Sinners Football 01- Goals for a Sinner (2 page)

“Give some credit to wideout, Connor Riley. This is a case of the receiver making the quarterback look good, Hank. Riley is the only man on the Sinners’

team with the speed to get under a pass overthrown by a mile on the third down. Billodeaux has an arm, but not much control. The loss of veteran quarterback, Art Golden, with a broken leg at the beginning of the third quarter is going to hurt the Sinners in the playoffs unless Billodeaux settles down. But, the boy has potential. Could be Art might get his only Super Bowl ring sitting on the bench after playing out his last years on this young team.”

“There’s the whistle, Al. As the meat wagon goes into the tunnel, the Sinners’ field goal team takes the field. Ancient Andy Mortenson gets into position, kicks, and it’s good. At forty-two, he’s still got the toe. The Sinners go on to the playoffs.”

Chapter Two

The night had been hellish. Every few hours, a nurse entered her room and nudged Stevie awake to the terrible pain of her concussion. Then, she would ask her patient some idiotic question like, “Do you know where you are, dear?”

“Hospital. Pain,” Stevie would answer.

“We’ll be able to give you something for that in the morning if the doctor okays it. Now go back to sleep.”

Just about the time Stevie slept again, the routine started all over.

In the morning, an orderly brought a breakfast tray. The glassy eye of a poached egg in a cup made her stomach roil, but she did choke down the toast, a cup of hot tea and a few spoonfuls of orange Jell-O

guided to her mouth with a shaking hand.

As a reward for her good behavior, an Indian doctor with slick black hair and a wide, white smile prescribed a mild painkiller which allowed Stevie to turn her head very slowly from side to side without the sensation that her brains were oozing out through her nose. She dozed.

When she woke, Stevie found she could focus her eyes again. One worry out of the way. Carefully, she pulled out the front of her hospital gown and peered down into the aperture. A large bruise about the size of a football helmet had formed in the center of her chest. The inner sides of both breasts were prune purple. Below them, the white bandages holding her broken ribs in place covered her torso to the waist.

The bruise seemed to continue beyond the bandages, but it was dark down there and hard to tell. The Indian doctor had said she was very, very lucky her lungs had not been punctured or worse internal damage done.

“Those football players, they are like bulldozers,” he claimed.

Stevie thought the sensation more like being hit by a fast moving SUV and then run over by an eighteen-wheeler coming from the other direction.

Around one, the flowers and guests began arriving. The Sinners’ organization sent three dozen red roses in an enormous black vase that took up most of the space on her windowsill. A stuffed toy red devil was attached to its base with a red bow. A small, white winter bouquet made up mostly of spider mums and glittering curlicue thingamabobs held a card reading, “I’ll get your camera back to you, baby. Dex.”

She started to shake her head—no-no-no, this could not be happening again—but the inside of her head collided with her skull and forced her to stop.

Up until that moment, her worst fear had been that her Canon, ripped from her hands by the impact, was now in the possession of some groundskeeper who had found it after the game and thrown out the memory card. Stevie had just learned there were worse fears than her worst fears. No-good Dex had access to her shots.

The rest of the flowers came delivered in person.

A flustered day nurse preceded them. She handed Stevie a disposable comb and a warm washcloth.

“You might want to clean up a little. Three of the biggest men I have ever seen are asking to see you. I tell you, that is some prime, grade-A beef on the hoof out there at the nurses’ station. Sinners players,” she added as if Stevie might not get the drift of the conversation.

“My vest. Is it in the closet?” Stevie asked in a panic. “There’s lipstick and some mascara and blush in the top right pocket.”

The nurse pulled the vest out on a hanger. She helped Stevie wobble into the bathroom. The little plastic container of blush was cracked and its contents scattered, but Stevie managed to brush up a little color for her cheeks. When she missed her eyelid with the mascara wand and drew a row of lines down her cheek, the good nurse darkened her lashes for her. The eyebrow pencil was broken in two, but the tip still worked well enough. Stevie added some frosty pink lipstick, combed her hair back and secured it with a blue scrunchie from another pocket in the vest.

