Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Falco
Jimmy Falcone
Jimmy Falconi
I press on my name.
And what pops up but pretty much the worst moments and memories of my life. Even my fucking heart explodes. I haven’t done this in years, and there’s a reason for that. In bits and pieces, articles and posts, the sum total of what I must look like comes together in a mere matter of seconds.
Jimmy Falconi is a manwhore.
I thumb through the images and feel sick. I’ve been in this league a long-ass time. There are a lot of pictures of me with a lot of different women. But they’re old. They’re from ages ago, from long before Annie was even born, back when I didn’t have anybody I cared about enough to do better for. But I did for Annie, as soon as she came along. Except, of course, she’s only three. So it looks like I’m a manwhore right up to the present.
I scroll through the search results, and it’s a lot of trash talk and sports forums, ranking me as one of The Worst Quarterbacks Ever. Really? Ever? Apparently. And that bothers me so much, right down in my gut. They’ve got me right between Kyle Boller and Mark Sanchez, the bastards.
This game, I’m telling you. Take a team to a Super Bowl, you’re a hero. Narrowly miss five national championships and you’re the worst.
I close that window and decide to do a little defensive work of my own: “Mary Monahan physical therapist Chicago.”
The first thing that comes up is a link for her work. A professional-looking photo of her smiling up at a camera, with a foam roller in her pretty hands, smiling so hard that her nose wrinkles a little. But the second thing is her Facebook page. I thumb through each and every photo. Her with Frankie Knuckles. Her with someone who might be her mom, or maybe an aunt. Her with a girl who is tagged as “Bridget”. Them together on a beach, at what looks like some sort of seafood place. Mary has lobster claws in her hands and is laughing so hard I can feel the joy right through my phone. Them together as snow angels with Frankie in the middle on his back. I notice that there are no pictures of her with any guys, except for a few with the Colonel. One of her holding a cake. One of her in an apron that says “LETTUCE PRAY” over her chest. Below that is a cartoon of a head of romaine with a halo over the top. Image after image makes me fall for her a little more, a little harder. I’d like to be with her when she’s cooking. I’d like to make snow angels with her. I’d like to go out for lobster with her. So, so badly.
But now more than ever, the difference between us is startling. Hers is a sweet, honest, quiet life.
Mine is a fucking spectacle.
I’m more than that. I know it. I am more than football and more than the internet says. I just need to prove it to her. And fast. Before she decides I really am no good for her at all.
So I hustle back into the trainer’s room and pretend to be doing wall stretches. When nobody’s looking, I grab the clipboard that I saw the HR woman using yesterday to write down Mary’s address and information to pay her. The sheet itself is gone, but the page that was underneath it is still there. God bless that lady from HR for writing so hard she’s probably a serial Bic pen breaker. I can see the vague but still-there shadows of the address on the paper.
Behind me, I hear Radovic sucking down a Red Bull, so I stick the page in my pants and then say, “Fuck!” as I clap my hand to my groin.
Radovic spins around, Red Bull sloshing from the can. “Go home, Falconi. For fuck’s sake. Go rest. Be here at ten tomorrow.” He shakes his head. “Remember what I said though…” He stares hard at me. “Fuck this up and you’re done.”
Crunch goes the can.
I gather up my shit and limp lamely out into the parking lot. My leg is actually totally fucking fine, but I’ve got way, way more serious shit to worry about today than leg lifts.
I could give her space. I could give her time. I could leave her alone.
But that might mean I lose her. She’s already thinking I’m a first-class player. (Who the fuck makes those internet memes anyway? I’ve never in my life said the words Hey, girl. Christ.)
And I am not going to lose her. Not like this.
So I look up florist on Google and click on the one with the highest ratings that also says OPEN NOW. A man answers. “Blooms in Season. How can I help you?”
I clear my throat. “I want all the roses you’ve got.”
“Sir?”
“All the roses. Red. Long stem. No baby’s breath and no bullshit.”
“It’s going to be very expensive, sir… Five dollars a stem.”
“That’s absolutely fine,” I say. “How many do you have in the shop?”
There’s a rustling. “Thirty-six.”
Well that’s not going to cut it. But it’s a start. I place the order and then go back to the list of florists.
Call. Order. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
27
Mary
After Mrs. Friedlander, I head to an appointment with a new client referred by Bridget. She was supposed to be Dr. Curtis’ patient, but I’m covering while Curtis is with him. The new patient is named Miriam. She has five children, none of whom are walking yet. I think she must notice me staring at them, trying in vain to do the math. “Twins and triplets. And another set of twins in here.” She rubs her belly.
“That’s… a lot of children.” I’m at a loss for what else to say. Just one is a source of so much anxiety for me, I can’t even articulate it. Seven children? The woman must be a saint.
