by Tim Green
"Double trouble for you guys," he said to himself as he tore into the box of Outlaw returns that had just been delivered to his office.
He started at the beginning with Ace Atkins, the first on the Outlaws roster. He pored over the tax returns for days, earmarking little abnormalities that he would later go back and check against employers' records and bank accounts. Usually there was something, at least a minor thing, on almost half of the returns an agent examined. Board would make a file of these glitches. He would go back to them later. He would send notices and ask for documentation that substantiated certain deductions and write-offs. If there was no documentation in any specific case, he would levy taxes and penalties with the very real threat of jail. The prospect was titillating.
With the IRS, unlike any other arm of the government, a citizen was guilty until he could prove himself innocent. The letters alone would be enough to jolt most of the players out of their reveries of wealth and leisure. The smart ones would call tax attorneys who would slow him down and make him work more carefully. But the lawyers would cost the players money, and in any event, he would make sure that these people dealt with him face-to-face, whether they had a lawyer or not. Board had big plans for this project. He would watch them squirm like bugs under a magnifying glass in the hot sun.
"What's the matter, Cody?" were the first words out of Marty Cahn's mouth as he slid into the booth.
Cody made an exaggerated motion to get a clear view of his watch.
"I don't know, Marty," he said. "When you were recruiting me to sign with you for my last contract, you used to wait outside the facility for me in your convertible Mercedes and chauffeur me to the "lexan for lunch. Now I'm sitting here waiting for you for forty-five minutes at Taco Man, and I've got the feeling you forgot your wallet, so I'll have to pick up the tab."
Marty's cheeks flushed slightly. As long as he'd known Cody Grey, he'd never been able to quite figure him out. It was usually somewhere between the content and the delivery of his words that Marty could figure out what Cody meant. As with every enigmatic person, sometimes Cody meant exacily what he said, and sometimes he didn't mean it at all. Marty never got the feel t;>>r when Cody meant to be funny in a dry way or was just being confrontational. He looked for a smile on his client's face and thought he saw one.
"Sorry," Marty said, picking one of two menus off of the table and concentrating on the selection. He glanced up. Cody was smiling, having fun with him. That made him relax.
Cody signaled to a waitress. "Now I'm in a rush, Marty. I've got to do a talk for some kids," he explained.
The waitress was a young, plump Mexican girl with dark hair, dark skin, and a pearly smile. Cody ordered a Double Supreme Burrito Platter, enough food for a mid-size family. Marty wanted the fajita salad, strips of grilled, fatless chicken on a mound of dark, leafy lettuce.
"When 1 retire, I'm going to eat like you," Cody said.
"I can't imagine you ever eating like me," Marty replied.
"1 can't imagine ever retiring."
Marty looked down at his red, plastic water glass. He picked it up and swirled the contents as if he were fascinated with this particular mixture of slush and water.
" So, can you?" Cody asked.
"Huh?" Marty said, looking up.
Cody rolled his eyes. Marty was so wimpy sometimes. When Cody first met Marty, he thought that with a little weight work and some conditioning, the lawyer could have been one hell of a tight end. He had the body type and big hands that could suck in a football like a Hoover Deluxe. It didn't take long to see that Matty just didn't have the heart for contact sports. Besides catching the ball, a tight end had to live in the land of the defensive backs, mostly safeties like Cody, who longed to hit them so hard the flesh between their ribs would tear.
"So," Cody said, staring intently at his agent, "what did they say?"
"They don't know," Marty said. His fingertips tingled with nervous energy as he tapped them on the table. For all Cody's granite facade, even Marty could sense the knot in the football player's gut.
"They don't know if they're going to pay me a million dollars, or they don't know if they're going to offer me a contract?" Cody's voice had a desperate edge that Marty had never heard before.
'They don't know either right now," Marty said, bravely looking Cody in the eye.
"God, Marty, it's June and they don't know?" Cody asked dejectedly.