“How do I look?” she asked the nurse.

“As good as you are going to. Might want to use the potty while you’re in here. Let me check for blood before you flush.”

Stevie obeyed and hobbled back to bed. As the last sounds of the flush died away, the room filled with Sinners bearing gifts. She recognized Joe Dean Billodeaux, a Cajun quarterback who hadn’t played much but had a way with the ladies that kept him in the gossip columns regularly. He was the smallest of the three—if a man over six feet tall and weighing one-ninety could be considered small. He had well-developed shoulders, slim hips, a killer smile, and one red rose which he added to the enormous bouquet on the windowsill.

“
Comment ca va, cher
?” he asked.

“
Tres bien, merci. Et vous
?” The opening dialog of her high school French class came back in an instant. She hoped he wouldn’t continue in that language because otherwise, she drew a blank.

“Why, I’m just great, and you don’t look so bad yourself for someone who’s been tackled by the Rev.

You know, Billodeaux means ‘love letter’ in my language.” He leaned amorously over Stevie’s bed.

The enormous black man hulking behind Joe Dean elbowed him aside. “Get out wit’ your Cajun crap. Let a man apologize for putting this pretty lady in the hospital.”

The Rev knew what women wanted. He offered a two-layer box of Godiva chocolates and placed it on her nightstand. The man was both wide and tall. A small, solid gut sat atop thighs the size of telephone poles and when a smile spread across his deep brown face, his head and neck seemed even larger.

Several inches taller than the Rev at a good six-five, the unmistakable Connor Riley hung back in the doorway. He gripped a small bouquet of daisies in front of the large chest that could push through a defensive line in order to gain the open space where his long legs would take him far beyond the meanest blockers. He’d brushed his golden hair back behind his ears. The long ends curled up on his wide shoulders. Connor was the only one of the group not smiling. He took a step into the room. “Do you remember me, Stephanie?” he asked, almost shy.

“Certainly. Connor Riley, wide receiver for the New Orleans Sinners, last seen through my view finder yesterday with thirty seconds to play in the game. Your team did win?” she asked, trying to put him at ease.

Of the three, he seemed the most stricken about her condition, but then, he was the one who had landed directly on her and put that helmet-sized bruise on her chest. Thank heaven, her legs had splayed open, or both of them might have been broken.

“Sure did. Ancient Andy came through for us again,” Billodeaux answered for the tongue-tied Riley.

“Do you remember Kevin Riley?” Connor hinted.

“Of course, the first of my lying, cheating boyfriends. See, no brain damage from the fall,” Stevie answered glibly. Then, she put a hand to her mouth and took it away again. “Oh, no! You’re Kevin’s little brother. All this time following the Sinners and I never tied the names together. I guess I put everything to do with him out of my mind. We played football together once when you were just a high school kid.”

Connor sidled up to the bed, seized the only chair and presented his bouquet. “You said you liked daisies because they were simple and cheerful.”

“You remembered that? We only met the one time when he brought me home to meet your parents, but they were out of town. Your brother dumped me the next weekend because we’d dated three months and I hadn’t put out for him. But you remembered I liked daisies?” Stevie took the flowers and gave Connor a friendly smile.

“You were the most beautiful, most fun, most talented girl Kevin ever brought home, and he went back to Merrilee even though she cheated on him. I sacked you into a pile of leaves that afternoon.”

“I shoved pecan leaves down your shirt. We were supposed to be playing touch football.” It was all coming back to her now—a lovely home on Lake Pontchartrain with a big wooded lot and an open area to play football, the rewards Kevin’s father earned with his engineering company building bridges and bypasses across the Louisiana swamps. Kevin was supposed to get his degree in the same field and join the business. Stevie supposed he had. She knew he’d married Merrilee the following spring just before graduation.

