Safety Net (7 page)

Ryan left, suddenly very subdued,
and Coach Bowman muttered, “Damn kid.”

He looked at Erick for a long
moment, clenching and unclenching his jaw. Erick stood frozen to the spot.

“West,” he said at last.

“Yes, coach.”

“All I need to know is: can you put
this past you? Can you let all of this go? I don’t just mean today. I mean all
of it, back to the mistake I made bringing Hutchinson here. Right now, just
between us, I’m admitting that. I made a mistake. Can you see past that mistake
and trust me enough to play for me? And I mean play to win. I need that from
you. But there needs to be trust between us, and I don’t want this Hutchinson
thing to take away the trust.”

Erick wanted nothing more than to
play QB1 for Coach Bowman, but he thought carefully before replying. He had
never understood Coach Bowman’s motivations in bringing him and Hutchinson into
the same program. But he’d always believed Coach Bowman had a motivation, had
some reason for it, and had always trusted that Coach Bowman knew what he was
doing. Where the plan had gone wrong was in Ryan Hutchinson not being the
player Coach Bowman thought he would be. Ryan had never left high school, as
Lowell had put it.

“Yes, coach. I can put this behind
me. All of it.”

Coach Bowman nodded once. “Good.
But it’s going to be rough for a while. This thing isn’t going to die down fast
in the offseason, and unfortunately, some of it is going to be directed at you.
Unfairly.

“Maybe, in a way, this isn’t a bad
thing right now. You’re going to have to deal with a lot of unfair shit like
this in your career. QBs get blamed for a lot of shit that isn’t their fault,” Coach
Bowman, the former quarterback, said wryly. “But you have to be prepared for
the next few months. Spring training’s starting. People are going to be
watching your every move, questioning everything you do. You’re not going to be
Erick West to them, you’re going to be the quarterback who’s pushing Ryan
Hutchinson out of Crocker. I need you to ignore all of that and be Erick West
and play like Erick West. You’re certain you can do that?”

“Yes, coach, I can.”

Coach Bowman nodded again, stood
up, and shook Erick’s hand. “Good. You can go now. Oh, and West. If any bloggers
contact you, ignore them.”

“Oh God, yes, coach.”

-----

Lowell could not understand Kelly’s
reaction to the Hutchinson incident at all.

“But that’s censorship!” she
gasped. “They can’t kick him out for something he said! That was his private
speech.”

“They’re not kicking him out for
that,” Lowell tried to explain. “He has to leave Crocker because he won’t be on
the football team anymore.”

“For something he said.” Kelly
crossed her arms over her chest, frowning at him as if Lowell had personally
carried Hutchinson off campus and dumped him in the street. Not that Lowell
would’ve minded doing so. It burned him to see Erick so hurt by it all -- not
because of what Ryan had said about him, but hurt because he’d been helpless to
save Ryan from himself.

“Not just for that,” Lowell said. “He’s
been nothing but a disappointment since he got here. He can’t work with anyone.
He’s not a team player.”

Kelly snorted, which didn’t help
Lowell’s temper. “Oh, you just don’t understand,” he snapped. “It’s a team. It
only works if everyone can work together.”

“So no one’s allowed to think for
himself,” she countered. “Express himself.”

“No! It’s not like that, for fuck’s
sake. Of course we disagree about stuff, but we work it out or work through it.
For the good of the team.”

Kelly’s look darkened. “Like those
guys at the community college who gang raped that girl? The ones who didn’t
participate went along with covering it up. For the good of the team.”

“What the fuck! That’s not even
what we’re talking about!” Lowell slammed back from the table, causing half of
his iced mocha to spill.

They were sitting in the coffee
house. Fortunately it was busy and loud, and no one was paying attention to
them.

“You can’t see that it’s the same
thing?” Kelly said.

“Because it’s not.”

They glared at each other for a
moment before Lowell, controlling his temper, tried again. “Look. Okay, I guess
sometimes teammates cross the line for each other because they think it’s the
right thing. Crocker’s not like that. These guys are smart. I mean, you’ve met
them, for chrissakes. All I’m saying is, we have to trust each other. When we’re
on the field, we have to know every player is going to do his best, going to do
what’s expected of him. That’s the only way we can win. And it’s really
important with the quarterback, we have to trust him with our lives, pretty
much. And Hutchinson, we couldn’t trust him. He wouldn’t let us.”

Kelly rolled her eyes, tightening
her crossed arms. “Good God, it’s only
football
.”

