The Snap, page 20
I was an enabler.
* * *
*
In the morning the WAGS headed back to their own cities. As the others maneuvered their laptops and overnight bags into the trunks of the rental car, Sarah bumped my hip. “I noticed you didn’t share anything,” she said quietly.
“I noticed you didn’t either.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” When I raised my eyebrows to indicate that no, it wasn’t, Sarah went on, “My deep, dark secret is all of you. Knowing all the stuff we talk about happens and not writing it because it would make life harder for my friends.”
I was still thinking about that at the end of the day while staring at a cost sheet of vendors for Red Guillory Day. This wasn’t my job, we had people for this, but they wouldn’t do it as well as I would. A detail would be missed, some problem not spotted. When I looked up and saw that the lights outside my office were off, I stretched and looked at my phone—almost eight thirty. Without realizing it, I’d been sitting here for the past three hours while the rest of the staff quietly left for the day. There was nothing waiting for me at home but an empty townhouse and my own thoughts, but I turned off my heating pad, gathered my coat and bag, and forced myself to head out.
My phone buzzed—a text from Annika to the group.
Today was the first day since it happened that I had any appetite. I’m so grateful for you girls, and I want to reiterate again that your secrets are safe. Thank you for sharing them. <3
Another light was still on, and I followed it to Asbel’s office. To my surprise, he was sitting at his desk behind not a computer screen, but a mostly empty bottle of Macallan whiskey. His tie was undone, and he was holding a bottom-heavy glass, tilting it this way and that to make the amber liquid sway. I’d been avoiding him, to the extent one can avoid their boss, since I learned about Red’s second call the night of the murder, that Asbel also lacked an alibi. But after last night, I needed to talk to someone who knew Red the way that I did. Or maybe, someone who knew him better than I did, who saw him clearly in a way that I could not.
“Everything okay, boss?”
If Asbel was startled, he didn’t show it. He just gestured toward a chair and reached, long and slow, under his desk for a second glass. His movements were thick, and I suspected the bottle hadn’t been quite so empty an hour ago.
“Cheers,” he said, handing over my drink. I inclined the glass toward him, then took a sip. “That’s an eight-hundred-dollar bottle.”
“Meh. Tastes like five.”
He snorted.
“Are we celebrating?”
“Not celebrating. Honoring, I guess. Red gave me this.”
“That was nice of him. After one of the Super Bowls?”
“No, I confiscated it when he showed up here drunk as a skunk before minicamp.”
We sipped in silence. The whiskey was rich and soothing, like a hot bath from the inside out, and I fought not to close my eyes and sigh. It felt good, being there with Asbel, drinking Red’s whiskey. Missing him together, not as the canonical figure he’d become to the football world at large, but as ours, fucked up though he might have been. Because I couldn’t just throw that away. The way I felt about him now didn’t take the place of how I’d felt before; it sat beside it. They existed together. He was a mentor and a monster. And I didn’t want to let him go.
“You know,” Asbel said, splitting the remainder of the bottle between our glasses, “I really miss that fucker.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I miss winning, that’s for damn sure.” He sipped, exhaled. “Red was…complicated. There was a lot to him that people didn’t know.”
I got the sense what Asbel really meant was that there was a lot to himself that people didn’t know. Football could be lonely. It wasn’t easy breaking apart a pretty good team for the moonshot of building a great one, and not many people could understand the validation, the vengeance, when it paid off in the biggest way possible. Asbel and Red were bonded together, and that had shown in Asbel’s refusal to give up on him the last few seasons, in the way he’d defended him from what was becoming a deafening roar of detractors.
“He called me, you know. That night.”
I looked at Asbel carefully. “He called me too. I didn’t pick up.”
“Me either.”
Without the whiskey, maybe I wouldn’t have said it. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to stand the answer. I sighed deeply, and watched Asbel with eyes so heavy and sad I could barely hold them open. I needed to know. I just needed to hear him say it. “Where were you?”
The silence stretched. It was just Asbel, me, and Red in the room. The stadium was dark and deserted, and I gripped the arm of my chair, because if Asbel was involved in this, I needed to hear him say it. He was always three steps ahead—maybe he’d seen a darkness in Red that I hadn’t. Maybe I didn’t care so much anymore who killed Red, because he wasn’t such an innocent victim. But I needed to know.
“I was here.”
“At midnight?”
Asbel sat back and stared out the window. It was dark and the office light was on, so there was nothing to see there but his own reflection. “You know, it’s not my job to be Red’s friend. It’s my job to look out for the team, to make the best decisions for everyone. Not one man.”
There was a defensive edge to his voice, and I didn’t understand it, because as usual I was behind him.
But then I caught up.
“You were interviewing coaches.”
“Coach, not coaches. Just Craig. It was preliminary, but I couldn’t just keep throwing money into a pit. I couldn’t pretend we weren’t losing and going to keep losing while A.J. got older and Red kept trotting out his playbook from the early Obama years. So I did my due diligence. I brought him in.”
An in-person meeting with our biggest rival, traveling from Texas to Syracuse, didn’t sound preliminary to me. The midnight part, on the other hand, made sense. Asbel wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to see.
