Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (43 page)

“
Why? Did his parents fuck him over because he wasn’t straight?”

She laughs. “Tell me when you get to Port City. I’ll make reservations at that Sikh place. I need to get going. Tell your boy family is overrated.”

I don’t think that would work. And I can’t think what my father could say that would help. He does deal with Mother and her weird neuroses, and maybe Mikhail’s clinging to his image of his son isn’t so far off from Mother’s desperate attempts to live in the past. But if Dev’s father doesn’t have any respect for a faggot, he’s sure not going to respect any guy who lets his son be a faggot.

I slump into a chair next to a vixen reading a trashy romance. Amusingly, she has pants on, while I’m still wearing my dress. Putting my feet up on my carry-on bag, I hatch elaborate fantasies of driving up to Lake Handerson, waiting ’til Mikhail goes to the auto shop, and then winning Duscha over to my side. She’d confide in me some athletic challenge that would make Mikhail respect me. He wouldn’t believe I could do it. I’d bet him that I could, the stakes being Dev’s return to the family. I wouldn’t even toss acceptance of me in. And then I’d make it, and Mikhail would be so impressed he would invite me anyway.

Or else I just go to the auto shop and beat the shit out of him in front of the co-workers he’s so desperate to look good for. That feels a good deal more satisfying than my after-school special fantasy. I even incorporate some irony, using my cast to deliver the knockout blow.

As foolish as it is, the fantasy makes me stretch my arms. I stand up, walking away from the vixen and her trashy romance. Near the windows again, I run through some aikido moves as much as I can without drawing attention to myself. It’s been years since I took a class, but I remember it pretty well. It’s a good discipline to help us smaller types deal with larger opponents. With nothing to lose, now, I wouldn’t hold back on Mikhail. Of course, aikido is designed to get you out of fights, not into them.

I get too careless, lose track of where I am. My cast bangs into the back of one of the chairs, sending a twinge of reality up my arm. I massage my paw pad, as much as I can reach. The frustration of my impotence makes me kick the chair back, earning me glares from the surrounding passengers at the gate:
chill out, crazy vixen.
I stare back until they look away.

I think of Mikhail and his auto shop, the community in which he’s so worried about people knowing his son is gay. How would he feel if a little fox came and beat him up in front of all of them? Or, more realistically, if I sent them all a picture of his son in a cheerleader’s outfit? Hell, I bet he hasn’t even told them he kicked Dev out.

They announce that the plane’s almost ready to board, finally. I assume that’s what they announce, because I miss the actual words, busy turning that last thought over in my head. I bet he hasn’t told them. Why would he? Family’s business stays in the family, he says. Dev as much as told me that, too. That’s why Mikhail can do whatever he wants. There’s nobody to judge him, nobody to put pressure on him or make him feel guilty or embarrassed about his Neanderthal behavior.

Well, now.
That
I can do something about. I take out the cell phone, anger changing to excitement.

Fortunately, the swift fox answers, just as first class is boarding, a small group of eight. “I’ve got my laptop open. Can I record this?”

“
I don’t have much time, Mister Kinnel. I’m not calling to tell you my story.”

He sighs. “You don’t have to do the voice.”

“
Force of habit.”

“
Are you wearin’ the dress?”

“
Of course.” They finish boarding first class. “Listen, do you have connections with regional papers, like around Gateway, Hilltown?”

Some clicks of the keyboard. “I can find ’em. But I ain’t going to dig up anything without—”

I turn toward the window, speaking low and fast. “I thought some of them might be interested in a story. About a gay football player whose bigoted father kicked him out.”

His tone changes. “Yeah?”

They start to board the main cabin. My row isn’t boarding yet, but it’ll be in the next group called. “He flew down to Chevali. I just think some of the regional papers up there might be interested. Local family drama.”

“
Probably not,” he says. “Maybe some of those papers still have society pages. But what happened?”

“
That’s all I know.”

“
Got a quote from Miski?”

