into my paw. I sniff: it’s domestic, but good domestic. “Are you s’posed to be walkin’?”

He grabs a beer from the table behind him, drops into a chair, and waves the crutch. “Aches like a mother,” he growls. “But I can’t lay in bed any more. God dammit, I had my bell rung half a dozen times, never missed a game. Fuckin’ boar.”

I see the play again, me dropping back, leaving Fisher alone to handle the boar and bear. My ears flush. “It shoulda been me. I shouldn’ta left you—”

He waves a paw. “Just glad it happened now and not ten years ago. Better me than you. You got a good long career ahead of ya.”

“
It’s not the same without ya,” I say, taking a drink. Nice: wheaty and crisp. My ears come back up, slowly. “Fuckin’ boar.”

“
We could use a guy like him.” Fisher looks around the room, his ears down, frowning.

“
Really?” I glance around the room. Gerrard, Carson, Charm, Vonni, Norton. A couple guys from the D-line I know casually. Brick isn’t here, though maybe he’s coming later. Pike isn’t here either. All of them good football players, talented, solid, but not over-aggressive. “I don’t think Coach’d go for that.”

“
Nah, our penalty yards are down this year. But you guys did a nice job, after I got hit.” Fisher gulps another slug of beer. “Maybe there’s hope for the team yet. If guys know they can’t push us around, that’s huge.”

“
We don’t let anyone push us around.”

He shrugs. “There’s ‘you can take a hit’ tough, and there’s ‘hit me and I’ll destroy you’ tough. We don’t have that yet.” His eyes sweep the room and return to me. “That ain’t our personality. ’Cept you, sometimes.”

I grin. “You pissed me off the one time. I already said I was sorry.”

“
Why? I attacked you, you hit back.” He shifts his sling around.

“
That’s different. You’re a friend.”

“
Don’t matter. Friend, family, whatever—you can’t let people get away with shit when you got something to prove. You do.”

I think about that. I’ve been pretty fired up this season, first trying to impress Lee, then worrying about the guys coming after me. Something to prove? Just that I’m a good football player. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“
Lots of these guys don’t. Gerrard? He just wants to play best he can.”

“
He’s a coach on the field. That’s what we need.”

Again, Fisher’s eyes unfocus. “A Mike can be more’n that. When we won those championships, in Highbourne,” he says, “you saw? You remember Von Werner?”

“
Big black wolf?”

He nods. “Mean son of a bitch. Punched a guy in a bar his rookie year. No big deal, then. Now it’d be all over the papers, or blogs, or whatever. Anyway, I remember, the semifinal, we played Yerba, they had this bear on the O-line, nasty blocker, just smashin’ open lanes for their running back.” I vaguely remember the game as he describes this. “Forget his name. First quarter, he ran all over our D-guys. So Werner tells the guys, let him through.”

I’m starting to remember this. I was in high school, still a cornerback, so a middle linebacker wouldn’t be one of my heroes, but this made highlight reels. “A wolf on a bear.”

“
That’s what they told him. He said, let ’im through. And when Werner got that look in his eyes, you didn’t say no to him. So next play, they bounce off him, let him go through the line. He sees Werner, his eyes light up. You can see it on the replay. He charges forward. Their buck, behind him, thinks he’s got a lane. He’s been following this bear all season.”

Vonni’s drifted over, listening to us. Gerrard, several feet away, turns his ears in our direction. Charm is still talking to Lee, but the fox’s tall ears are similarly aimed toward Fisher. Conversation is slowing in the room.

“
But Werner’d been watching the bear. Seen him on film all season, watched him in the game. Bear’s got fifty, seventy pounds on him, but he don’t have good balance when he charges. Keeps his feet too close together. Just a little thing, but it’s enough. Werner waits ’til the bear’s lowered his head, and then he makes this sweet spin move, like he’s dancin’. Grabs the bear’s arm and pushes him down. Leaps over him and plants his helmet square in the buck’s chest.”

He notices the crowd and plays up, with motions of his paw. Beer comes close to sloshing out of the bottle. “The buck goes down like a sack o’ bricks. The bear gets his face planted in the turf. He gets up madder’n ever. And Werner glares at him, and the bear glares back. So next play, they run the same thing again. And the guys let him through again, and he comes for Werner. Steel in his eyes, Werner usedta say.

“
But Werner’s ready, and this time he don’t even touch the bear. He spins to the other side, dodges completely. The bear slows down, wondering where Werner is. Cause he wants to get him now. But Werner’s already past him, grabbing the buck, and he throws him forward, to the ground, right into the bear. The bear’s off balance. They go down together.

“
They pass on the next down, so the bear’s hanging back to protect. Werner leaves the coverage to his line, and he dives through to the bear.”

We’re all quiet. In the background, the TV goes mute. Gerrard’s resigned half-smile tells me he’s heard this story before, but his ears are still perked, listening intently. “And he flinches. The bear. Werner told me after the game, he said, that’s when I knew I had the son of a bitch.

