Fantasy League (5 page)

THE PODCAST WAS ANNA'S IDEA.

“You're a natural,” Anna said to Charlie.

“And you're insane,” he said.

“No, I'm right, as usual,” she said. “You'd be a natural talking about football.”

“I'm good talking about football in front of you,” Charlie said.

“What about Gramps?” Anna said. “Not only are the two of you practically boys now, he thought enough of what you were saying that he went out and signed Tom Pinkett.”

“First of all,” Charlie said, “I'm sure the Bulldogs' scouts must have approved of him, too.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“And second of all,” Charlie said, “you know better than anybody that I don't even like to get up in front of the class when I have to speak.”

“But see, that's the beauty of doing a podcast,” she said. “You don't have to look at anybody when you're talking to them. You just talk to me.”

He said that he didn't know anything about doing a podcast.

Anna said, “I do.”

Of course she did. Of course she would. Charlie knew it was part of the fun of knowing her, being inside what Charlie's mom called Anna's force field. She wasn't just a jock. She was a huge techie, too. Sometimes something would go wrong with one of the computers at Anna's house when her dad wasn't around, and Anna's mom would call up to her and ask her to fix it.

She loved gadgets the way she loved social networking and Instagram and all the rest of it. And if some new gadget came along or was even in the chute, she was the one at school who knew about it first.

So now in Charlie's room, she was talking about multimedia posts, blogs, streaming, audio files, free hosting, and something called Soundsnap for intro music.

“Intro music?” Charlie said. “Now I've got my own theme music?”

“Just throwing it out there,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “But sometimes when you throw stuff out there, I'm the one who needs to duck.”

“You'll sound smarter than half the guys on Kevin's dad's station,” she said. “Not only should most of those guys not be allowed to talk on the radio, they shouldn't be allowed to talk, period.”

Charlie looked at Anna, sitting there cross-legged on his bed, looking happy and excited. She'd said her grandfather thought every day was going to be the best of his whole life. Now Charlie knew where Anna got it from.

Or maybe he got it from her.

“You never mentioned a podcast before,” he said. “Now you act as if I'm insane if I don't do it.”

“Not only are you going to do it,” she said. “But I'm going to produce it.”

“Now you're a
producer
?”

She nodded. “Yup. This is going to be
huge
. Wait till people hear how much a twelve-year-old kid from Culver City knows about the Bulldogs and the rest of pro football.”

“It
would
be kind of cool having a show,” Charlie said. “I wouldn't be one more guy on the radio hating on our team.”

He turned and saw Anna smiling at him.

“This is L.A.,” she said. “You know what they say here.”

“What do they say here?” Charlie said.

“Kid, I'm gonna make you a star.”

And that is how
The Charlie Show
was born.

ANNA SAID THAT ALL CHARLIE had to do was think of
The Charlie Show
as his own personal diary, just with him saying what was on his mind instead of writing it down.

“I don't write in a diary, either, not that you asked,” he said. “And no one would want to read it if I did.”

He and Anna were in his room, sitting on the floor, all set up with his new microphone and headphones, and GarageBand installed on his laptop to do their first podcast.

“That's where you're wrong, Sparky,” she said.

“I hate when you call me that, have I mentioned that to you?” he said. “Sparky sounds like a puppy.”

“You hating it is why I do it, silly,” she said, making that sound like the most obvious thing in the world. “Besides, you know how much other kids bug you for your fantasy picks? Now everybody is going to want them.”

“Everybody,” he said. “You make it sound like we're going to have a bigger audience than one of those singing shows.”

“I always thought you should be putting your picks out there,” she said. “You know as much as the guys on the fantasy football shows on TV.”

“I like sharing picks with you, not strangers.”

“Don't worry,” Anna said. “You will.”

Their parents, all of whom loved the idea of the podcast—Anna's mom even suggested they should try to get school credits for it—helped with the cost of a real radio microphone and brand-new headsets. For the past few days, Anna had been trying to explain the process of a podcast to Charlie, but to him it was the same as if she were trying to explain how to take his laptop apart and put it back together.

They had already done some practice episodes and played them back, listened to them. Anna graded them like a hard teacher grading papers. But they had been good enough that Anna had now started promoting
The Charlie Show
on her Facebook page, even counting down the days to it.

Some of the practice episodes had been with Charlie alone, some with him talking to her once in a while. Finally Anna had decided—who else was going to decide?—that on the first official episode the only voice anybody would hear would be Charlie's.

“It's the world premiere!” she said. “We've got to make sure they know who the star of the show is.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All eight people who will be listening.”

“I don't need any of your attitude, mister,” she said.

“But if I ask you to talk, you will, right?”

Anna said, “I guess I could say a few words, if asked nicely.”