The argument ended there, in cold
silence until Kelly excused herself. She didn’t text him later or the next day,
and after a tense few days, Lowell apologized to her, even though he didn’t
believe he was wrong. Kelly merely promised not to bring the topic up again.
Ryan Hutchinson dropped out instead of sticking around for the inevitable, and
the matter was closed as far as Lowell was concerned. Maybe in the fall, when
the season started and Kelly could watch some games, she’d understand.

-----

Dale had never thought there would
be a time in his life when he would be happy to get away from football for a
while. Spring training had started, more grueling than ever, and the team’s
mood was grim. Yes, Ryan Hutchinson was gone, but at what price? The sports
blogs had had a field day: Crocker was a laughingstock and Erick West was an
overrated, untested golden boy who could only disappoint. Even after the
negative attention shifted away from Crocker -- to the NCAA investigating USC
and to the Ohio State halfback who’d been arrested for selling dope -- the team’s
mood didn’t lift.

The only bright spot was Terrence
Duran getting picked by Baltimore in the fifth round of the NFL draft. Mullin
and one of the linebackers also got late-round picks, and the team celebrated
their teammates’ success in reaching the pros.

In training, at practice, every day,
Erick acted as if nothing had happened. He joked with the guys, he pushed
himself harder, he waved any comments off with a smile. It was impressive and
thoroughly scary to watch.

When Erick had returned from seeing
Coach Bowman that awful day, Dale was prepared to get his ass kicked. He
had
gone to Coach Bowman’s office intending to expose Hutchinson’s rant, but he’d
been too late. The blogosphere had already taken care of it. But Dale didn’t
think that would matter to Erick, who had very clearly defined lines he would
not cross, and running to coach was one of them.

What Dale hadn’t been prepared for
was watching Erick drift back into his dorm room, ashen-faced, crouch down on
the floor, cover his face, and cry. Dale and Lowell stood there, uncomfortable
and awkward, and when Erick’s roommates showed up, Dale quietly had to send
them away, making up some spur-of-the-moment cover story for why Erick needed
to be alone. There couldn’t be any more witnesses to this.

After a hesitation Lowell crouched
down, too, and rested his hand on Erick’s back. Erick wiped his eyes and said, “Shit,
I’m sorry about this.”

Lowell blew out a breath. “Fuck,
no. Don’t be.”

Erick stared at the floor morosely,
looking ill. “I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t save him,” he whispered hoarsely.

“You can’t save someone who won’t
save himself,” Dale pointed out, but Erick said, “No, seriously. I didn’t try
to save him, didn’t want to save him. I didn’t want him here. I never wanted
him here. I came here to be QB1 and he was in my way.”

“Wow,” Lowell said softly, sitting
back. “So Erick West is human after all.”

And that had brought a sickly
little smile to Erick’s lips, and then he’d told them all about the meeting
with Coach Bowman, swearing them to secrecy. It was the only time Erick ever
talked about that meeting.

By all appearances, Erick bounced
back, the Hutchinson incident forgotten by the time spring training started.
Dale didn’t believe it for a second, but Erick had to move on. They all had to
move on. Dale understood this, but on top of everything else, it made him look
forward to his time away from the team -- the time he spent with Javier.

After a slow build-up -- actual
dates -- his relationship with Javier had moved rapidly. Javier lived in a
shared townhouse off-campus. His housemates were three fellow grad students: a
married Chinese couple and a guy from India. They welcomed Dale with a house
dinner. They drank wine and talked about their homelands and their research. It
was all so very grown-up, and Dale felt sophisticated and privileged to be
included.

Afterwards Javier asked Dale to
spend the night.

“Won’t your housemates object?”

“Why would they?” Javier asked, as
if of course, these grown-up intelligent people wouldn’t object to anything. It
was like a dream.

Javier’s room was on the top floor,
a small bedroom with a wall of bookshelves, crammed with books in English,
Spanish, and a few other languages. He had a low, platform-style bed with dark
grey sheets which smelled subtly of Javier’s cologne.

They’d only kissed a few times
before tonight. Dale didn’t expect Javier to murmur against his ear, “Let me
fuck you.” He had imagined things going slower than this.

He sort of didn’t want to do it. He
was a virgin, this wasn’t what he’d had in mind when Javier had asked him to
stay. On the other hand, Javier wanting him was heady and alluring, and Dale
imagined how green and immature he’d look if he said no.