“
No.” I pause. “Well. He said, ‘I still love my family, no matter what.’” That oughta play well up in the Midwest.

“
Anything else? I need more than that.” Rustling as he changes position. “C’mon, I went to the post-game and asked ’bout his kick blocking play so the writers’d notice. Did you see that?”

“
That was you? All right, there was an argument at a Sonoran restaurant. Mister Kinnel, I have to go.”

He’s already typing, muttering something to himself about the number of Sonoran restaurants. “Sure, okay. Listen, I’ll call you after you land, ’kay?”

“
Sure.” I hang up and turn off the phone, and get ready to board.

I have to admit that this definitely qualifies as pushing, but I couldn’t just fly home, go to work, and act as if nothing’s wrong. My thumb still aches, and if nothing else, the bastard deserves to be made to squirm a bit. Anyone who would reject a son who needs him deserves whatever happens to him. Anyone who hurts Dev deserves whatever I can do to him.

?

Alex tries to lord it over me at work, crowing about Dev’s injury. “I’m so gonna win that lunch from you,” he says.

“
They didn’t target him because he’s gay,” I point out. “They targeted him because he was trying to make an open-field tackle.”

“
They isolated him. Look at the play they were running.”

We have all the film, so it’s easy to call it up and spend fifteen minutes arguing over whether the Tornadoes ran plays specifically to get Dev one-on-one with Bixon. I don’t see it; Alex does. I can’t tell him that Dev told me about the after-game handshakes, that everything was cool. It’s still an enjoyably trivial football-geek argument, marred only by having to watch Dev get pancaked over and over.

We—the Dragons—won this weekend, only the second time all year, so that makes everyone pretty happy. Chatter in the office is about the players who stepped up, because as the team’s confidence in various players changes over the year, our scouting assignments change. Suddenly a new left tackle is less important; we can focus on our need at center. If the center steps up his game, we can look for a tight end to jump in priority.

The changing assignments bring some frustration. Just because Kingsley did well this week doesn’t mean we don’t need to replace him; just because Forsyth did poorly doesn’t mean we do need to replace
him
. But that’s the way the ownership thinks, which at least partly why the Dragons have been terrible for the better part of a decade now. A team based on snap judgments will lose, 99% of the time, to one with more objective evaluation and a long-term plan. Morty’s trying to change the culture, but he can only do so much.

Halloween comes and goes; I pass out candy from my apartment to the few cubs and kids that come by, talk to Dev on the phone, and get ready to fly off to another round of games. The flood of e-mails to Dev’s box has slowed now that he’s not the top story in the media. He tells me he’s still getting sponsorship offers, none as urgent as the Ultimate Fit line in terms of getting commercials out, but a few that are advertising in gay papers and gay neighborhoods. “Focus on football,” I remind him, and he says yeah, whatever Ogleby can sign with stock photos, he’s approving; anything that needs his participation waits until after the season.

He’s still subdued. I’m gentle with him all week, and I don’t mention Kinnel. I meant to, the first night on the phone, but he sounded so down that I decided to wait until I could tell him in person. The article hasn’t been published anywhere I’ve heard of yet, which is good because I’m getting uneasy crawls through my fur when I think of it. More and more, I have to talk myself into believing it was the right thing to do.

Dev and I don’t talk about his family at all, in fact, though it shadows everything we say. I can feel his heartache even though I don’t miss my own family. I know how I’d feel if Dev left me, though. It’s not the same, but he’s my family, so it’s as close as I can get.

Thursday night I’m sitting alone in the apartment after an early call with Dev, looking out into the space between the buildings across the street. Hilltown in late fall is not as pretty as some of the cities I visit; the downtown, where I live, is all twenty-to-thirty-year-old concrete apartment blocks with some older brick houses dotted where the plots don’t quite line up.

