“And you don’t wanna make money with your music?”
“Of course I do. I mean, I can mix that Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande sunshine music into my sounds. I’ve done it, and I’ll keep doing it to make ends meet. But you gotta understand that that’s down at the bottom of the barrel stuff. As in: Being right at the bottom where the shit smells bad and you damn near hurl just by walking in its vicinity. Real desperation.”
I stop the car because we’ve arrived. “City parties?”
She laughs. “Precisely! Where they hire the cheap Brooklyn DJ because the auto-mix expert from the Upper East Side’s too busy patting himself on the back in his limo while sipping on that same Perignon.”
She starts stepping out, but I grab her wrist. With her lips inches from mine, so close that I can feel her heat radiate onto me, I say, “You fascinate me.”
The left side of her mouth tugs once up, then breaks into a smile. “And you embarrass me sometimes with your crazy magic stare-me-downs.” She tries to pull away but I hold her by her cheeks. “Hey!”
I move into her.
She softens under me, and my heart breaks into a gallop. “We’re gonna steam up the windows,” she says.
“Oh, so you’re aware of that now.”
“Hey! Don’t make fun of my lack of experience!”
“Let the windows steam up. I want people to know what’s happening in here.”
Outside the car, I put her shoulder under my arm. She’s a good head shorter than me. And I like that. I like engulfing her. Holding her.
Hold it against me if you will, call me chauvinistic, but I downright enjoy feeling like I protect her.
Because I do. And as we cross the street to the bar, I’m looking around me. Because I sense in my bones that there are wolves in the wings.
-2-
We’re at Slambam—a bar (I discover later) whose bathroom walls are covered in old magazine cutouts of everything from beyond-impressive cleavage and high-on-the-thigh shorts, to the words SEX and LUST spelled out as if they were in a threatening letter from a psycho to a victim.
The place itself is a little cramped—booths along the wall, a stage in the back.
Trev and Skate are already seated, three cans of empty PBRs on the table. Trev gets up and hugs Blaze who, I can see, is a little taken aback by the affection. “It’s nice to see you again, Blaze.”
She moves a lock of hair behind her ear and says, “Uhm, thank—thanks.”
Trev gives her a deadly smile, and if he wasn’t my boy, I’d be nervous.
She scoots over next to me and I lean back in the corner like I’ve just won the UFC title. Because that’s how I feel. My two homeboys and my new homegirl.
We order beers and down them. Trev sticks with the Egg Creams. “One’s enough for me.” He points at the growing pile of PBRs in the center which Skate has taken to forming a pyramid out of, stopping the waitress every time she tries to take them away. Soon after we move onto draft beers.
Blaze asks Skate what he does for a living and he explains that he writes on walls. She’s too polite to prod and dig in and find out what he actually does for money so Trev and I explain that Skate, unlike us two losers, was actually born into money. “Whereas we have to actually work for our food, this dude just sits back and lives off his inheritance,” I say.
He shrugs, relaxed about it. “If I don’t need to work, why should I?” But I can see the playful anxiety in his eyes. The conversation’s going where it always goes when we get onto Skate’s access to Old Money. From the corner of his eyes, he catches my grin. “Don’t!” he says at me.
I start laughing.
He looks up. “Deck, don’t!” Trev’s started snickering as well. “Trev! I will fuck you up, man!” Trev’s stifling laughter.
“Blaze,” I say. “Guess what Skate’s real name—”
“Don’t you fucking dare, Deck!”
“—is? This pale mofo with the Black Mamba around his neck.”
He sits back, defeated. “Fuckin assholes.”
Blaze shrugs. Trev leans forward, and waits just a second, just to make Skate sweat a little more. He flicks a thumb in Skate’s direction: “This graffiti artist’s—”
“Graffiti writer,” he corrects.
“Whatever. This skinhead paleface who looks like he just came out of a cardboard box, is actually called... Now, wait for it...” In an exaggerated voice, he says, slowly, “Sebastian Kade Darby... But wait, there’s more... Now, here it comes...here it comes...”—there’s silence for a moment—“THE SECOND!”
Skate slaps Trev on the head. “Asshole,” he grumbles. Trev puts him in a headlock and they’re quickly rumbling like kids right here on the bench! But it’s too late, because Blaze is guffawing, her eyes watering.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Ever.
When the gag finally dies down, Trev wipes his eyes. Blaze asks, “And...so...all this?” She waves at Skate’s rag-tag sweater and just generally scruffed-up look.
He shrugs. “It just wasn’t for me, you know. That kind of life. Deciding which fork to use when you’re at dinner. I’d just as fast use my hands.”
“So he moved out at eighteen, and never looked back, right Skate?” I explain.
“It’s Sebastian Kade the Second to you. Only my friends can call me Skate.”
More laughter from us. We’ve really got him by the balls here.
Blaze, although still chuckling, notices his discomfort. “Well, I think it’s cool that you stuck it to them. I think it’s cool that you’re living your life like you want to.”
Me: “Whoa! Skate has an ally now!”
“Two against two!” cries Trev.
