With a Little Luck: A Novel (40 page)

“Layla, please follow me,” he said sternly.

I got up, brushed off my pants, and trailed him to the back. I held the dog and petted his head as Dr. Eisen cleaned and stitched the wounds, my face drenched in tears and my chest heaving from heavy sobs. Every time I regained my composure, the dog would look at me with his large brown eye—the only one that was visible as he lay on his side—and I would lose it all over again.

Once the dog was sedated and resting comfortably, Dr. Eisen sat me down.

“Layla,” he said, and then took a breath—that breath you always know is going to be followed with bad news. “I appreciate your enthusiasm for this job and your love of animals, but judging from tonight, I don’t think this is the right field for you.”

“But—”

I started to defend myself, but he cut me off instantly. “There will be far worse cases, much more blood. Some animals—many—won’t make it, and you need to be tough.”

“I
am
tough,” I said, as I reached my tongue up and toward the right to catch another salty tear.

But that was it. I was fired. After one night on the job. Not even after a night—after four hours. Veterinary school would not be in my future. Which was fine, I suppose. One unresponsive Edgar and an overly empathic response to a wounded Lab’s owner saved me the additional four-year school commitment after the standard undergrad time. And after messing around taking pictures at a dog park one day, I realized that I was actually better at something
else
involving pets. And now I’m in the right place—at least, regarding my job. Sometimes it’s good not to get what you want.

Also, I like that the animals don’t tend to die on you from getting their pictures taken. Sorry—their “portraits.” We’re trying to go upscale.

“You know all this talk about SUVs and how bad they are for the environment?” Brooke says, as she swipes the last bite of our sundae. “Do you know there’s a huge tax break if you buy one that’s over a certain weight and you claim it as a business-only vehicle?”

“If you’re a farmer,” I say.

“I’m serious. They’re called
light trucks
. They’re classified as a work truck. And you can essentially write the whole thing off on your taxes. So basically you can get a free Hummer!”

“You just wanted to say ‘free Hummer.’ ”

“No, I’m seriously gonna get one.”

“Not to be a stickler for details,” I say, “but you don’t even have a job. I’m pretty sure you need a business, or at least a job, anyway, to be able to write things off.”

“Yeah, I’m working on that. It’s not easy. People aren’t hiring brilliant, charismatic what-have-yous.”

“ ‘What-have-yous’?” I question. “Is that how you’re marketing yourself these days?”

“Not all of us know what we want to do from the age of two, Layla. Not all of us are still living our high-school glory days.”

I always know Brooke’s annoyed with me when she says my name. Any other time she’ll call me “Lay” or “bee-yotch” or “dude.”

“Layla” means business. I also know because now she’s taking potshots at my marriage to Brett.

As I figured out my career path, Brett wasn’t too far behind. There was only so long he could hang out and watch Trish and me play with animals—and only so long we would put up with him distracting our subjects with a pepperoni Hot Pocket just seconds before we got the perfect shot. Following his dream, albeit humbly at first, Brett went back to Hamilton High, our former high school, and got a job assistant-coaching with his old mentor. Frank Wells suggested that he’d now stick to offense, his true passion, and he’d name Brett defensive coordinator as well as JV coach. Brett accepted. And after a beginning rough patch of their combined approach, there was a fairy-tale quality to their success. Together they brought the team to the state championships three years in a row. Then they both moved up to coaching at UCCC, which was—unsurprisingly, given the record I mentioned earlier—looking to head in a new direction.

You know how that turned out. Winners.

Brett. As you now see, he’s a great defensive coordinator and coach. If not a father, he’s at least a wise older brother to most of the team. Of course, what most sets Brett apart—and also some would say is his greatest flaw, given the craziness of his visions—is that he’s always thinking big picture. Always. That’s why he pushes his boys at academics as well as athletics: He knows there’s always a place for both, and that in the best of all worlds, the two complement each other. He dreams bigger than blocking drills and impromptu Gatorade showers.

It’s always been that way with him. He’s always been a mixture of goofball and prodigy. Through high school, he was star of the football team—and when I say star, I mean he was Sol itself, with everything else revolving around him. He was certainly the most highly recruited player in our high school’s history. You know, he was the kind of kid you read about in the newspaper, whose parents are sitting down for meatloaf with a new college recruiter virtually every night and fending off midnight phone calls from those without the good fortune to find a seat at the dinner table. But he was also secretly editor-in-chief of a weekly pro-football scouting report that he self-published and distributed from his parents’ basement until the NFL sent him a cease-and-desist order; some of his insights were so dead-on they suspected him of having informers in every locker room in the league. They didn’t get that Brett’s not the kind of guy who needs informers.

In college, he might have been on a path to playing in the pros but was spared a likely future collecting Super Bowl rings, knee scars, and fortunes in endorsements by a complete tear of his Achilles tendon. I think that, for the rest of his life, somewhere inside he’ll be running down an imaginary sideline, waiting for a perfect spiral that he’ll catch and carry into life’s end zone for the game-winning touchdown.

He certainly tried after the injury. A perfect example of his big-picture thinking getting him in trouble was the illegal protein-bar concession he ran out of the campus rec center. Fosterbars, he called them. He researched healthy ingredients and with some other kids created a snack that everybody, quite literally, ate up. It was extremely successful. At least it sold well in the area until the school’s athletic director somehow ended up with a tainted bar and shut the operation down. Brett was a victim of his own grand schemes in that case. He tripped himself up by attempting to meet soaring demand with materials sourced from a questionable vendor selling product out of an unmarked semi. Turns out it was expired government-surplus granola. He should have known better. Who in the government eats granola?

But that debacle’s all in the past. Now he’s on top of his game. He coaches like a whirling dervish, a latter-day Knute Rockne with enough Joe Paterno to be a player favorite, and he also indulges his entrepreneurial side. He’s playing around on Craigslist, trying to get some designers to help him. Or at least he’s been talking about it. He believes the next big thing will be his value-priced athletic underwear, coming soon to a big-box retailer near you—the first truly affordable Under Armour competitor.

Yup, he’ll likely be successful. He’s successful in whatever he does. Great guy, fun-loving, good at everything—you can see why I wanted to “team up” with him and his family. And you probably still don’t really see why I’m annoyed with him.

At least Brooke gets it. Sometimes she gets it a little too well. She points things out that I’m trying to let slide. And I know she’s just looking out for me. But in case I don’t, she reminds me that she loves me when she hugs me good night. And then she flips me off.