Killerbowl, page 6
“Nonexistent,” she replies. “I must apologize for my charade in Atlanta. I wanted to meet you informally. I wanted to get a feel for your true character before you found out what I do and erected a misleading facade.”
“What exactly is it you do?”
Ted answers for her. “She’s going to do a long feature article on you, T.K. For a national magazine.”
“Which one?”
“EBS” says Sarah bluntly before Ted has a chance to couch a more gradational reply.
“Ted, you’re kidding me.” T.K. spreads his hands out imploringly from his sides. “That’s the magazine of the End Blood Sports group. They’ve been against street football from the day it was born. There’s no way that magazine’s going to print anything positive about me. I won’t do it. I can get all the bad publicity I want on my own.”
“T.K.,” Ted answers, “Miss Lauffler has assured me she’s not interested in character assassination. She wants to do a straightforward personality profile of a professional street football player. If it turns out to be flattering, which in your case I don’t see how else it could, that’s the way she’ll write it. I believe her. Honestly, T.K., I don’t think you’ve got a thing to worry about.”
“Damn right I don’t, because I’m not going to do it.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have any choice.” Ted spreads open his hands the same way T.K. had. Imploringly. “I’ve already signed the contract. Back out, and EBS can sue us both for what little we’ve got left.”
Ted turns his back to T.K. “I’ve got a wife and three kids, T.K. I’ve got medical bills, food bills, clothing bills, the rent’s coming due. EBS paid me cash on the line.”
T.K.’s not angry. He’s let Ted Monreves handle his business dealings long enough to know Monreves wouldn’t deliberately sell him out, no matter what the price. If Ted made the deal, he did it because he honestly believed that, at the worst, it would do T.K. no harm. T.K. nods. “O.K., so I’m going to be the centerfold in EBS. What the hell do I care about my image, anyway?” He reflects for a moment before posing a question to Sarah. “Why me? Why not Matision or one of the younger guys?”
Her frankness is bluntly revealing. “Two reasons. First, you were the only famous player I could persuade to do it.”
T.K. throws a dirty look at Ted which Ted does his best to pretend he doesn’t see. “The other reason?”
“Your type of man fascinates me.”
For a moment, her totally unexpected admission leaves T.K. at a loss for words, but only for a moment. “So you’re attracted to old men and losers,” he says through a jovial grin.
She tilts her head, as though viewing his statement from a different perspective. “That’s exactly what interests me about you. Not the part about old men and losers. You’re certainly neither of those. No, something else, something I noticed in you in Atlanta and again, here, now. You’re so terribly hard on yourself. You seem to have an amazingly low regard for your abilities and, I sense, for your profession as well. I don’t see how you can survive, let alone excel, in street football feeling the way that you do.”
“I’m only kidding.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I guess you’ll have lots of time to find out. When do we start?”
“How about tomorrow morning?”
“Super. Practice starts at six A.M.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Great. Bring your camera. As a special exclusive to the readers of EBS, I’ll demonstrate some of the more humane forms of hand-to-hand killing.”
Without waiting for her reply, he collects Eddie and leaves.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
“There’s the kickoff,” announces Timothy Enge, “and that starts another great season of SFL action.”
Jaime and Surdo Sakura watch this, the first game of the year, a hard-fought contest between the San Francisco Prospectors and the Honolulu Sharks, from a spacious one bedroom displacement home on Maui.
The game is being played on Oahu, in Honolulu, and its boundaries encompass the high-rise apartment house on Walinea Street in which the Sakuras reside. The official SFL playing area is 700 yards by 350 yards, approximately eight blocks by four, although it can be slightly more or less subject to the exact layout of the streets concerned. Depending on the precise location of the streets selected, this usually means that anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand people will have to be evacuated, given a one day football vacation as the SFL tactfully phrases it.
The SFL teams have become quite adept at large-scale transportation. Special trams ferry the vacationers, as they’re called, from their homes to the homes away from home the teams have set up. There they spend game day relaxing, eating, drinking or drugging at SFL expense. Most of the displaced forgo the free golf courses, the free banquets, the free dances, the free movies, the free bowling alleys and tennis courts in favor of watching on TV the game that has displaced them. Each house in the village is equipped with a jumbo fifty inch full color TV set, a considerable improvement over the thirty-inchers common to most homes and apartments. But the sheer size of the set is only one of the attractions of watching the game in the village. The SFL gratuitously provides all viewers with an unlimited number of free replays. With the cost of living as high as it is and the relatively little extra money most people have available to spend on replays, this is a very welcome benefit. One which vastly overshadows the multitude of other pleasures the village has to offer. So appealing is this benefit that almost never does a resident of a playing area refuse to move out of his own free will. (If he does, he is, of course, transported by force. The games must go on.)
For Jaime, who sells patio covers and pedals a cab part time, and Surdo, who works as an information retrieval operator for a local insurance company, the situation affords an all too rare relief from the financial considerations which severely limit the extent of their viewing.