“
He blocks him just above the knee. All legal. Sends him flying backwards, and then he stomps on his paw on his way to the QB. Like by accident, only not. Refs don’t see it.”

He surveys us. “And that’s it for the bear. We don’t even have to double-team him the rest of the game. Once in a while, the guys let Werner through, and he knocks him down again. Oh, the bear runs off his mouth, but Werner’s got his number.” Teeth show in his smile. “Werner shoulda got MVP for that game. No way we win that without him castratin’ that bear.”

Gerrard coughs. “We need to get to the playoffs first. Then we can worry about taking out their star bully.”

Carson nods, Charm says, “Fuck yeah!” and Norton echoes him. They break into smaller conversations, drifting apart again.

Lee leans in to Fisher. “The bear was Acherson. And he wasn’t ever the same after that game.” He starts to say more, but Charm grabs his shoulder.

“
Hey, I want you to tell Vonni ’bout my kick,” he says. “He never listens to me.” And before Lee can protest, he’s being pulled away.

I’m left with Fisher again, the two tigers in the room. “Hell of a story,” I say. “You want me to be like that? Step on people’s arms?”

He pokes my arm. “Playoff time, everything gets ramped up.”

“
Can’t wait to see it.” I’ve been in two playoff games, back in college. The memory is faint, though moments still stick out. I made two interceptions in our win. The next game, the one we lost, was really where the game started to move fast. Everyone was running in high gear. Seito, the white wolf quarterback on the opposing team, was deadly with his passes. He’s now sitting on the bench in Highbourne. I don’t know anyone else from that game who’s in the pros.

The night with Lee afterwards in the hotel, that first time we had sex outside his apartment, that was in high gear, too. That night is crystal clear in my memory. Lee’s hard to spot when I look for him, around the room, lost behind one massive body or another. Charm’s kept him in his orbit; I finally see a calm Lee listening to Charm, who is gesturing expansively. The fox catches my eye and gives me a half-grin and a “what can you do?” flick of the ears.

“
It’d be good for you,” Fisher says. “You can’t know what it’s like ’til you been there.”

“
Be good for all of us,” I say. Gerrard’s over by Lee now, and turns to add something to the conversation. It looks like Lee’s met everyone. I relax, seeing him so fully relaxed. I was worried he’d be bristly or jittery, but there’s nobody like Charm to get someone comfortable. I’d like to know how he does it. Maybe I should bring
him
to meet my parents.

“
No, I mean it.” There’s something insistent in Fisher’s voice, so I turn my attention to him. He’s got a faraway look in his eyes and his ears are half-down. “Some guys, you don’t know how they’ll handle the playoffs. You’ll do great, long as you keep your head in the game.”

I’m aware of Lee, on the other side of the room. I stand straighter. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“
Maybe not,” he says, and eyes me. “How’s things with your folks?”

I feel my ears flush as I flatten them to my head. “Fine.”

“
Yeah, well, you should keep that in mind next time you go on TV.”

“
That stag—”

He cuts me off. “TV people are all assholes.”

“
Yeah, but this one—”

“
What, didn’t ask you the questions you wanted him to? They never do.”

“
But—”

“
They never will.”

I grumble. “Yeah, I won’t be doing
his
show again.”

He leans foward. “You read any of the articles people wrote about you? Seen what they done with your words?”

My fur prickles. “Lee read them. He said they were okay.”

“
Sure. He’s smart, he don’t wanna bother you. They were okay, most of ’em. But I’m sure you didn’t mean half what they read into your words. Get used to it. Remember your media training.”

“
I did remember it. But they don’t train you to talk about what to do if you,” I lower my voice, “come out in public.”

“
They don’t tell you what to say after you stand up for a teammate gettin’ gored in the leg, either,” he says. “But you figured that out okay.”

“
They did tell me that,” I remind him. “‘What to say after a fight.’ I know they didn’t do it your rookie year.”

“
It was a lot shorter.” He grins, showing fangs. “‘We took care of business.’ That’s all we said after a fight. But I thought you did pretty good. Course, I was high on oxymorphone, so, y’know.”

He points to his leg. Below the bandages, there’s a metal brace, with a cloth area full of scrawled names. I gesture. “Want me to sign it?”

“
Sure.” He chuckles. “I can sell this on eBay when it comes off.”

I find a pen and write, “Need you on the line, Dev,” and then, because Vonni and Carson did it, I write my number next to it: “#57.”

“
I know your number,” he says when I straighten.

I cap the pen, looking down at what I wrote. “Yeah, but your eBay buyer might not.”

He laughs, and then my whiskers twitch as two large bodies enters the room. A moment later I get Pike’s scent, then Kodi’s. Pike calls out loud greetings, slapping paws as he walks in. I look at what I just wrote and feel a prickle of guilt, because Pike’s sure to see that. Then I think, hell with him, he knows how things are. He knows we have to make adjustments with him on the line instead of Fisher. And the game’s starting on TV, anyway, which brings people to the couches.