Out of Position (17 page)

“Dysfunctional families I know,” I tell him.

He grins. “You’ll fit right in. So tell me ’bout yourself.”

I spend twenty minutes on my carefully rehearsed bio, and at the end of it he nods, but doesn’t look as impressed as I’d hoped. “So you’ve been around football a long time.”

I nod. “Went to Hilltown’s one playoff game in ’94.”

“We’ll get back there.” I’m inclined to discount that as his automatic reply except that he drifts off a bit after saying it, staring into a dark corner of the bar, and I can see the gears in his mind turn as he adds up the talent on the team and the possibilities, probably next year’s schedule (which isn’t out yet). And that excites me.

“We will,” I say, “if Thallow and Vinge can step up this year, if TGV can protect the blind side as well as he did last year, and if we can draft a couple rookies who can fill the gaps at tackle and end on the left side.”

A flicker of surprise lights in his eyes as he turns back to me, his ears perking slightly. “You know what?” I shake my head. “You remind me of me, like twenty years ago.”

“With a longer nose.”

“More spindly, too.” He taps the table, head tilted, watching me. “I had a whole speech about scouting ready to give ya, warning you off, but that wouldn’t really matter, would it? I could say you have to bend over and get fucked up the ass every night and you’d still want the job.”

I just nod, because if I say anything, it’ll be “even more so,” or, “I’m counting on it,” and I don’t think I want to go down that path with Morty just yet. He finishes off his beer and signals for another one.

“Come get it yourself,” the polecat yells at him.

Morty snorts and goes over to the bar. When he returns with his beer, he extends a paw to me again. “Well, kid, if you think you can find us a left tackle and left end, welcome aboard. I’m not authorized to hire full time, but I already talked to the club about working with an assistant as a temp. Sign some paperwork tomorrow morning, then we’ll hit the first round of workouts, wideouts doing the forty. Hope you’re a quick learner, ’cause after that you go to interviews yourself while I watch the second round of wideouts. I’ll get you the schedule tomorrow morning when you come by to sign the paperwork.”

“Interviews myself?” My tail’s twitching, excited.

“Don’t worry. Media interviews, mostly bullshit. Nobody asks good questions, kids all give coached answers. Just one of those things we gotta cover.” He scribbles a hotel and room number on a bar napkin and slides it across the table to me. His extended claws tear the edge as I take it. “Where you staying?”

Dev’s at the Hyatt adjoining the convention center. We didn’t think it was discreet for me to stay there too. Not to mention it’s about three hundred a night. “Motel 6, down the road that way, take a right at the crack house and a left at the abandoned factory and you’re there.”

He grins. “One perk of this job is I get to stay downtown where the action is. But I used to stay out there, back in the day. Fact, I think I usedta stay in that crack house.”

I’m glad he can make jokes that don’t involve minorities. “So how long have you been doing this?” I ask.

He stares down into his beer. “Twenty-two years ago was my first combine. Eighty-four.” He rattles off a list of Hall of Famers he talked to, and then pauses and says, “Bennie Ringer.”

I frown. “Never heard of him.”

“Course you haven’t. He was my first twister.” He watches my ears cant and my frown deepen. “Twister. Left twisting, last leaf on the tree or some bullshit like that. It’s what Mike called ’em, and I learned from him. A twister is a kid who’s got spirit, got talent, but just for one reason or another never gets drafted, never makes a team. You know in your gut he’s got what it takes, but it don’t show up on film, and you just can’t talk the bosses into taking a chance on him. Used to be the twisters’d just disappear. You might run into ’em later bagging groceries the next year. Now, with the internet and European football and arena and that shit, they never vanish. You keep checkin’ up on ’em. Sometimes they even make it to the league after a couple years and you think, there, see, I was right.”

Now he gulps the beer. “Is there a twister every year?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “At least one.”

I go quiet, thinking about how talent isn’t all it takes to get a break, in this or any profession. Morty talks a little more about the old days, shows me his Pocket PC with all the players in it and the form he got off a friend of his that lets him scribble notes in shorthand. “I still use the clipboard for games,” he says, “for the big diagram of the field. But for the combine, this is amazing. I usedta have to carry a huge binder full of paper in a briefcase everywhere. Now I just carry this and a couple memory cards. I love technology.”