She said that because it was still the preseason, one more game before Week One of the regular season. This would be a good chance for them to really see what worked on the show and what didn't. They had agreed that the first part of the show would deal with the Bulldogs, looking back at last week's game and ahead to the next one. The second part would just be stuff from around the league that Charlie found interesting, his opinions about the biggest games and biggest stories of the previous week.

The last part of the show—Anna described it as “wait for it, I'm Charlie and I'm awesome”—would be Charlie talking fantasy football, including some of the picks he expected to make for the regular season.

“Once people figure out how good you are at this, it's going to be
huge
,” she said. “Thing could go viral by the second week. Now relax. Just pretend you're talking to me and have fun.”

“Who said talking to you is fun?”

She gave a whoop of laughter and punched him in the arm, did a check of the microphone, put her fist back out but just to get some pound from him this time.

“Let's do this,” she said.

And they did, Charlie pretending he was hosting one of those pro football shows on ESPN. Except he was hosting it from his room. Anna had said they could take breaks if they wanted to, and they did after the first segment, Charlie saying he thought he wanted to have her voice in the segment as they went around the league, maybe setting him up with questions.

At one point she asked him what he thought about fans and the media hating on the Bulldogs the way they did, especially since L.A. had waited twenty years for a team after the Rams had left. Not saying who she was, not saying who her grandfather and uncle were.

She called herself “Football Girl.”

Charlie said: “I know people are always talking about how great the weather is in L.A. Maybe that's why we seem to have more fair-weather fans than any other place in America.”

Anna gave him a fist pump on that one.

Then he talked a little about Tom Pinkett, how happy he was to have him on the Bulldogs, not saying he was the one who'd told Joe Warren about Pinkett when Pinkett was still on the bench in Cincinnati. He and Anna had agreed that would remain their secret.

“That's all we'd need,” Anna had said, “people thinking Gramps is getting advice from a twelve-year-old.”

Before long Charlie was going through some of the fantasy picks he expected to make in the early rounds of his drafts, which defenses he had his eye on. Then it was over, Charlie amazed at how fast the time had gone, Anna telling him the show had timed out at just under thirty minutes.

The last thing he'd done was talk about some surprise fantasy picks he might have for the opening week of the season.

“But if you want to find out what those surprises are,” he said, “you really are going to have to tune in to the next
Charlie Show
.”

Anna grabbed the microphone back at that point, like even on his show
she
had to get the last word in.

“Think of missing a show like missing a class,” she said. “One that's going to be taught by the Fantasy King.”

“So says Football Girl, who thinks she's a queen,” Charlie said. “Talk to you next week, everybody.”

They had done the show sitting on the floor of Charlie's room, his laptop between them. Anna closed the laptop now. Took off her headset. Charlie did the same. They stared at each other for a moment, neither one of them saying anything. Then Anna Bretton high-fived Charlie so hard she nearly knocked him over on his back.

“Huge!” she said.

THE CULVER CITY CARDINALS PLAYED their opener against the Venice Bears the day before the Bulldogs were going to open their season at home against the 49ers.

Jarrod Benedict threw for one touchdown and Kevin Fallon ran for another while Venice only crossed midfield twice in the whole game—the Cardinals' defense was that good. Charlie played on both the kickoff and punt teams, got some good plays in at outside linebacker for the last two minutes, and even knocked down a pass intended for Venice's big tight end on the second-to-last play of the game.

He spent the rest of the day at Memorial Field thinking of himself as an assistant coach, standing next to Coach Dayley. He had even identified a couple of Venice blitzes before they happened, so sure that one blitz was coming from Jarrod's blind side that Coach Dayley ran out on the field before the ball was snapped and asked for a time-out.

Coach changed the pass play he'd called to a draw, Venice stayed in the same defense, and Kevin Fallon ran straight up the middle, blowing past the attacking Venice defense. He ended up gaining twenty yards.

“Kid,” Coach Dayley said after the play, “you see things on the field that make me think I ought to have my sunglasses checked.” Then before Charlie could say anything Coach put a hand on his arm, stopping him before he started, and said, “I know, I know, you're just paying attention.”

“It's true,” Charlie said.

“Everybody pays attention, Charlie. Your paying attention is just a little different.”

It was a good day. The team won and Charlie made a couple of good calls for Coach. And he got to play. He could be Brain the rest of the week. He could be the boy Fantasy King. In that world, he did feel like the star of the team.
All
his fantasy teams. There he could throw like Jarrod and run the way Kevin Fallon did. But in his heart he knew something:

On Saturdays, the thing he wanted the most was to go home with a dirty uniform.

A dirty uniform made him feel like a real player, even if he had probably done more to help his team standing next to Coach than he had on the field.

Normally playing a game like this and winning it would have felt like the best part of his Saturday, even before he and Anna and Kevin went into town, maybe had lunch at Wildcraft Pizza and then went over to the Coolhaus Shop, which used to just be a fancy truck, for ice cream.