They arise at 11 P.M. on Saturday, a full hour before kickoff. So as to make certain they don’t miss a single play throughout the day, they fortify themselves with amphetamines, which the Sharks have thoughtfully left for them in large bottles in the medicine cabinet.
As the game progresses, they watch every moment, hour after hour, dashing to the bathroom and the kitchen only during the quarter timeouts, watching replays during the commercials (which still doesn’t save them from being exposed to a sales pitch since every replay is, itself, preceded by an abridged commercial).
The game is nearly over.
The Sharks are losing, the Prospectors have the ball. Then, on third down and short yardage, Eddie Hougart, the Prospectors’ halfback/deep safety, fumbles. The Sharks’ center recovers. Since a ball turnover such as occurs with a fumble or an interception alters which team has the use of weapons, runbacks are prohibited. The ball is immediately blown dead, giving the Sharks possession on Nahua Street, the Prospectors’ 320 yard line.
Danny Ho, the Sharks’ quarterback, a Hawaiian native, and thusly an adored local hero, takes the snap and keeps it. In a brilliant turn around left end, he ducks into a department store, where he shakes his pursuers. He makes his way out to Kuhio Street. He has almost reached Seaside Avenue and the Prospectors’ goalyard, when he’s intercepted by a deep safety and a lineman. Circling warily, they trap him between them.
Acting quickly, before defensive reinforcements arrive, Danny tucks the ball into his gut pocket and engages the deep safety, who, with his long knife, is easily the more dangerous of the two. The lineman immediately assaults Danny from the rear with his short club. Ho pays the lineman no more attention than an elephant would an attack from a flea.
The light-intensifying TV cameras recording the scene catch and amplify every tiny bit of illumination. On TV, the battle can be seen as clearly as if it were being fought in broad daylight. So true are the colors, so clear the action, the only way to tell this is not happening during the daytime is by the strange, surreal fact none of the combatants casts a shadow.
The deep safety jockeys for a clear and killing shot under Ho’s helmet, at his neck, but Ho is a wary and experienced ballplayer. He keeps his chin well down, his neck covered. Abruptly, Ho makes his move. He catches the deep safety’s arm under his own. With a twisting motion, he breaks the safety’s arm at the elbow. The deep safety gamely tries to switch his knife to his other hand. Ho is already way out of his reach, doing battle with the lineman. The lineman has Ho in a bear hug and is beating on Ho’s kidneys from behind. Gambling, Ho drops to one knee. In a beautiful clean and jerk, made all the more difficult by the angle through which he has to execute the maneuver, Ho picks up the lineman in both hands and raises him into the air. Squatting down again, Ho slams the hapless lineman over his braced and upraised knee. The man’s back breaks with a gratifying snap. Ho rises and sprints for the goalyard, using a running butt against the goalyard tender to carry himself across.
Jaime and Surdo go wild, rerunning the sequence a giddily thriftless four times, once each from all four viewpoints, Ho’s, the lineman’s, the deep safety’s and the goalyard tender’s.
Ho takes in the extra point himself, but it’s a fruitless gesture.
T.K. Mann has called a flawless game, and the Sharks lose, 93 to 80.
“Wow,” says Jaime, helping Surdo return their personal belongings to their suitcase for the trip back to their apartment. “What a finish. It’ll take me all day tomorrow to recuperate from it.”
“Me too,” Surdo agrees, still noticeably flushed and slightly out of breath even though the game has been over for nearly an hour.
“I live for the start of football season,” muses Jaime. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t watch the games.”
“I guess we’d be bored to tears,” suggests Surdo.
“I guess we would.”
A tram pulls up to start them on the first leg of their journey home.
International Broadcasting Company
IBC Building
200 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10016
INTEROFFICE
To: Pierce Spencer
From: Ida Moulay, Vice-President in Charge of Programming
Date: May 3, 2010
NOTE: This memo is company private and is printed on flash paper. It will disintegrate if photocopied or if allowed to remain outside its protective envelope for longer than five minutes.
Just a note to let you know the football player recruiting program is an unqualified success. Every player on the list you approved was signed up and equipped in time for the opening game on Sunday.
As an interesting aside, even though we had only two men (one on each team) under our guidance in each contest, still we were quite easily able to successfully dictate the action levels of every game played. I believe this conclusively confirms your theory.
I feel we may now start to think in terms of our longer-range goals, to wit:
(a) the creation of “ideal” or “dream” matches to boost ratings.
(b) the continued buildup of a “bigger than life” hero (Harv Matision has worked out quite well thus far—depending on your eventual objectives, we may want to stick with him) to be used for network promotional purposes.
(c) the elimination of players who don’t contribute to the excitement of the game (T.K. Mann comes immediately to mind—perhaps a “dream” match pitting him against Matision in which Mann emerges the hapless, i.e., lifeless, victim?).
I leave these suggestions for your consideration.
For your information, I’m enclosing the directorial transcript from a representative play in one of yesterday’s games. Brief though it may be, I feel it will adequately enable you to evaluate the performance of Danny Ho. A recent acquisition, he seems to be working out quite nicely. We may want to keep him in mind for future stardom.