“I haven’t slept in three years,” she says with an almost scary smile on her face, like she’s been practicing it in the mirror.
Oh man. I try to make sympathetic expressions and sounds, but I’m not totally sure I’m succeeding. One of the littlest ones begins climbing up the banister like a monkey and gets his foot stuck, screaming hysterically and thrashing back and forth on the steps. Without missing a beat, she grabs a tub of Crisco from the pantry, scoops out a handful, rips off his sock, and butters up his plump little foot. She yanks it free and sticks his sock back on.
“Do you have kids?” she asks as I stare, horrified, at the little child, who has now removed his sock again and is licking his foot.
“No,” I blurt out automatically. “I don’t.” I try to temper my enthusiasm. “I have a dog. Kind of. Half a dog.”
She looks at me, mystified.
“I share my dog with my roommate. Now, shall we see what’s going on with your neck?”
Her mirror face reappears, and she gazes at me blankly. I can almost feel it coming. “I bet you’d make a wonderful mother!”
And there we have it.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I smile. “I can barely remember to buy enough eggs for the week.”
“Neither can I, but you’ll get the hang of it,” she says. “Let me just put on some Dora the Explorer. They should conk out here pretty quick. I dosed them with Benadryl.”
Oh God. This is not the kind of pro-children data I need. I look around the house, at the madness and the chaos, and listen to a baby screaming in a back room. They say that when you have your own, it’s different. But I’m not sure that I’m really cut out for mothering. Not if it’s like this.
In my purse, my phone buzzes. I know it’s him. He’s been at it all day long. I glance down into my bag and see: Dinner. Please. Let me explain. I didn’t make any of those memes…. in the preview window. Followed by: Kate Moss and I are just friends!
I clench my eyes shut.
That cannot be my life.
Miriam returns, baby monitor in hand and her neck stiff as a board. I reach down and silence my phone, just in time to see: Okay. I’m going to leave you alone now. Please don’t ignore me forever.
“Ready?” I ask Miriam.
She tries to nod, but can’t because her neck is in such spasm. So she smiles her mirror-face smile instead and says quietly, “I’ll tell you, Mary. I love my kids. But think long and hard before you have them.”
“I don’
t even have a boyfriend,” I tell her, and find myself smiling that same forced smile she’s been giving me this whole time.
When I return home, I find Bridget outside with Frankie Knuckles, who is in the very early stages of his poop dance. It’s a complex round-and-round ritual that can last as long as five minutes, depending on if he’s interrupted, or if there’s a breeze, or if—God forbid—another dog comes within fifty yards. He’s seriously considering a small space by a leafless bush in a planter box. Back and forth, back and forth. Round and round. Bridget has dressed him in a hoodie to keep him warm, which she Bedazzled herself with the words #1 STUNNER.
Even though Bridget is in her parka, I can see that underneath it, she’s dressed to the nines. She’s got her boots on, her riding boots, the ones that mean business. Or a date. She treats finding a man like most women treat finding a new bra. Gotta try them all on, and preferably wear them around a while before you decide. I, on the other hand, prefer to think that there is one perfect bra out there, destined for me. It happens to be a wireless T-shirt bra from GapBody.
As for the man… I glance at my powered-off phone, and leave it off.
“Where are you headed?” I ask, taking a bag from the roll attached to the treat pouch hanging from her pocket, in preparation for the finale of the ballet.
“Out. How are you?”
I try to get the bag undone, but with my mittens on, it’s just impossible. So I pull them off and, through one of them in my teeth, I say, “Crappy. But Mrs. Friedlander is better.”
She nods. And then glares. “I think you should give him a chance.”
“Of course you’d say that. You’re a Bears fan. You get it. He’s your kind of guy.”
“Pfffft. No. I prefer my men metrosexual, slightly maladjusted, and bearded, as you well know. No, I just think…you’re all upside down. I’ve never seen you like this. It must mean something.”
Doubtful, I think, picking up a turd. Very. “This is real life, Bridget. People don’t fall in love in two days. There is no such thing as insta-love.”
She shakes her head at me, and then looks up at the street lamps. “Oh, ye of little faith.”
I bag up the poop and drop it in the garbage, where it gets caught on top of a pizza box. “I’m fine as I am. Yes, he’s sexy. Yes, he’s sweet. Yes, he owns real estate. Yes, he does charity half-marathons for the humane society…”
“Is this supposed to be a list of cons? Does he have herpes? I don’t understand the problem…”
I hold up a finger. “End of conversation. We have amazing sex, but we’re a bad match. It was madness. It’s over.”