Dark grey sheets, the scent of
cologne... Afterwards, Dale figured Javier had been as careful and gentle as he
could be. If he was disappointed, it was due to his own inexperience, Dale
thought, embarrassed.

The bathroom was one floor down,
and Dale, wrapped loosely in a chenille throw, treaded cautiously on the stairs
and had nightmare visions of encountering one of the housemates. He wanted to
take a shower but was afraid of the noise waking the house. He fumbled through
two narrow cabinets searching for a washcloth and towel before wondering if the
door next to the bathroom was a linen closet. Debated whether to check -- what
if he opened the door to another bedroom? -- before risking it, and he opened
the linen closet door slowly as if expecting a demon to rush out from within. Then
he stood in the darkened hallway, naked, wondering how the hell he would know
which towels were Javier’s. He invented a rationale: Javier’s room was on the
top floor, so the towels on the top shelf were Javier’s. He washed and wrapped
up in the throw and crept back upstairs.

He didn’t know if he was supposed
to stay. Javier welcomed him back to the bed and caressed his back and arms and
told him he loved him. And Dale felt warm and wanted and mature.

For the rest of the academic year,
Dale spent as much time with Javier as their schedules allowed, and when he
spent the night in Javier’s room, Javier fucked him.

The only time Erick felt alive
these days was during practice. The drills were grueling, more physically
demanding than any at training camp, and Erick relished them. Sweating, aching,
stinking, growling from the exertion: he was alive.

The rest of the time, he was
sleepwalking. And the funny thing was, no one noticed. His professors didn’t
notice, and he got good grades. His friends didn’t notice, though he wasn’t
hanging out with any of them much. His roommates didn’t notice, and when they
mapped out their plans to backpack through Europe over the summer break, they
asked Erick to come along and he said yes. Summer seemed a very long time away.

It wasn’t. Before he knew it,
spring training had wrapped up, classes were winding down in a flurry of
all-nighters and final papers, and there was a low-key goodbye party for the
seniors on the team. Erick spent most of the party at a table with Duran, deep
in quarterback talk.

“Hey, man, the way that shit
wrapped up, that sucked,” Duran said during a lull. “But not gonna lie, it
ended the way it was meant to. That spot’s yours, as it shoulda been.”

Erick really didn’t want to talk
about the Hutchinson thing again. Or ever. He cocked his head and shrugged a
little. Duran watched him closely and grinned. “West, people like you. Get used
to it.”

“They hate me, too,” Erick said,
trying to make it a joke.

“Yeah.” Duran nodded. “Comes with
the territory. Comes with the attention.”

They were interrupted by yet
another teammate coming over to congratulate Duran for the gazillionth time and
talk about Baltimore and speculate about the team’s plans for next season.
Erick wandered off to schmooze, to pretend he was here. He wished he were
outside on the field.

“Bro.” Lowell slapped him on the
back. “I didn’t even see you here. Where you been all night?”

“With Duran.” Erick looked him
over. He hadn’t seen Lowell since spring training ended. His hair was growing
out and his beard was growing in. Erick wondered idly if Kelly liked the beard.

“How’s Kelly?” he asked.

Lowell looked at him oddly but
said, “She’s good. Things are good. She’s going to be a counselor at one of the
summer camps here, a science camp for kids. I’m thinking about coming back
early so I can spend some time with her before training camp.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Erick replied
automatically, his gaze drifting past Lowell to the other side of the room. “You
seen Dale?”

“I saw him earlier. He was looking
for you. Hey, Erick, is there something...?”

Erick wandered off before Lowell finished
the question. No, there was not something. He was keeping it together. He just
needed, right this second, to get out of this room and away from this party and
away from the team.

He ran into Dale outside. Dale was
on the phone, and Erick hung back, well out of eavesdropping range. When Dale
finished, he stuffed his phone into a pocket and joined Erick. They walked
toward the stadium.

“I saw you and Duran holding court
like royalty in there,” Dale said with a bite of amusement. “Fucking
quarterbacks.”

Erick knocked Dale’s arm with his
elbow, but asked after a moment, “Is that what it looked like?”

Dale gave him a sidelong look. “No.
Christ, Erick. You wanna know what it looked like? It looked like you were sick
to your stomach and Duran was talking you out of puking your guts out.”

Erick stopped walking. “It did?”

Dale sighed, taking a few steps
before stopping and turning to face him. “Oh, you’re good, I give you that. But
you’re not fooling me. You’re not fooling Lowell. And I bet you a million dollars
from your future NFL salary that you’re not fooling Coach Bowman.”

