Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (60 page)

There’s a tiger working on the wagon, and a bear bent over the tool bench to the right. Loud rattling sounds fill the air periodically, the smells of oil and gasoline strong even just outside. The new rubber smell of the stack of tires at the back makes its way forward too. I don’t see Mikhail anywhere.

I stand at the garage entrance for a good three minutes, fluffed tail curled down against my leg, before the bear notices me. “Hey, Ivan,” he rumbles.

The tiger pulls his head down from the car, sees the bear pointing to me. He wipes his paws on a rag and walks toward me. “Morning,” he says. “What can I do for ya?”

My heart thumps. “Is Mikhail in?”

Ivan squints. He jerks a thumb upwards. “He’s in the office. What’s this about?”

“
Personal,” I say.

The big tiger leans closer. He’s about as big as Dev, just not as muscular. His fur is stained with grease, his overalls filthy, and he’s showing a gut. His muzzle is clean, though, white and black with a touch of grey near the eyes. I see his nostrils flare. “You smell familiar,” he rumbles.

“
Yeah,” I say, seeing no reason to lie. “We ran into each other over at Mikhail’s house a little while back.” I hold up the paw wrapped in the bandage, the metal splint glinting.

He frowns. The bear turns toward me, scratching his ears. “Sorry,” Ivan says, “Ain’t got many foxes hereabouts. I don’t remember...”

Then he does. His eyes widen. He takes a step back and surveys me, holding a paw out. “You stay there. I’ll...I’ll let Mickey know you’re here.”

The bear’s frown doesn’t clear. “Ivan?” he says slowly.

Ivan steps quickly to the bear’s side and bends his muzzle down. “It’s that fox,” he says into the small ear in what I hope he thinks is a discreet whisper.

The bear stares at me. “Huh,” he says. He’s got a gut too, but it doesn’t look as bad on him as it does on Ivan, who’s moving surprisingly quickly up the stairs, his steps thudding on the cheap wooden planks.

Cars speed by outside, covering any sound I might be able to hear from upstairs. The bear and I watch each other. I fold my arms, to appear more nonchalant, and also because my fingers keep tapping things. He doesn’t even pretend to be doing anything with his tool bench.

The wind picks up. I tighten my arms around myself, but I don’t want to step any closer into the garage. The bear and I look at each other, and we wait.

When Lee hangs up, when I go back out, I try to lose myself in the practice. I try real hard. But I can’t get his voice out of my head, can’t stop thinking about my father making that phone call that got Lee fired. I hit pretty hard that afternoon, to the point that Gerrard takes me aside and tells me to ease up. I snarl back that I’m just playing hard. He says if I injure someone on the practice team, that doesn’t help us win, and I say that if they can’t take it, they shouldn’t be on the team.

We used to play football, Dad and me and Gregory. I used to tackle Dad with all my strength, but he could always push me away, or drag me along until my brother leapt in to help. When I was in high school, he took particular pride in beating my tackles, although then I could stop him on my own. “Get better,” he’d say. “You can’t stop me, how are you going to stop kids on the field, hunh?”

I dodge Jake on the next play, trying to get to Baki, the cheetah with the ball. Jake grabs my uniform—holding—but I don’t care. I yank at it and charge. The cheetah’s gotten rid of the ball, but I tackle him anyway.

“
Unnecessary roughness,” he says, once I let him up.

“
Holding.” I wave at Jake.

We stare at each other. Jake and Gerrard come up. Baki grins at me, the light still burning in his eyes. “All right,” he says. “That’s how we’re playin’ now.”

Gerrard starts to say something and then stops. He looks around, at me, at all of us, and then gives his permission with a curt nod. It’s great. Everybody’s going full-out, even though we’re not wearing pads. I have my brace on, but that doesn’t stop my ribs creaking in complaint on a couple tackles. I keep going. It’s Baki who stops things, coming up limping on one play.

“
That’s enough,” Gerrard calls.

“
It’s just twisted,” Baki says. He’s already putting weight on it.

“
Let’s run it off,” Gerrard says. We do sprints and jog around the field to cool down, then head to the showers.