Should you have any questions, I’ll be only too happy to answer them.
Directorial Transcript
Sharks versus Prospectors
May 2, 2010
Excerpt
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
From the window of his Russian Hill apartment, T.K. idly contemplates the continual stream of monstrous air-cushioned freighters whooshing in and out of San Francisco Bay. Nine out of ten are painted with the gray and white piping that signifies ownership by one of the Asian nations—Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Thailand—banded together to form the world’s most progressive and powerful industrial cartel. T.K. considers the ships a nice contrast to the dark green of the bay, an observation which fairly well sums up his disinterest in the whole area of world politics and economics.
Today is Tuesday, his favorite day of the week. The pain and fatigue taper off on Monday. Wednesday and Thursday are practice days, scrimmages and theory sessions eat them up. Friday is traveling day or, if the game is being played in San Francisco, the day he and Coach Carrerra select the playing area. Saturday he scouts the street, and he rests. Then, of course, there’s Sunday.
T.K. usually spends his Tuesdays in bed with some willing young lady. Unfortunately, this Tuesday’s young lady has literary rather than romantic collaboration in mind.
For the past few months, Sarah Lauffler has accompanied T.K. everywhere, to practices, to other cities, to bars, to chalk talks. After games in which he’s been badly injured, she’s even gone with him to hospitals. She’s watched him play in and win eleven games.
Now she sits cross-legged on the floor with a massive sheaf of papers beside her.
“This is a final draft of my article,” she explains. “What I’d like you to do is to read what I’ve put together to make sure I have all my facts straight.”
He accepts the manuscript and carries it to his favorite chair, a mock leather recliner. He flips on the overhead pin-light and begins to read.
Considering its eventual destination, the article’s balanced, almost flattering tone surprises him.
“You’re really going to run this in EBS?” he asks when he’s finished.
“Yes. I think the story makes an interesting point, one that EBS too often overlooks. Namely, that football players are human beings, subject to the whole range of human emotion, to pride, to love and even sometimes to compassion.”
“That’s all so much chic journalistic bullshit.” He waves her manuscript at her. “You completely overlooked the whole reason I play football. For the money. To support myself in the style to which I’ve grown accustomed.”
Vigorously she shakes her head. “That doesn’t add up. Even given your high style, you still make twice as much money as you openly spend”
“I save a lot.”
Again, the headshake. “Your bank account shows a balance of a little more than two hundred dollars.”
“EBS writers are a sneaky bunch.”
“I’d call it being thorough. Granted, you may be in it for the money. If so, where does that money go?”
T.K. gets up and walks to the window. Off in the distance he can make out the hills of Marin and, beyond that, the blue, unsullied sky.
He turns decisively to face her. “I’ll show you.”
They catch a pedicab to the commuter station. There they board a steam tram heading south. They leave San Francisco, traveling past San Alto Jose along the elevated tracks above the bay. They cut inland at South Point, switch trams at Gilroy, head through Hollister and finally get off in Los Banos. The whole trip takes just under an hour.
They rent two bicycles from the Hertz desk in the tram depot, and pedal off along Kings Road Canal almost to Dos Palos. There T.K. pulls up outside a large white house, a Victorian confection, all steeples and intricate carvings and stained-glass windows. The house is in excellent repair, obviously the end result of someone’s laborious care. The area around the house is quite different. The ground is hard packed and dry. Although the ground’s been cultivated and planted, nothing grows on it. As the wind comes up, a cloud of dust blows off the land, enveloping the bottom of the house, giving it the appearance of a sugar cake rising up out of a smoky caldron of desolation.
With Sarah standing beside him, T.K. knocks on the door. A frail, baldheaded man answers. “Can it be?” the old man cries out. “T.K. What a nice surprise. You were just here. We didn’t expect you back again for another month. Ma, come see who’s here. It’s T.K.”
A buxom, white-haired old lady rushes forth from the kitchen. She engulfs T.K. in a clasping embrace.
“Sarah,” says T.K., disentangling himself, “Meet Frieda and Tanner Shaw.”
“How do you do,” Sarah says.
“Come in, come in,” says Frieda.
“In a minute,” T.K. responds. “First, I’d like to show Sarah the shed.”
Tanner fetches a brightly polished key and gives it to T.K.
T.K. and Sarah head off toward a large metal shed out back, an incongruous entity contrasted with the picture postcard charm of the house proper.
“Who are they?” Sarah asks.
“They were my parent’s best friends. They lived on the farm next to ours.” T.K. points off into the distance. “If you squint, you can see an electrified boundary out there. Everything on the other side of that boundary belongs to the government. The Shaws’ farm is out there in the middle of it somewhere.”
He turns to stare at her, angry, not with her but with the amorphous robber baron named bureaucracy. “When the Shaws lost their farm to the government, they moved in here. The government siphons off all their water for its crops, leaving the Shaws with nothing but a lump of dust. They try to make their new land as good as their old. They nurture it, they tend it, they try to make it live. It repays them by blowing away.” Another cloud of dust billows by.