Skate’s feeling cockier. Like Eminem, he does a funky hip-hop I’m Cool hand gesture, and says, “Damn fuckin straight, homies! Me and Blaze here will take yooze on!”
“Truth is,” I say, “Skate here—”
“Sebastian to you!”
“—is about as suited to living the high life as a fish out of water. And we’re OK with Skate interloping in our crew!” I toast my glass at him.
He pretends to be upset still (which he never was in the first place) then raises his own glass. “Assholes.” We tip glasses, all of us, and drink down. “Besides, you know you wouldn’t get half the touchdowns you do without me saving your ass.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“Where do you guys play? I mean, isn’t football only in colleges and then pro?”
Trev leans forward. “Blaze, what you’re looking at here—these two yokels—is the most wasted potential in all of the history of the NFL.”
I jump in. “Er, hello? Is this Trevor Perkins talking? I mean, the Trevor Perkins? Five thousand two hundred yards last season Trevor Perkins? Two times bowl champ—”
“Yeah yeah yeah, Deck. I’ve heard all that. But you know my stance—before anything else is education. You two, now there’s a joke. You see, Blaze, it is possible to join the NFL without going to college. And Trev and Skate here have more than a small chance of being able to enter the draft—”
“English, Trev.” I point at Blaze. “She probably doesn’t know what the draft is.”
“I don’t.”
“See? It’s basically what you have to join to get picked for the NFL.”
“Like the army?”
We laugh. And I say, “Exactly like the army. Anyway, it’s complex. You have to play at something called a combine, and then from there you get picked for the draft. In short, there’s a whole scouting process—and they only look at college—”
“Bullshit!” Trev’s body is chilled, but his voice is loud. “There are ways of entering, Blaze. And these dudes have been playing ever since they left high school, so it’s even easier for them.”
“Anyway,” I say, “I don’t even know if we qualify yet—”
“Do the math,” Trev insists.
“Huh?”
“Do the math.�
��
“Trev, it gets complicated when you don’t go to college—”
He leans forward. “Four seasons.”
“What?”
“If you don’t go to college, it’s four seasons. Four seasons of the NFL must elapse for you to automatically qualify.”
“So that’s four years. We haven’t been out of school—”
“Damn it, you’re an obstinate sonofabitch.”
“I was gonna say the same about you.”
Trev turns to Blaze. “I’m sorry, Blaze. It’s just that this pinhead—this supremely talented pinhead—doesn’t even bother to look at his eligibility. He leaves school, continues to play ball, so he stays in top shape—and the finest damned RB in the Major League—”
Blaze frowns. “R-what?” She looks at me. “And you play in the Major League? I thought that’s what the NFL was.”
“Trevor?” I gesture casually, like this is his mess to clean.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Veering off the subject?”
“Very much.” I give him my best grin.
“RB is a Running Back. It’s a position. Catches a lot. Runs a lot.”
“Gets hit a lot,” I interject.
“Ho ho ho! Not you, my man. You do all the hitting.” Trev’s eyes are wild with excitement, no doubt thinking back to the good ol’ days of us three playing together in High School.
“You were saying?” I gesture casually again for Trev to continue.
“Major League is not the same as the NFL—the National Football League. That’s pro football. Then there are many Semi Pro leagues around. Deck and Skate here play for one called the Major League—East Coast. Not very creative, but it is what it is. I don’t know how many teams they have—”
Me: “Nineteen. From New York, Connecticut, Jersey, and Penn.”
“Nineteen teams. So, Skate and Deck here play for a local Brooklyn team. The Bluebirds. Top of their division.”
“Wow—”
I stop Blaze right away. “Division. Not the league. A league is broken up into several divisions. So, Divisions are smaller. League champions this year were the Jersey Wolves. They’re miles better than us. The only team to have won the championship three times. Our team, the Bluebirds, well, we do well locally, but not when it comes to competing at conference— Sorry, that’s like several divisions. The point is: We’re big fish in a small tub.”
“I’m so confused.”
“Basically, league is the biggest, conference is second, and division is third. In terms of size.”
“OK, with you on that one.”
“And the Major Leagues is not baseball, it’s football?”
“Actually, that’s true. For whatever reason, they called our league—the one the Bluebirds play in—the Major League. But it has nothing to do with Baseball. Not in this case at least.”
“Cool. I sort of get it. Carry on, Trev. This is entertaining.”
My smile widens. “It is, isn’t it?”
Skate cuts in the way he usually does: A casual comment when no one thinks he’s listening. “Pity that Brad dude had to leave. We could’ve taken the cup with him, I’m sure.”
Trev: “Who?”
I say, “Dude named Brad. Lifted shit for a living. Real old school Bushwick type, thick accent. Fell in love with a babe—I mean, a girl”—Blaze gives me a naughty smile—“from Park Slope and moved over to England where her friend’s gonna marry some gazillionaire Software Consultant of some sort.”
Skate: “You in touch with him? I mean, Brad from Bushwick, not the gazillionaire.”
“A little. We email every now and then. But promises of winning a small-time league that you don’t even get paid for don’t do shit to convince him to return to Bushwick now that he’s sporting a suit every day of his life and pulling in the big dough up there in...I forget the name.”