“I was going to tell him no,” he said with a very unfamiliar note of pleading in his voice. “I was going to say thanks but no thanks, we’re sticking with Red. But no one would believe that now that Craig’s feet are up on Red’s desk. Red’s dead, and I don’t want the last impression of him to be that he died right before he got fired.”
I nodded, pretending not to notice the tears gathering at the corners of Asbel’s eyes. I squeezed the arm of the chair. It was the closest I could come to touching him, to offering some comfort. “I won’t say anything.”
“I know.”
I spent the drive home thinking about legacy. What it meant. Who decided it. If it could or should be changed. Media relations is about facilitating access, but it’s more than that. I once read that diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell and making them feel flattered by the invitation and excited to get there. That’s media relations. I was very, very good at it, and that meant I’d been as big a factor in crafting Red’s legacy as anyone. I’d built him up into the figure he was today.
I owned this mess.
Asbel didn’t want anyone to know he’d given up on Red, and so he wouldn’t tell the police what he’d been up to that night—unless it ever got past this stage and they wanted to charge him with something. He wasn’t going to prison over a memory. But the odds were it never would go that far, and for now there were whispers around the building. Whispers were sticky. They had a way of hanging around a person forever, no matter what answers and explanations came later, because once you’ve heard something enough times, it becomes true. Asbel was destroying his own legacy to protect Red’s.
And what about me? For what noble purpose was I protecting my secret alibi?
On the night that Red was murdered I was sitting in my car on a quiet suburban street. The heat and headlights were off so I couldn’t be seen, and my breath had puffed out in little clouds across the dash. Across the street, past a broad, sweeping lawn flanked by oaks, was a neat white Victorian.
I’d been there for hours, watching the lights move through the house. First the whole lower level was lit, then just the family room, and then a bedroom upstairs. Now the house was dark. Inside, I imagined, two people slept wrapped around each other, his chin to her hair. An overflowing folder of notes and vendors and guest lists and church fees sat on the nightstand, where they would pick it up again tomorrow. There was so much to do, because she was young and they were in love and their wedding, I’d learned by cracking the password on their website, would be in the spring.
She smiled as she slept.
His name was Peter.
I’d driven by their house before—lots of times, if I was being honest. I knew it well because Peter had shown me the listing before our last big fight. He’d wanted to buy it together. To make a life there.
And I’d said no.
Peter swore it wouldn’t mean giving up my job, but of course it would. He was already so frustrated when I wasn’t available, when I didn’t have weekends or holidays or summer vacation the way normal people did. What would happen once we added kids to the mix? It was inevitable, an explosion waiting to happen, and I wasn’t going to feel guilty over the career I’d spent my life building, the one that was just as important to me as Peter’s was to him.
Now I was outside the house with the detritus of a Big Mac and fries on the passenger seat. The ice in my Coke had long since melted, but I lifted the cup and took a deep slurp. Peter was getting married. It was going to be another losing season. I was thirty-seven.
At that moment, Red Guillory called.
I didn’t answer. I was feeling sorry for myself and angry at him for something he’d had nothing to do with. I was sick over what my job had cost me, sick over my choices and choking on regrets. I silenced the call.
And by the morning, Red was dead.
* * *
*
Practice was closed all week—very unusual, but Coach Washington was entitled to do things his own way. I was much more worried about the players coming into the cafeteria afterward with hung heads and headphones in. No one talked or joked around. The training-room line stretched down the hall, and it looked like almost everyone had a bag of ice strapped somewhere on their body.
A.J. pushed his way into my office after practice on Wednesday. He wore white Bobcats slides, light-gray jogger-style sweats, and a long-sleeved navy T-shirt. His hair was wet from a shower. “We need to talk.”
“Sure.” I indicated a chair, but he paced back and forth in front of my desk, and I stood so that he wasn’t above me. I folded my arms. “Something on your mind?”
He stopped, pointed at me. “I am not holding a poodle.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The rescue dogs shoot. Drea has me holding a fucking poodle named Noodles, and I’m not doing it.”
Sweet Drea. My dear, dear friend in Community Relations. I picked up a notepad and pen and looked at him with the most serious face I could muster. “What kind of dog were you hoping to hold, A.J.?”
“A golden! A white lab! A bulldog! Something you’d see in a Ralph Lauren ad.”
“Well, that might be tricky because these are rescue dogs, not purebreds. Noodles is probably a whole mix of things.”
“Then get a different dog.”
It stopped being funny. I put down the pad. “You’d like me to find you a fake rescue dog to hold in this campaign. And then what happens when someone wants to adopt it?”
“Find a breeder for purebred goldens—no, a lab. Purebred white labs. I’ll hold it in the photos, and then—whatever, it can go to the shelter with the others. It’s like a donation, someone will be thrilled to get that dog for cheap. And get a receipt, I can write that off.” He shook his head. “This shit comes so naturally to me, I don’t know why I pay you and Omar.”
“You don’t actually pay—”
“Text me when it’s done.” He left.
For this, I gave up Peter.
For this, I’d sold my soul.
Rodney poked his head in after A.J. left. “Was that what I think it was?”