Marty shrugged. "It won't be a lot of money, I don't think. They said we should pursue other opportunities, that they appreciated all you've done for the team."
"What the hell," Cody barked. "I bust my ass for this team for eight damn years and they tell me to pursue other opportunities? I don't have other opportunities, do I?"
"No," Marty said, squeezing his lips as though on a lemon. "Not with your knee. I've spoken with every team. Maybe, if someone gets hurt in training camp, they'll need someone."
"So now I just sit around hoping that the Outlaws will find it in their hearts to sign me to some half-ass contract for the minimum salary?"
Cody stared at some distant point in the clear blue sky outside the window. The noises of the restaurant filled the silence. Mothers hushed screaming kids. Conversation hummed. Plates were scraped with silverware. The heavy smell of fried chips pervaded the air. Their waitress returned with two plates of food and cheerily asked if she could get them anything else. She had spilled hot sauce down the front of her bright yellow apron, the colors of a fiesta. Marty answered politely for them both and poked tentatively at a strip of grilled chicken.
"Hey," Marty said, "look, we've got time. You'll get well. They'll see it, and they'll want you back. I think you'll be there by the time the season starts. It may not be what we want, but it won't be minimum. They won't do that to you. They won't. It won't be what you're used to getting, though."
Free agency was the worst thing that could have happened to most NFL players. The older ones, nearing the ends of their career, were the hardest hit. To compliment a severance package that was cut in half, and a meaningless pension increase, the football Players Union had gotten free agency with a salary cap in their negotiations with the NFL owners. The owners could barely contain their delight. For the players the cap meant that a select few marquee guys would get the vast majority of the money available for the teams to pay out in salaries under the cap limit. The rest of the players, most of the young players, older veterans whose skills were declining, and anyone who was recovering from an injury, could only look forward to a crammed- down salary. For Cody, free agency had come four years too late.
Cody continued to stare out the window.
"I thought you'd want to know the truth," Marty said. "It's not that it could be worse. I think they'll end up signing you. Your knee will be better. How is your knee?"
Cody looked at him. "It's better. It's good. It's not completely better, but I don't think it ever will be. I can play with it like this. They know I can play like this. What about mini-camp?"
"What about it?"
"Am I going?"
"I think with or without a contract you should. The coaches want you there. We're not really in a position to play hard to get."
They sat quietly for a moment before speaking again.
"I don't think you should take this personally," Marty said, invoking his best lawyerly frown.
Cody set his jaw and looked back out the window.
"Eat, you'll feel better," Marty said after he had a mouthful of his own food.
Cody looked at his watch, then attacked his food, saying very little to Marty while he ate. Then he rose abruptly.
"1 gotta run," he said. "Can you take care of this?"
Marty waved his hand to say of course. "Where are you speaking?"
Cody was already starting for the door, but he stopped.
"I told you. I gotta speak to some kids. At a school. You know me ..."
"Just keep working out. Do what you're doing and don't worry," Marty reassured hi
m. "It'll all work out, Cody. I really think it will."
Cody thanked his lawyer from halfway across the restaurant with what might have been a smile and walked out into the hot afternoon sun. He reached for his sunglasses like an old man reaching for his heart pills. His vision was cooled the instant he got the glasses on his face. For a moment he forgot where he parked. He scanned the lot until he saw his blue pickup. Jenny hadn't wanted him to drive a truck. She said it was crass. But there were some things even Jenny said that he just didn't care about.
Cody left the door open to drain the heat while he fired up the engine and the AC. When it got hot and humid in south Texas, which was May through September, you usually didn't get your truck cooled down until right before you got to where you were going.
Sweat had pooled under his arms during the drive, so after he parked at the school, Cody blasted the cold until he felt presentable. The John Houston Elementary School was on the north end of town in a lower-middle-class suburb that was similar to the one he grew up in. The Outlaws had a community relations director who lined up players to speak at special functions and appear at different charity events throughout the community. Cody was her most requested and, because of his willingness to help, her favorite player. Injured or not, old or not, the kids in Austin all wanted to meet Cody Grey.