So do I—sometimes. Dev’s supposed to message me when he gets to the hotel, and the phone in my pocket hasn’t gone off yet. I’m not worried, but I’m starting to wonder if I should be. Even when Morty and I finally shake paws and separate for the night — “last good night of sleep you’ll get for a few days,” he says — Dev still hasn’t texted. I hold the phone in my paw on the way home, wondering if I should bother him or not, and finally I send him a quick text: ARV OK?

All that does is exacerbate my sense of loneliness as I try to judge whether the sirens in the distance are heading this way or not, picking my way around broken glass in the street. The only other person in sight is a shambling bear, lurching against the houses on the other sidewalk. I think about him and wonder if he’s a twister, too, someone who once had talent and promise that didn’t show up on film, or if he just had some bad breaks.

I know that feeling sorry for him, and myself, isn’t productive, but it’s a quiet street and a lonely moon, and the mood is impossible to dispel. Getting to my motel helps a bit, but not much; despite the cozy light and trappings, the room smells worse than I remember it. The water comes out of the sink with a brownish tinge and a coppery taste, and when I sit on the bed, I feel the unmistakable tickle of fleas.

So I put my clothes back on and go out to the manager’s office, where I ask for flea spray and he tells me he’s out (of course he is), but that the maids have some and he promises to make a note to instruct them specifically to use it in my room tomorrow morning, and unfortunately all the other rooms are taken and he’d really like to help but he’s tired and it’s late and I’m only paying twenty bucks a night, after all. He doesn’t say this last, but he doesn’t have to.

I trudge back to the room and lie down on the floor. I try to read
Charlotte Temple,
but good Lord above, it’s boring. Just as I close my eyes, my phone buzzes. I grab it and flip it open and see a message from Dev: GOT HERE OK. WHOS ARV? I smile, hold the phone against my chest, and try to get to sleep.

Despite a stiff shoulder from sleeping on the floor, I’m in good shape for the following day. Signing the papers with Morty takes only a few minutes, as long as it takes for me to scan the legalese and make sure I’m not signing away anything important (they basically just say that I’m working for the Dragons on an unpaid internship for one month and that I promise not to reveal anything I learn to anyone not working for the Dragons). After that, we drink hotel coffee and he brings out his list of prospects, which he was nice enough to print out for my PDA-less paws.

This list, I have to say, is pretty cool. This is everyone the Dragons are looking at, which is more or less all three hundred people in the camp. I scan it for Dev’s name, trying not to look like that’s what I’m doing, and find him near the bottom, incorrectly listed as a defensive end. I think about correcting Morty, decide that wouldn’t be the best course of action in my first hour of employment, and just cup my big ears forward to listen.

After going through the schedule again, we head off to the first workout and watch all the kids practice from the clump of scouts. I get a lot of ribbing from the others because of my age, things like, “why aren’t you out there?” and “Morty, your kid don’t look like you, ’dja notice?” and “whassa matter, kid, bomb out already?” But for the most part, they’re focused on the workouts and so am I.

It’s hard to keep it professional. Here are over thirty kids my age, twenty to twenty-two, superb athletes of every species—and wearing fairly tight-fitting clothing, even though the furbearers still have their full winter coats. I see the fittest raccoon I’ve ever seen, who could be a superstar on some of the web sites I visit; a coyote with legs as thick as my waist who’s had himself molted and then had his fur sculpted, so his muscles practically pop out; and a cheetah whose lines blur even when he’s standing still. And that’s just the group right in front of us. Everywhere I look, gorgeous boys flexing, running, posing, performing.

My tiger’s not in this group, more the pity, as it’d give me something to focus on without feeling guilty about the throbbing stiffness in my pants. I have to keep holding my list in front of my crotch, like I haven’t had to do since high school, willing it to go down and cursing my decision to wear jeans rather than looser slacks. Unfortunately, in order to do this job, I have to refer to the list almost constantly, and make notes on it, so I strain my neck looking down. It’d be easier if there were somewhere to sit, but we’re walking around, trying to stay as close to the action as allowed.