Then why are you all ignoring
me?
Erick wanted to ask.

“Oh,” he said. They resumed their
walk and reached the stadium, which was closed and dark and ringed by a metal
fence. Everyone on the team knew by now where to get in under the fence and how
to slip inside. They came out through the stands and climbed onto the field,
and Erick immediately sort of wished they hadn’t; he missed this so damn much.
He wanted to be on the field, he wanted to be playing.

“It looks bigger when it’s empty,
doesn’t it?” Dale said, circling around, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “You
ever see pictures of the old stadium, when they had the track around the field?
That must’ve sucked for the fans... Maybe explain why they never had any
fans... Erick? You okay?”

I’m okay, I’m okay
, Erick
thought desperately. He had to be okay, because he had no idea what was wrong.

Dale grabbed him, pulled him into a
tight hug. Erick fell limply into it. “This isn’t a gay thing. This is a
we-just-scored-a-touchdown manly hug, okay? You with me?”

Erick choked on a laugh. “Okay. I’m
with you.” He wrapped his arms around Dale and held on. And it was longer than
a touchdown hug, more like a we-just-scored-the-winning-touchdown-in-double-overtime
hug.

“Listen to me, homeboy,” Dale spoke
against his ear. “I’m here for you. We all are. Don’t forget that. You need us,
we’re here. They could send me to Pluto, but you call me and say you need me, I’ll
find a way to get back. You got that?”

Erick squeezed him and patted his
back. “Yeah, I got that.” He pulled back, swallowing hard, and caught his
breath. “You know Pluto’s not a planet, right?”

Dale snorted. “Oh, so now you’re
trashing my academic credibility? Fucking quarterbacks, I tell ya.”

-----

Before Erick was ready for it,
summer started. The plan had been to take summer classes but he stared at the
course catalog and everything looked meaningless. As soon as he finished
finals, he spent a week in Virginia with his parents and managed to avoid the
topic of Crocker football because his eldest sister Trisha was getting married.
Next December, but apparently it wasn’t too early for Mama to start interfering
with the wedding plans.

He met up with Kinney and Yates at
Dulles and they flew to Frankfurt together. Kinney was the master planner,
armed with Rough Guides and Lonely Planets and print-outs of recommended youth
hostels for a dozen countries. Yates was the navigator with maps and an
excellent sense of direction. Erick was content to let them lead. He wasn’t
quite sleepwalking anymore, but wasn’t quite awake yet, either.

After two weeks and Prague,
Ljubljana, Budapest, and Vienna, they were in Venice where they met Candace and
Angelika, two girls from Tufts staying at the same youth hostel. Candace was
beautiful, brown, curvy, and vivacious. Angelika was willowy and gorgeous. The
five of them explored Venice together for four days. Kinney’s next chosen
destination was Nice; Candace and Angelika were going to Rome to catch their
flight back to the States. Erick parted company with his roommates and went to
Rome.

Candace made him laugh. Impulsive
and intensely curious about practically everything, she strode through
unfamiliar territory fearless. She was unpredictable, uncontrollable, and made
fun of herself rather than others. Angelika was the thinker of the two, the one
who bothered to read the signs, check the map, or consult the guidebook. When
they reached Rome and Candace announced she wanted to stay and travel with
Erick, neither Erick nor Angelika were completely surprised. They saw Angelika
off at the airport, and Candace changed her return ticket. Two nights later, in
Naples, Erick fucked Candace for the first time.

Alive again, and this time it was
real life, more real even than football: the heavy hot summer, the sights and
sounds and smells of ancient cities, in love with a beautiful woman. Barcelona,
Madrid, Paris: Erick viewed them through the sound of Candace’s laugh, tasted
their air through the scent of her sex. Crocker seemed like a thousand years
ago, a place another Erick had visited.

-----

Lowell spent the first half of the
summer idle and spoiled, living in his old bedroom, catching up with his
friends from high school, and texting with Kelly every day. She was in Santa
Barbara until the science camp started, and complained about her parents and
gossiped about friends Lowell didn’t know. It was nice to be lazy for a change.

He flew back to California a month
before training started. Kelly’s science camp job was all day every day, from 7
a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Lowell filled his first few empty days reading and working
out before boredom spurred him to volunteer at a kids’ basketball camp on the
Crocker campus. He wasn’t impressed with the coaches but he enjoyed helping the
kids, and as a volunteer his schedule wasn’t as tight as Kelly’s.