“So how is Kevin doing?”

“Married, works with my dad, has four kids,” Connor recited.

Obviously, he did not want to talk about Kevin.

His brother had lured her to the house knowing his parents were away visiting an Aunt Helga who was recovering from surgery. The little brother who had decided to stay home put a snag in the planned seduction. Instead, they played touch football, ordered pizza, and watched a video. And so, she never did sleep with Connor’s brother.

“Oh my, four children, and Kevin only thirty.”

“The big family was Merrilee’s idea. They got an early start. She knows how to hang on to a man.”

“Well, I’m glad someone knew how to hang on to Kevin. Would you pour me a glass of water?”

“Sure.” Connor’s hand shook as he poured from the squat pink plastic pitcher on the bedside table.

Water dribbled from the bottom of the cup as he held it out for her and made splotches down the front of her white hospital gown. He pulled a wad of tissue from a handy box and was about to swab Stevie’s chest, but she waved him away.

“Bruised, very bruised, don’t touch. It will dry.”

“Do you want me to hold the cup while you drink?” Connor asked.

“No.” Stevie poked the bouquet of daisies into the water and set them by the Godiva chocolates.

“Another thing I like about daisies is they are tough and long-lasting, but even daisies need water.” Connor nodded as if she had said something very profound. “Where have you been all these years, Stephanie?”

At the foot of the bed, Joe Dean shifted uneasily and exchanged looks with the Rev. The man might as well have said, “Where have you been all my life?” It was an old pickup line, but said in that tone of voice, might have been a proposal rather than a proposition. Stevie ignored the glance and pretended to miss the point. Men, they just had to try.

“Let’s see. After Kevin, I did my senior year abroad in Italy. I liked it so much over there I stayed on for graduate work. I was doing serious black and whites of wrinkled old women and coloreds of the Tuscan landscape—nothing too original. Then, Marcello suggested we go to see the horse races in Siena, a once a year, no-holds-barred event. That was the first time I covered a sport.” Speaking enthusiastically about her profession, Stevie continued. “There was something about getting a split second shot at a critical moment that grabbed me. I sold a few of those pictures then started going to soccer games, bicycle races, anywhere action could be captured.” Connor said, “Marcello?”

“This guy I lived with for a year or so. Anyhow, I came back to the States with a nice sports portfolio, but found out it was quite a boy’s club—very hard for a woman to get a start. I got a few assignments to cover women’s sports, gymnastics, golf, that kind of thing, but never the big three, football, basketball, or baseball, unless I was willing to do it on spec.

Finally, finally…I get in on the ground to photograph the Sinners and I wind up in the hospital, thanks to my own carelessness.” She shrugged, then winced as her broken ribs shifted.

“Would any of you happen to know what became of my camera? There were some surefire cover shots in it.” “No worries. I gave it to one of the press people named Dexter Sykes and told him to get it to
 
Sports
 
Illustrated
 
just the way you wanted. I said it better be your name on any shots they used or else he could deal with me.” Connor patted her hand.

“Ah, thanks, Connor. I was a little worried. Dex and I have a history, a bad history. He sent me a note saying he had my camera. I wasn’t sure if it was a nasty joke or the truth, but you’ve eased my mind. Dex wouldn’t cross anyone as big as you. Hell, he probably wouldn’t cross me again. I blacked his eye just before I threw him out.”

“You and Dexter have…been together, Stephanie?”

“Yes, I have no talent for finding honest men or keeping them. Okay? And about this Stephanie business: I have hated that name since the day I was born, and Steffie is even worse. Please call me Stevie. All the guys do.”

“Okay, Stevie, then.” But Connor’s expression was one of sorrow, as if he had a hard time thinking of her by any other name than Stephanie after all these years.

Joe Dean stirred with impatience like the hyperactive child he had once been. “Say Con, we ought to let Stevie get some rest and go and visit old Artie. He’s somewhere in this building, too. I need to see how he’s doing.”