“That stays here.” I walked out of my office and held up a finger to Chloe and Edward. “Everyone got it?” They nodded, and I rubbed the spot between my brows. “Chloe, can you please research breeders? And do any of you want a dog?”
* * *
*
On Sunday afternoon when I looked out at the mostly empty stadium before kickoff, Chloe was at the opposite end of the press box handing out roster cards. She wore a black bodysuit and wide-legged black pants, and her ash-blond hair was twisted at the top of her head. My clothes felt ill fitting and unflattering. My skin itched.
“Chloe?” I called, and she looked up, a half smile on her face. “Sorry, would you mind just—could you grab me coffee? With milk. Thanks, I don’t want to miss…”
As she left the press box I straightened my laptop so that its edges were flush with the desktop and stretched my spine as far as it would go.
“Oh, we’re doing this again.” Rodney sighed when he saw the first formation. As expected, A.J. handed the ball off to Alec, who managed to squirm a yard or two downfield before being tackled. Second down was a short pass that picked up two more, and then we were facing third-and-seven.
“That was quick,” I muttered. A.J. dropped back, the pocket collapsed around him, and he scrambled around the field looking for someone to throw to. A hulking defenseman broke through and came at him, arms raised, a wall of clay, and A.J., instead of leaning in to protect himself or throwing the ball out-of-bounds, heaved it downfield.
An instant after the ball left A.J.’s hands, the defender leveled him with a bone-crunching thud. The outraged fans cheered as yellow flags bloomed—the hit was clearly late—as the ball continued its long, slow arc toward Raj streaking up the slot. I felt the familiar bubble rise through my chest and into my throat as a safety picked up coverage and fell into step with him. The ball hit its peak and began to fall, gracefully, beautifully, toward two sets of outstretched hands. Raj and the safety were locked together, stride for stride, each face twisted back and up, directly into the sun, as the ball came closer, more floating than falling, until at last it landed nestled against a jersey of Bobcats red.
“YES!” The press box exploded, the staffers with cheers, the press in surprise, as Raj tumbled to the ground at the twenty-yard line.
“Holy shit!” Rodney said, yanking me back and forth by the shoulder. “Holy shit!”
My reply caught in my throat when I saw Deon and the training staff jogging onto the field. A.J. was still down, curled onto his side and clutching his shoulder. “Oh no.” The writers clicked away, tweeting out updates as Deon went down on one knee next to A.J. and leaned in. A pause, and then A.J. shook his head. Deon asked him something else, and the head shook again. Deon nodded, once, firmly, then signaled something to the sideline.
When the clock stops for an injured player, he has to come out for at least one down. But A.J. didn’t go to the bench or the trainer’s area. Instead, head down and clutching his shoulder, he went straight off to the locker room.
Chloe appeared, my coffee in hand. “Just the way you wanted it,” she said. She meant the coffee, but I looked at the field and felt sick.
Will Campbell, the backup, jogged off the sideline looking impossibly small. He was bigger than A.J., bulkier, but he took up the space only of a person, not a legend. “Jeeeeesus,” breathed the AP writer as we watched our left tackle grab Will’s face mask and pull their helmets together. Will nodded, the helmets shook, and then he nodded again, more forcefully.
“Anything, Poppy?” Bernie asked, twisting around from his seat in the front row.
“Rodney’s heading down now.” I signaled Rodney with my eyes to go to field level and get an injury update, although I could have told him right now it would say upper-body injury, out.
The tackle whacked the side of Will’s helmet and released him. Will clapped his hands together with all the force of a butterfly’s wings and sent the team to the line of scrimmage.
“This should go well,” I muttered. Beside me, Chloe drummed her nails on the desktop. Unlike A.J., Will was lined up under center, which made sense because red zone or not, these first few plays were to shake off the dust, and Cleveland had poor run defense. All Will had to do was hand the ball off to Alec and get out of the way.
Instead, he dropped back and looked toward the end zone. “What the hell…?” Without thinking, I grabbed Chloe’s arm. The defense was sucked forward like air toward a black hole, collapsing in on Will. “Oh, fuck. His brain is broken.” The press box froze. There was no sound. Every mouth was open, every eye trained on the speck of a person on the field who was about to become a crumb.
But then Will tucked the ball and took off. A path emerged, a tunnel through the bodies held back by blockers, and Will pounded through it. This wasn’t the tight, compact speed of a running back, it was a powerful, destructive force. He shook off one linebacker, then made a balletic spin move to juke past another. A safety reached for him, connected, grabbed, and they fell together to the earth, a tangle of bodies and helmets and cleats that made an audible thud as they landed impossibly hard with the tiny, pointed, protruding end of the football just past the goal line.
And we won. Two-and-seven had never brought such joy. Will showed up to the press conference with his hair pushed back and dripping champagne, having been nearly waterboarded with the stuff in the locker room. Coach Craig was pleased but measured, saying he was proud of their progress but concerned about A.J.
“Did you actually draw that up?” I asked him afterward, while we walked back toward the locker room.
He grasped the door handle, pulled it up, and gestured me courteously inside. A broad grin split his face.