One unseasonably cool afternoon in
July Lowell stopped at Phil’s Coffee close to campus and was taken aback to see
Dale working the cash register. He had texted Dale a couple of times after classes
ended in June, then Dale had dropped off the radar.

Dale stared at Lowell for a second
before breaking into a grin and saying, “What’s your order, cribmate? When did
you get back?”

It wasn’t busy, so Lowell leaned on
the counter. “Couple of weeks ago. I’m volunteering at a basketball camp for
kids while Kelly’s doing the science camp thing. I’ve been crashing with her.
The science camp counselors all got rooms in the new dorms by the law school.
Sweet. Very sweet.” Lowell glanced around. “How long have you been working here?”

“About a month and a half.”

“You didn’t go home?”

Dale had a customer to ring up and
didn’t immediately answer. “No. I thought about taking a summer class, but you
know... Anyway, I just stayed here. I’m renting a room.” Dale fussed with
straightening the tip jar and candies for sale in front of the register.

“Heard from Erick?” Lowell asked
casually.

Dale glanced at him. “Not really.
You?”

Lowell shook his head. A group of
customers came in, and Lowell stepped aside. “Hey, wanna toss the ball around
sometime?”

Dale looked up from making change. “Homie.
Football. I am so there. Text me.”

Lowell grinned and left, already
looking forward to it. It felt like forever since he, Dale, and Erick had
practiced together, just the three of them.

He was disappointed and slightly
surprised that Dale hadn’t heard more from Erick than anyone else; those two
had been tight. Erick’s last update had been from July; he was in Madrid. He
posted a picture of his foot propped up on an open windowsill and captioned it
Sore
foot
.

Lowell had almost commented on the
photo, had wanted to say something funny but couldn’t think of anything clever.
Plus, he wasn’t sure what would make Erick laugh these days. Something had
changed between them, sometime around spring training.

That night Kelly fell asleep early
-- that happened a lot; apparently teaching science to a bunch of kids was
exhausting. Lowell sat up in the sofabed beside her and texted Dale.

dude football when

Caps? Punctuation?

bite me

Tomorrow? Off work at 2.

2s good where

Field by Abraham Hall?

all fields used by camps lotsa kiddies

It’s late. I can’t think where.

meet u phils

Tomorrow not working at Phil’s.

u work where

Tutoring but it’s too far.

u tutoring no way lol

Fuck off.

where u live

Skelton Ave. Big apt complex. I’m in 2A.

ok

Falling asleep now.

ok go 2 sleep nite

Nite.

The next day Lowell finished at
camp a little after one. He walked leisurely over to Skelton Avenue, but he was
early. The apartment was easy to find: it was the only complex on a street of
old single-storey houses. He went to 2A and knocked and hoped Dale had gotten
home already.

A short woman with wavy red hair
opened the door and regarded him blankly.

“Um, hi. Is Dale home?” he said.

“And you are--?”

“I’m his friend Lowell. He said to
meet him here. I’m early, but...”

She looked him over. “Oh, that’s
okay, if he’s expecting you. He should be home soon. Come on in.”

She showed him inside to a small
living room crammed with a large sofa, chair, computer desk with two monitors,
coffee table, and a fluffy grey cat. There were books on the table, the floor,
and the sofa. She gathered some off the sofa, stacked them on the table, and
invited him to sit.

“I’m Betsy. You want something to
drink? I’m having some wine.”

Lowell sat down and petted the cat,
who had come to sniff his shoes and rub its whiskers against his leg. He was
wearing baggy shorts and the whiskers tickled his skin.

“Oh, no, thank you.”

“Dale’s friend... We haven’t met
Dale’s friends yet. You want some mineral water?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

The cat brushed against his legs
and he scratched its head.

“Oh, he likes you,” Betsy said,
returning from the kitchen carrying a glass of red wine. She sat in the chair
and lifted the glass, nodding toward the cat. “That’s John, by the way.”

Lowell leaned forward to look at
the cat. “Hello, John.” He scritched John’s chin, setting off a rumbling purr.
Betsy sipped her wine, watching, amused. “He’s normally a mama’s boy, but he
certainly likes you. So tell me about you and Dale. Where’d you two meet?”

The cat jumped onto the sofa and
Lowell stroked John’s back. “Huh? Oh, we met at Crocker. Ow. Dude, not there.”

Lowell shifted the kneading cat
further down his leg and Betsy snickered, “He always goes for the crotch.” To
the cat she said, “Don’t be so cheap and easy.”