"This and a bad knee will get you half your severance," Cody mumbled to himself as he limped toward the single-story brick building.
Usually the players in the most demand were the least likely to accept invitations to speak at nonpaying events like an elementary school's Drug Awareness Day. Cody was different. He had done more than his share in the way of civic duty in the city of Austin since the day he arrived eight years ago. If it had something to do with kids, Cody had a hard time saying no. Jenny bristled at his willingness. It seemed to her, and he admitted that it was sometimes true, that it was harder for her to get him to go to a social event with her than to some sports awards dinner for a bunch of nine-year-olds.
Today was the first time Cody found himself in full agreement with his wife's disgusted sentiments. He had done this routine for eight years, talked with the kids, signed their autographs, answered their questions, helped raise money for good causes. He hadn't done it because he thought he'd get something out of it. He did it because he thought it was right. Despite his reputation as a violent bad-guy, he liked being around the kids. It was fun for him to show the public, and himself, that he could tear heads off during a game but be the kind of guy to visit kids in his spare time. But even though his motivation hadn't been to get something in return, that hadn't kept him from expecting that in the end he would get something anyway. He couldn't imagine having given so much of himself not only to the Outlaws but to the community in general and then getting the message that he should seek other opportunities. Maybe Jenny was right about a lot of things. Maybe he was a fool with his head buried in the Texas sand.
Cody talked to the kids and smiled at the teachers. Then he got up on the cafeteria stage to do his thing. There was a crowd of adults by the doorway. Among them was one young woman whom Cody could not keep his eyes from wandering back to. She had blond hair and bright blue eyes that were set like sapphires in the face of a golden idol. She looked like a younger version of the movie star Sharon Stone, only without the attitude. In fact this woman, one of the teachers, he guessed, seemed shy and quiet. She wore a plain white blouse and dark slacks. Her hair was pulled back into a girlish ponyiai!, bi;i even that couldn't contain its golden brilliance. When their eyes nvt she would drop her gaze, but he sensed that she couldn't help looking at him any more than he could at her.
While he delivered his speech from memory, Cody thought of nothing but the pretty blonde schoolteacher. He was a married man. He knew that, but whenever he saw someone as attractive and unadorned as this girl was, he couldn't help himself from wondering what it would be like to know her. He would imagine himself and some shy flower like this blonde, living happily in a simple suburban home, taking care of their kids, baking cookies. It was a crazy thought,- it was a dream that overtook him at times and gnawed at his heart from within. He wanted to talk to her, to single her out right there from his platform and ask her to have dinner with him. All the while he was conscious of the fact that he was married and loved his wife. It was that crazy.
The kids were stone silent. He looked at the rest of the teachers as he finished his message. Even they were in awe of him. The ferocious Cody Grey could actually speak. His message was simple: work hard in school and don't do drugs. It was a boring message that these kids heard all the time, but he was assured by everyone that it was never heard more clearly than when it came from him. He wasn't so sure of that, but he did as he was asked.
When he finished, he sat at a table down in front of the stage and the kids swarmed around him for his autograph. He lost sight of the pretty teacher in the mayhem and didn't see her again. He never would. It was one of those fantasies that transports a person into an entirely new universe, a different life. He could have fallen in love with that teacher, gotten a divorce from Jenny, gotten over his love for Jenny, and moved on, possibly to better things. Cody had experienced these fleeting fantasies before in the past four years. He wondered if the day would ever come when he would break through the walls around him and see something new. He doubted it. Like most people, whether it was wise or not, it was Cody's nature to stay on the path he had chosen and make the most of it.