Skate raises a despondent eyebrow. Brad was truly a monster on the field. Played one season with us. But that’s how it goes in the Semi Pros (which isn’t pro at all, purely amateur.) They come, and they go.
Trev: “OK, sorry I asked. But back to the point.” He looks at me. “So, now pay attention.” Trev holds four fingers up. “Four seasons. Then you’re qualified.”
I tease him. “You’ve really been researching this, haven’t you?”
“Four seasons. We left school three and a half years ago. You do the math.”
“Skate, help me out. We finished school...?”
“June. Well, practically August.”
“Three and a half years ago.” I’ve got my fingers out like an old-time abacus now. “See? This is why Trev’s the only one of us who goes to college. So, Football season’s in September, finishes December/January. So, that’s one season the year we left.” Index finger up. “Next year, another.” Second finger up. “Two years ago, three seasons.” It dawns on me. “Hell, we’ve been out of school for four football seasons? Damn. Where did the fucking time go?”
Trev sits back like he’s just imparted the word of the holy book to his followers. Hands behind his head. “Four seasons, Deck. We been out of high school three and a half years. That makes it four NFL seasons that have passed. And that makes you punks instantly eligible.”
“And you not?” Blaze asks.
“Technically, yes. But I’m on a sports scholarship, and colleges generally don’t hand out four-year scholarships. So if I don’t play football, I got no education. And I can’t pay for college. I deferred for a year, so I’m in my junior year. I got one more year to go and I’ll have my degree. They’re waiting for January fifteenth to come and go before they confirm my scholarship for my final year.”
“MLK’s birthday?”
“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not why. It’s the date this year that the commissioner—that’s the dude at the top of the NFL—has set for all potential players to announce if they’re entering the draft or not.”
“The draft—where players get selected for teams,” she says, checking if she’s following so far.
“Right. And if you’re in college and you announce you’re entering the draft, you can’t play college football anymore. And I’m pretty sure Penn State won’t be so happy to have me leech off them without playing ball this next season.”
“Oh.” Her eyes go wide.
“So, only after the fifteenth will they let me know if I’ll be covered for the next year.”
“Seems pretty cruel.”
“Yeah, well.” Trev waves a defeated hand in the air. “It’s rampant in colleges. It’s the nature of the beast. Ain’t nuthin we can do about it.”
“And what about you, Skate?” she asks.
We all look at Skate. When he finally checks us out, he says, “What? I’d go to the combines. If I wouldn’t be so scared of them testing me for drugs.”
“Combines? You mentioned that earlier, right? I forgot what that is.”
Trev explains to Blaze that it’s like a “Tryout” before the draft. As in, you can’t just jump into the draft. You have to go to a Combine—which is a meeting where a bunch of men prove just how large a gorilla they are—and then there are scouts and recruiters for teams there who then invite you to the draft. You actually have to make it to the draft to get selected. Finally, if you don’t get picked by a team in the draft, you become what’s called a “Free Agent.” And that’s when the hard work begins, trying to get picked when all the hype has died down.
“Fuck me. It is complex.” The other thing I love about Blaze, is how much she freaking curses!
Trev turns to Skate. “It’s a urine test. Not a hair test. Means you’d have to be clean for five days only. You could do that, couldn’t you?”
Skate thinks about it, leans back. “Five days? Damn. I do that every week.” He picks up his beer, then puts it down. “When’s the regional combine?”
Trev: “February fifteenth.”
“Damn it, Deck, I might just do it.”
It feels like something heavy falls int
o my stomach. And I really don’t know why. Because Skate making it into the NFL would be awesome, wouldn’t it? Just as Trev making it would be awesome...
Wouldn’t it?
I grab my beer, and think about the good times we’ve had over the years. Partying it up, egging people’s houses on Halloween, hitting on girls, boasting who scored the most (Trev always wins, we’ve given up pretending he doesn’t.)
I think of when Trev first left for college. It was alright. Skate had been there. We still partied it up. We still had a good time. But if he goes...
Me: “Well, I ain’t doin’ it. I’ve never been one for the limelight. Just like you, Trev.”
“You’d get that two million for that place up in Brooklyn Heights in no time.”
“Yeah, and then I’d never live in it. I’d be travelling all the time, working out all the time. I’d like to get that place. Sure. But not as some status symbol; as an actual representation of the fact that I worked for it. And I’d like to make use of it.”
By Trev’s glint in his eyes, I know he’s wanting to make a joke about Making use of Desperate Housewife Tatiana. But he stops himself after a quick look at Blaze.
“When Skate and I play Semis, well, we do it for the fun. We don’t get paid shit. We just like getting out there and hitting someone to the ground, you know. That’s cool for me. It’s all I want from this game.”
Trev sits back. “Couldn’t have said it better myself, homes. Understand now why I won’t do it?”
I do get it now. It’s the same fear I have. The fear of making it all impersonal, of having it all lose meaning. Losing the simple satisfaction of slamming a shoulder into a dude’s stomach and hearing the breath expel from his lungs, and then offering him a hand up.
The satisfaction of a job well done and, maybe, even, coming home to a wife to share it with.
Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) Page 18