Just not this Saturday.

This Saturday his mom was driving him home and he was going to take a shower and put on a polo shirt to go with his good shorts before she drove him to Anna's house. After that Anna's mom was going to drive them over to Joe Warren's house in Bel Air for lunch.

“I
told
you,” Anna had said to him on Friday at school, telling him about the invitation to have lunch with her and her grandfather. “You and Gramps really are boys now!”

• • •

Charlie already knew that even though Anna's grandmother had died when she was in the first grade, Joe Warren still lived in the same big house a couple of blocks from the Hotel Bel-Air.

Anna had told Charlie that her Gramps wasn't alone in the house; there was a couple, husband and wife, who lived in a small cottage on the property. The wife cleaned and cooked for Anna's grandfather. The husband drove him around and tended to the grounds, which Anna said required a whole lot of tending, wait until Charlie saw them.

“Gramps giving up driving himself around was a big thing,” Anna said. “But it had just turned into bumper cars for him.”

“
Anna
,” her mom said from the front seat of the car as they headed toward Bel Air, “your grandfather just had a couple of little fender benders.”

“
Mom
,” Anna said, trying to imitate her mother's tone. “One time he hit a mailbox and a tree coming out of his own driveway. Dad said if he'd clipped the doors to the gate and the fire hydrant by the street, it would have given him a grand slam.”

There was a huge iron gate at the entrance to the driveway, one that didn't open automatically. Anna's mom had to punch in a code. Then they drove up a steep hill, past more old, thick trees than Charlie thought he'd ever seen.

Like everything on the property was as old as Joe Warren was.

He was waiting for them when they got to the top of the drive, wearing a light green sweater, khaki pants with a sharp crease in them, and loafers without socks.

“Look at you, Gramps,” Anna said, jumping out of the car and running to hug him, “you look like a movie producer.”

“That, young lady, is a very mean thing to say to a senior citizen,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Or any citizen, for that matter.”

He turned to Charlie and said, “Well, hello, Mr. Gaines.”

Charlie nodded respectfully. “Mr. Warren.”

“Anna told me on the phone that your team got its first win this morning.”

“Two tackles for him,” Anna said. “The college scouts will be coming around any day.”

“She's just making stuff up,” Charlie said.

Anna said, “Not about the two tackles.”

Charlie looked at Joe Warren and said, “Played special teams and got in at garbage time, is all.”

“You played, you won, it's a beautiful day in the City of Angels,” Joe Warren said. “I believe I'd much rather be you—and be your age today—than me.”

Anna's mom said she was going shopping in Brentwood and would be back in a few hours. Joe Warren told her to take as much time she wanted. Then he walked Charlie and Anna through the front door, through a living room that Charlie thought was about half as long as a football field, a den filled with bookcases that stretched all the way to the ceiling and the biggest television screen Charlie had ever seen outside a stadium, through a huge kitchen and out to the back patio. There stood a lawn that was
longer
than a football field, Charlie was sure, the grass amazingly green and perfect. Of course there were more big old trees back here, like they were trying to block out the rest of the world.

Charlie immediately noticed how still it was back here, the chirping of birds the only sound, Charlie thinking even the birds were keeping their voices down. The three of them sat down and an older woman Joe Warren called Maria brought a pitcher of iced tea with three glasses, Maria telling them that lunch would be served in about twenty minutes, if that was all right with them.

“Your lunches are always worth waiting for, Maria,” Anna's grandfather said.

When she was gone Joe Warren turned to Charlie and said, “Got a little football news that even you don't have yet.”

“Oh,” Anna said, “so it's only news for
him
? Let me remind you of something, Gramps. I can talk with the best of 'em.”

“No kidding,” Charlie said.

He saw her smiling at her grandfather.

Joe Warren said, “It just happens to be news that will mean more to Charlie. About our team.”

Our team. As if it suddenly belonged to all of them.

Charlie and Anna waited until the old man said, “Your quarterback is starting tomorrow against the 49ers. Our coach is probably telling the media that right now over at the stadium.”

“My quarterback?” Charlie said.

“Tom Pinkett.”

“You're joking.”

“While there are many in the Los Angeles area who believe our entire quarterbacking situation is a joke,” the old man said, “I am certainly not joking. Your man Pinkett is under center tomorrow afternoon at one.”

Chase Sisk, as all Bulldogs fans knew by then, had sprained his shoulder the previous Saturday night against the Saints after taking a hard sack. Officially he was listed as doubtful for the season opener, but everyone knew there was no way the team was going to risk losing him for the season by rushing him back.

Charlie felt bad for the guy. He'd been allowed to go down to the locker room for a few minutes after the Rams game, and Chase had been as nice as any of the players he'd been introduced to. But Charlie the football guy, Brain, knew Sisk's injury wasn't a bad thing for the Bulldogs, just because he never thought Chase Sisk was ever going to be anything more than a big arm with a much smaller football brain.