The kids were going crazy for his signature. They just didn't know any better. They didn't know that his value on the open market of professional football right now was bottoming out. The kids were the last to forget. To them, he was larger than life. The smile he wore for them was twisted with his private pain. They didn't understand yet that when an athlete outlives his usefulness, he is quickly replaced and just as quickly forgotten.
Chapter Seven
Cody's presentation to the school children was a success, and at the bell announcing the end of the day, the kids were slow to leave. Cody said a few nice words to the lingering teachers and searched fleetingly for the blonde, too embarrassed and not motivated enough to ask anyone who he was. Then he walked out through the throng of kids making their way to the waiting school buses and headed home. Jenny was out at the pool. The water heater was broken, and despite the hot days, the nights had been cool and the water was still on the chilly side. Jenny was never a big swimmer anyway. For her the pool was more for looking than swimming. Cody stood by the poolside and assessed his wife across the water. She lounged on a comfortable chaise under an umbrella. She wore a straw sun hat, sunglasses, and a white frilly bathing suit that he guessed cost about five hundred dollars. On her wrist was a gold Rolex and a diamond tennis bracelet. Her long dark hair spilled out of the hat and draped onto her bronzed shoulders. Her lips and her nails were painted a brilliant red. They were like an invitation and a warning at the same time. She could sexually satisfy you or gut you, or both.
Jenny was talking on the cordless phone, a perfect image of wealth and beauty. She looked almost nothing like the high-school girl he knew in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as Jenny Gretzsky, at least she didn't remind him of that Jenny. She had come a long way. Because he couldn't see her eyes, Cody wasn't sure whether she'd seen him. Jenny was like that sometimes. She could sit and talk on the phone or read a book or watch TV and not see or hear anything around her. There were other times, though, when she simply ignored you.
Cody said nothing. He just took a step toward her and plunged straight down into the pool. He came up and broke the surface with a yell in a spray of spit and cold water. Jenny was up on her feet now, and he saw that the phone was no longer in her hand.
"Are you crazy?" she shrieked. "You scared me to deathl"
"Help," Cody gurgled and flapped his hands desperately at her. His jeans and suede boots filled with water and dragged him down. He kicked against the weight. It hurt his knee, and he wondered just how foolish he'd been to jump in. H
e was a few feet from the other side now, and Jenny, still disconcerted, bent down to give him a hand. He pulled her in.
She broke the surface screaming and clawing for the edge of the pool like a wet cat. Cody climbed out alongside her and pulled her toward him. She fought him, sputtering and enraged. Cody could feel the sun already warming him. His laugh shook his whole frame, and she almost got away. Jenny's hair was matted down on her head and clung to her shoulders like black Saran Wrap. He looked into her eyes and realized that this was a moment in his life that would make a difference. There were so many things that were wrong between them, and he guessed that was why he'd pulled her in, to shock her, to remind her who she was and who he was and why they were even there together in the first place. She was still struggling when he pulled her even closer and kissed her. She was stiff and cold, and if he'd stopped it would have been over right then and there. Nothing would have been left but the formality of drawing up the papers and splitting what little was left from their eight years of living so well. But Cody didn't stop, he'd gone too far, and he knew that all the chips were on the table. Jenny was a horse you couldn't just lead to water. You had to make her drink. He would hold her and kiss her until she either tore out his eyes with her nails and got away or relented and kissed him back.
It was like a long slow dance while they wrestled there, soaking wet in the early summer heat. But as her body warmed and recovered, she struggled less and less. Then she let him kiss her. Then she kissed him back. Then she began to devour him. He slipped the straps from her shoulders and pulled the top of her bathing suit down to expose two perfect breasts. He groped at her like he did the first time they were together. She put her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling his face to her breasts. He carried her like that into the small pool house. The sliding glass door was open. Cody dumped her onto the soft double bed. She squirmed desperately out of her suit, and Cody tore every button on his shirt getting it off. They made love until the sun began to turn the sky red-orange in the west, and the long shadows of the hills crept toward the city below them, plunging it into darkness. Then they slept.