I feel a lot better; still angry, but calmer. I ask if we can grab a burger, but even the burger places here serve tacos, and the whole place smells like peppers. Glad we’re leaving tomorrow.

The guys talk about the weekend’s game, about Hellentown and the Pilots’ offense. I say “Yeah,” or “That’s what I hear,” and not just because we haven’t watched a lot of film on them yet this year. My mind’s elsewhere. The guys pretty much let me be, after Gerrard heads off their questions.

As soon as dinner’s over, we head back to the hotel. Most of the guys are going to turn in early, but Charm, of course, is not. So I have the room to myself, to dial my father.

The phone rings and rings. Nobody picks up. So I talk to the machine.

“
Hey. It’s Devlin. Listen, you might not want to talk to me. That’s fine. But stay the fuck out of Lee’s business. That was a shitty thing you did, a weak thing. This doesn’t concern him. This is between me and you. Okay?”

The line clicks. I hold my breath for a second, my bravado wavering. My father’s voice says, “He made it about him—”

I hang up. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. I don’t trust myself to respond. The phone sits in my paw, alive with tiny vibrations. I can hear the echo of the ring in the future, Dad calling me back, furious that I hung up on him.

But the phone doesn’t ring. “Good,” I mutter, and drop it on the dresser.

I’m just going to have to keep them apart. Lee can’t do anything to retaliate, and he’s going to want to, once he recovers from the shock. That’s who he is, no matter how many promises he makes to me about not being pushy any more. But he doesn’t really know my dad. Someone could get seriously hurt, and my money’d be on the small fox going to the hospital again.

Of course, my Dad could find things seriously fucked up too, if Lee really put his mind to it. I don’t think he would, because he cares about me. I’m not sure Dad has that restraint. That is, I don’t think he thinks about what hurting Lee means to me. If he did, he wouldn’t have fucked with Lee’s job. Lee shouldn’t have talked to Kinnel, no question, but Dad’s retaliation was way out of line.

I find my claws snagging the fabric of the chair as I think about it, and lift my paws away. It’s not a big deal for me to pay for a damaged chair, but it’s just rude. Especially when the hotel has a sign specifically asking clawed guests to be careful. I retract my claws with an effort and go lie down on the bed.

Charm comes in an hour later. “Hey, Gramps,” he says. “Thought you’d be sacked out.”

“
Yeah, well.” I stare at the ceiling. “Hey, Charm? Do your folks know about your life? I mean, all the fucking around?”

“
Ha.” He strips his shirt off. “Dad keeps count for me. ‘Just don’t get ’em preggers,’ he says. Gave me my first box of condoms, did I tell ya?”

“
No.” I sigh. My dad would probably love it if I had a series of girlfriends. That just doesn’t appeal to me at all, not any more. “What if your dad did something really shitty to a friend of yours? Like, got him fired.”

He frowns. “Why would Dad want you to get cut?”

“
Not me. Just like...one of your girls. I dunno.” I press a paw to my head.

He sits on his bed. “Did my dad call you?”

“
No. It was my dad. He got Lee fired.”

His little ears twitch, and he blows a long breath out through his nostrils. “Fuck. Uh, I know it’s your dad, but that’s kind of a dick move.”

I pound the bed with a fist. “I know!”

“
Okay, cool.” He gets up and stretches. “Long as you know.”

“
What do I do?”

“
Uh...” He turns to look at me. “Tell him he’s a dick? I could tell my old man that, but I dunno. Hey, wasn’t your dad not talking to you or something?”

“
Yeah. They kicked me out because I wouldn’t break up with Lee.”

“
And then they got Mrs. Gramps fired?”

“
Well. Lee kind of told the papers about me being kicked out.”

Charm blows a snort again. “This sounds like one of them foreign movies with subtitles where I never know what’s going on and then some wolf in a stupid hat stabs a badger in an overcoat.”

“
When did you ever go see a foreign movie?”

He waves a hand. “There was this hot jaguar, she was all into that shit.”

“
Say no more.” I prop myself up on my elbows.