Not that he ever would have said that to Anna's grandfather.

But once Chase was gone, Charlie had just assumed that JJ Guerrero, his backup, would move up and be given a chance to show what he could do. Charlie and everybody else in town. Until now.

Joe Warren picked up his glass, Charlie noticing the tremor in his hand, afraid he was going to spill some of his drink. But he just gestured for Charlie to pick up his.

They touched glasses.

“Cheers,” Joe Warren said. “And thanks, kiddo.”

“For what?”

He took a sip of his iced tea. Maria's was way better than Snapple.

“We never would have signed him if you hadn't said something to me that night,” Joe Warren said.

Then he winked at Charlie, smiled and said, “True story.”

• • •

When lunch was over Anna said she was going inside to watch some of the USC game on television. They were playing one of the early-season college football games against Florida.

“You're even watching
college
football now?” her grandfather said.

“She thinks the Trojans' sophomore quarterback is cuter than all of her boy bands put together,” Charlie said.

“See
you
in a few,” she said to Joe Warren, kissing him on the cheek. “And you shut up, Charlie Gaines.”

When she was gone, Joe Warren said to Charlie, “C'mon, I'll show you my really quiet place.”

It took some effort for him to get out of his chair, and Charlie almost jumped up to give him a hand. But the old man made it, and pointed down to the end of the lawn.

“Down there,” Joe Warren said, and began walking slowly down the hill, in that careful walk you saw from old people, making sure not to shuffle his feet, picking them up and placing them on the grass in front of him, as if the next step he was going to take might be the one that put him down.

Anna had told Charlie on the way over that her grandfather refused to use a cane, even though the rest of the family thought he needed one.

The lawn went slightly downhill, down toward the last clump of trees. But then there was a path through them, and they walked into this beautiful, tiny garden, Charlie and Joe Warren standing in the middle of all these bright, amazing colors.

Joe Warren, Charlie could see, was so tired it was as if he had just walked up a hill, face red, out of breath.

“Sorry it took so long to get here,” Joe Warren said. “But my late friend Red Auerbach, who built the Boston Celtics, once gave me just two words of advice about growing older. Would you like to know what those two words are?”

“I would.”

“Don't fall,” Joe Warren said, and then lowered himself into one of the two cushioned chairs positioned perfectly to catch the sun at this time of day.

He smiled at Charlie now. “An old actress friend of mine once said that getting old ain't for sissies. But you have to get as old as I am to find out how true that really is.”

Then he told Charlie how he and his wife used to come out here at the end of the day, sometimes before dinner and sometimes afterward. And how he still liked to come down here when the sun was setting and talk to her for a few minutes the way he always had before she was gone.

“I even used to put on some music and dance with her down here, Charlie. Sometimes I still do that, too.” He smiled at Charlie. “I keep telling myself that one of these days I might kick up my heels and dance at the stadium if this team of mine ever makes it into the playoffs.”

“She sounds pretty special,” Charlie said. “Mrs. Warren, I mean.”

“She was the one who always told me the truth,” Joe Warren said. “Still does, as a matter of fact.”

Charlie thought it was weird, the idea of talking to dead people. But the old man looked happy just talking about it.

“She was never
afraid
to tell me the truth,” he said. “Never afraid to tell me things she thought I needed to hear even if I didn't want to hear them sometimes.”

He paused, put his head back to take in some sun.

“Now I seem to have surrounded myself with people who won't tell me the truth. Or just give a version they think the poor old guy can handle.”

He turned and looked hard at Charlie, Charlie thinking Joe Warren's blue eyes were the youngest part of him. The brightest.

“You're a smart kid, Charlie,” he said. “You must know where I'm going with this.”

“It's about your team.”

“I love my son, don't get me wrong,” Joe Warren said. “And he loves me. And we're going to build the Bulldogs into a champion together, I believe that in my heart. In the process, we were also going to finally have the father-son time we didn't nearly have enough of when he was growing up.”

Whatever it was, it was more than I had
, Charlie thought.

“But now the whole thing is a mess, despite my best intentions. And his . . .” His voice trailed off, running out of steam. “When I made the suggestion to him about Tom Pinkett, he acted as if I didn't trust his judgment anymore. Said that I had installed him as general manager so he could make football decisions. Then I got my back up a little and said that in addition to being the owner of the team, I was also team president last time I checked.”

Charlie waited.

“He said that any time I wanted to replace him, I should go ahead. I told him that I had done a little research and felt that Tom Pinkett might be a better backup than JJ, might even turn out to be our best option at quarterback this season. And lo and behold? Our coach ended up agreeing with me.”

Charlie didn't know what to say, so they sat there in silence for a few minutes, Joe Warren tipping his head back again to let the sun hit his face.