I live on the second floor of one of those, a converted house that at least doesn’t smell of mildew. Mostly it smells of me, whatever quick meal I was cooking, and, if I stray into the corners, of the vixen who was the previous resident. It’s hard to stay out of the corners of the eight by ten kitchen, or the ten by ten bedroom. My bed is a loft I have to scramble over my old college desk to get up to; the living room, not much larger, has my old sofa-bed but no room to fold it out unless I move the TV.

I’m at my desk looking out at the narrow balconies, the buildings streaked with dark, damp stains. Streetlights flicker across the skeletons of trees. When the snow comes, things will be more lively, but right now it’s cold and it’s lonely. It makes me think of Dev, down there in Chevali, and how alone he feels.

That I can sympathize with. After Brian was attacked, when I started dating Dev, I drifted away from my other college friends. My visits home became perfunctory ritual, filled with the same home movies and inanities. Then we fought over me not graduating, which I’ve never really forgiven them for. Have they forgiven me, though? It’s hard to tell. I haven’t talked to Mother since Christmas.

Aunt Carolyn thought I could talk to Father. Maybe if I don’t mention Thanksgiving, he’ll have some perspective. Tomorrow might be better to call, though. My mind will still be filled with colleges and football and Dev, but I’ll be in a hotel room rather than my cramped, lonely apartment.

Then again, I know I have time now. If I’m going to do it, I might as well do it. It’s only a bit after nine. They’ll be up.

My father sounds surprised when he picks up the phone. I start with small talk, how’s he doing, how’s the business, all that. His voice sounds echoey, so I ask if he’s in the basement.

“
I was practicing pool,” he says. “Your mother has some people over.”

“
Mrs. Jess and Nathan?”

“
No.”

“
Some other vixen with a ten-year-old cub she can dote on?”

He sighs. “What’s on your mind?”

I lean against the chilly window. His voice is weirdly flat, but I don’t follow it up. “You never told me about your sister.”

“
Marina? I haven’t talked to her in years. Since before you were born.”

I imagine him in the pool room, leaning against the table, maybe sitting in one of the armchairs. I brush my tail idly past the backs of my legs. “Aunt Carolyn said the family kicked her out.”

“
Grandma did. Your grandma, I mean. Didn’t take to the desert fox. I forget his name now. Hari?” He pauses. I hear the scratch of his claws through his cheek fur. “Why?”

What the hell am I doing, asking my father for advice on getting another father to reconcile with
his
son? I almost say, “No reason,” and hang up. Almost—if I hadn’t just talked to Dev and heard that same oppressive weight on him he’s had since Sunday. He needs me.

“
Dev’s parents—his father—told him not to come home again.” Father doesn’t say anything. “Until he stops seeing me.”

He’s still quiet. I regret the foolish rush of emotion, like asking about Thanksgiving. This silence reminds me of that one. I brace myself. “Father?”

I can hear him breathing. He exhales slowly, and says one of the last things I’d expect. “Do you want to get a drink?”

There’s a bar near my place we both know. I bundle up and walk down the street, ears flat against the cold breeze, thinking about my father. I’ve known him for twenty-some years. I never really talked to him about being gay. I figured it out on my own, sitting in my bedroom jerking off under the covers. I can still remember the Abercrombie catalog, of all things, the slender fox in the tighty whities I was looking at when I had the burst of realization: this is how I’m different.

There was no way I could tell my parents, not outright. I wasn’t worried they’d throw me out; I’d just grown used to all of us having our own private lives. So instead, I came home from college my freshman year with gay literature and gay posters and a jacket with a pink triangle patch on it, and dared them to bring it up. Mother never did; Father only made oblique references to my “lifestyle.” But I never asked them to meet a boyfriend, not until after Dev walked over that day in the restaurant and introduced himself.

Which was pretty ballsy of him, and more than he ever did with his parents. I only talked to him a few times about when he’d come out to them. Later, later, he always said, and he’d change the subject. And I, knowing how hard it was for me, let him. For all the times I pushed him, nudged him, annoyed him about football or about our relationship, I never brought up family. I like to stick to my strengths.