To my relief, by the time Morty comes to collect me for the interviews, I no longer look like a horny high school kid. Only the top fifty players or so get media interviews, and those are scattered throughout the combine. There are twenty-three the Dragons think they might be interested in, twelve of which they will have a reasonable chance of getting as things stand now, but with trades and all, you never know, so Morty, Vic (the other Dragons scout), and I will have to cover all twenty-three. The general manager and director of player personnel and coaching staff will be focusing on the workouts and will set up evening interviews with the players they have specific interest in. Those have a big impact on drafting decisions. The scouts usually don’t attend those.

So while those are going on, Morty takes me and Vic to dinner at a pizza joint down the road. The day’s been a blur to me; I constantly have to refer to my notes to remember some of the things I wanted to talk about. I haven’t had a chance to call Dev all day, but that’s okay, because he’s probably busy with meetings and medical exams and psych testing and stuff. I don’t know if any teams set up interviews with him besides the Dragons.

I seem to have done pretty well for my first day. Morty gives me a handful of interviews to attend the following day, mostly the players they don’t think they’ll get. Like Morty told me, and tells me again, the interviews are the dead weight of the combine. They’re held for the benefit of the media, but it’s nice for the scouts to have someone there. In rare cases, they might learn something from the answer to a question, and the transcripts of the interviews aren’t really that reliable. I read through them, back in my hotel room, and then call Dev.

He doesn’t answer the phone. I leave my stinky room and pace around under the stars for a little while, and then decide I should get some sleep, because tomorrow’s going to be even more tiring than today. And as I settle back onto the floor (the maid service has not really done anything to take care of the flea problem, other than adding the sharp chemical scent of the flea spray to the odors of the room), my phone rings.

“This is amazing!” he gushes. “I was hanging out with all these guys and we were joking about the hospital tests. I think I’m the heaviest in the group.”

His excitement makes my tail wag. “Of course. There aren’t many tigers who can cover a wideout.”

“I’m the only tiger. There’s one cougar, and otherwise it’s like a dozen foxes and some coyotes and a couple wolves.”

“Foxes?”

He lowers his voice. “None of them looks as good as you.”

“Now I know you’re lying. I saw the wideouts practicing today.”

“Sure, they have muscles, if you go for that sort of thing.”

I grin. “Maybe I should start working out.”

He snorts. “How was your day?”

I tell him, but briefly, because I want to hear more of his experiences. “Did any other teams set up interviews with you?”

“Two,” he says. “Gateway and Highbourne.”

I try to think about what I know about those teams, but my head is full of numbers and workouts from today. “Cool,” I say. “Will there be any more, or is that it?”

“Hellentown said they might come by if they had time.”

“Nice!” It really is, even though I can’t get Morty’s talk about the ‘twister’ out of my head. If I can help it, that won’t be Dev. He’s talented enough to make it, I think, though after the morning spent watching the sleek physical specimens he’s up against, I have nagging doubts. I also have something else. “So, think I can come over now?” I say, rubbing my erection, even though I’d been about to get to sleep.

“Oh, I dunno, Lee, I have to be up pretty early tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow night?”

I move my paw back to behind my head and stare at the ceiling and sigh. This is more important than me getting off tonight. Besides, I’ve always got my paw at the ready if things get too tense. “Sure.”

“I want it too,” he says.

I cut him off with, “I know, but this is your career. I can wait ’til tomorrow.”

“Will you?”

“Sure,” I say, and then get what he means. My paw, which had drifted back down to my sheath, lifts away from it. “Yeah, I’ll wait.” He chuckles.

“Me too.”

“Do you have to get naked with a bunch of foxes again tomorrow?”

“I didn’t check the schedule.” I can’t tell whether he’s responding seriously to my question or not, not while over the phone. Another reason to wish I were there in person: it’s a lot easier to tease him.

“Well, if you do, you can tell me about it tomorrow night.”

“I will.” He rumbles. “In detail.”

Now
I know he’s joking.

 
The following day I’m even more stiff from sleeping on the floor again, not to mention in a different way from watching more trim, fit, muscular boys go through their paces.