“
Look, Gramps.” Charm yawns. “Sounds like they made the decision for ya. Stick with Mrs. Gramps. You guys are happy. The grups’ll come round or they won’t, but it ain’t your problem now. Leave ’em alone and they’ll leave you alone.”

“
Grups?”

He eyes me. “You ain’t never called ’em that? Grownups, I mean.”

I laugh. “I’m a grup, then.”

“
Well, yeah,” he says. “But I got a few more years t’go.”

He lies down on the bed and whacks the light switch. “Asshole,” I say, and I flick off my light too.

I’m still mad in the morning. Like, I think about it and I get pissed all over again. I’ve been upset at my dad before—I think I spent most of my junior year of high school fighting with him—but not like this. It’s like he’s become a different person. And now I’m looking at some of the other things he’s said, the way he treated some friends of ours when he felt they’d let him down, the way he talked to our relatives, even the way he treats Mom sometimes. Is he, really, all that different now?

I’m mad at myself, too, for all the times I was intimidated by him. If I’d stood up to him at home or at the restaurant...if I’d laid down the law and said, “this is how it’s going to be,” then would he have messed with Lee that way? If there were nothing for Lee to tell that reporter about, then Dad wouldn’t have made that phone call. Or would he?

Above and beyond that, I can’t stop thinking that this happy home family life I’ve been clinging to has been nothing but a lie. I know Lee would tell me I’m overreacting. I know Dad would say he’s only done this because he cares about me, the same as Lee did. But I can see Lee’s reasoning. I know that partly he was trying to get back at Dad, but he was also trying to show how he was wrong, force him to take me back in. Dad wasn’t doing anything but being petty and vengeful and, as Charm so bluntly put it, a dick.

I dial up appropriately angry music on my iPod for the flight. Something with loud guitar and people wailing about how much the world sucks fits my mood. The rest of the team doesn’t, though. They’re all laughing and joking, high-fiving, talking about how much ass we’re going to kick—and get—in Hellentown. The New Kestle pickings are pretty slim, I guess, but Hellentown is prime territory. Gerrard reminds them not to get distracted Saturday night, and Charm laughs and tells the plane to tag along with him any other night.

When that dies down, Charm asks, as discreetly as he can (only the nearest three rows hear him), if Lee’s coming to visit. I say I don’t know. The question reminds me how much I miss him, though, how much I’d love to have him near me just to vent about all this. To apologize for my dad, to put my arms around him and be reassured that he’s still there.

We land, pile into a bus, and go straight to practice while our bags go to our hotel. To my surprise, Carson taps my shoulder as we’re heading into the locker room. I step aside with him and let the other guys go in.

His expression is, as always, unreadable. He’s got his sleeveless tee on, so I can see the muscles bunched under the spotted fur of his folded arms. “What’s up?”

“
You okay?” he asks.

I nod. “Sure. I’m good with football. Just this family thing is a pain in the ass.”

He stares past my shoulder. “Gerrard said.”

I’m not sure what to say to that. “Thanks,” I say finally.

“
My dad’s an asshole,” he says.

I tilt my head. He’s still not looking right at me. “I’m sorry,” I say.

He turns his head so I can see the side of his throat. His fingers brush the golden fur there. “See this?”

“
You mean the spots?”

“
No. The scar.”

I look closer, and I see it. His fingers are just brushing a thin line of white fur. I wouldn’t be able to see it if it didn’t bisect a black spot. “Oh. Yeah?”

His fingers smooth the fur down, hiding the scar again. “My dad did that. When I was two. Threw me through a window. Mom took me to the emergency room.”

“
Christ.”

“
He took off ’til I was twelve. Then he came back and broke my arm trying to get money from me.” He says it as if he’s reading it off a team’s injury report in the newspaper, with no spark of anger in his eyes. “Mom threw him out. Said she’d kill him if he came back.”

“
You ever see him again?”

He shrugs. “He’s in prison.”

“
Oh.” I don’t quite know what else I can say. “My dad’s not...uh, he’s just a dick. He’s not...”