Bridget takes out her long-wear lipstick and does some touchups in the window of a nearby kabob restaurant. “Well, if you’re so sure, come out with me,” she says, sliding her lips together and dragging Frankie away from an empty bag of sour cream and onion chips. “Tonight.”
“Karaoke?” I ask her, clapping my hands together. “Because that would make me feel better. You, me, nachos with jalapeños, Backstreet Boys? I’ll be fine.”
She pouts and drops the lipstick back in her purse. “Speed dating. Come on. See what the dating pool is like. And after that, you can tell me if you really think Jimmy Falconi is such a…” She looks at the steaming bag on the top of the full trash can on the corner. “…Such a bad idea after all.”
Speed dating. I’ve never done it. But, I think, as I watch Frankie kick frozen mulch into the street, maybe it’s worth a try.
The big event takes place in a bar that is, unfortunately, Charles Bukowski themed. On all the walls are painted quotes that are decidedly not the stuff of romance, including: “I DON’T HATE PEOPLE. I JUST FEEL BETTER WHEN THEY’RE NOT AROUND,” and, “LOVE BREAKS MY BONES AND I LAUGH.”
Charming.
And speed dating itself is every bit as strange as I feared it would be, and has a musical chairs feeling that makes it hard to say anything at all lest the buzzer sound in the middle of a halfway decent conversation. Bridget is, of course, the belle of the ball and has done this so many times she checks Facebook in between rounds, in the space where I am gulping back vodka tonics and shoving my face full of cashews. She’s also got a row of complimentary glasses of wine lined up in front of her in a general arrow shape pointing back at her. It’s just that kind of passive aggressive subliminal messaging that she’s really good at. Like when she stuck my American cheese singles—the very best for making grilled cheese—on the top shelf of the fridge with a note that said, “This was in the cheese drawer.”
Right now, at table 7, I’m here with my mostly tonic vodka tonic, and talking to a man named Owen, who specializes in the study of common minnow. I don’t know how he’s done it, but he’s managed to get to me twice. And now he’s really getting down to brass tacks.
“Do you know the minnow?” he says, swizzling his Shirley Temple. He reaches into the book he’s got with him—The Common Minnow—and pulls out a bookmark. Of a common minnow.
“Not really.” I smile. “It’s a nice-looking fish though.”
He slides the bookmark across the table to me. “There. That’s a little gift. They’re very interesting. Very complex. They are the harbingers of ecological overall health. When the minnow starts to decline, everything declines. Like the bees. Do you know about bees?”
Don’t even get me started on bees, Owen. There’s just no way I’m telling this guy that my aunt was an apiarist. He’ll probably get down on his knee right now and swear his undying love to me in the name of the minnow. “I’m a bit allergic. But I do love honey.”
Oh God. What is wrong with me?
Owen the Minnow Man goes on, and on, and on, crunching his ice from his Shirley Temple and talking minnows until the buzzer sounds.
Across the room, Bridget eyes me from behind her glass of cabernet.
I roll my eyes.
And she looks at me like, What did I tell you?
The next guy is actually cute enough, a rugged beard with hints of white near the jaw and mouth, but has a sort of dimness in the eyes. I give him the benefit of the doubt and decide on early-onset cataracts.
It isn’t cataracts. It’s a simple-minded brutishness that starts with him asking me, “So, how do you like it?”
I’m so gobsmacked, my mouth drops open. “How do I like what?”
“It,” he says, making a boinking motion with his finger into his fist. “Hard? Soft? You got fetishes?” He swills his Old Style from the can. “Because I can get into pretty well anything. Feathers?” He gives me the thumbs up. “Furry butt plugs?” Here he pretends to be Caesar, holding his thumb parallel to the ground and then very, very slowly raising it up again. “I’m down. I mean, whatever. You can just lie there if you want.”
Ohhh no, he didn’t. I clench my hand and briefly allow myself the pleasure of imagining what it would feel like to hit him right between the too-closely-set eyes. My aunt had a theory. It was a simple one. Never trust a man whose eyes are too close together. Still, I can’t be suckerpunching this guy in the middle of speed dating.
“Top or bottom?” he asks.
Or can I?
So it’s time for a subject change. And what does my subconscious throw out there but: “Do you like football?”
What? Mary! Why? Why? Why?
He glowers. “Football. What the fuck do you wanna talk about football for? Aren’t we here to get laid?” He looks side to side like he might possibly have come to the wrong event.
I wedge the toe of my boot against the foot of the table to prevent myself from kicking him in the shins. “How about those Bears…”
“Fucking Bears,” he says, taking another swig. “Fucking Jimmy Goddamned Falconi.”
The anger is absolutely instantaneous, like an ungrounded light switch getting flipped in my head. I can actually feel it, like I could when I’d turn the lights on in an apartment I once had and I could feel the current in my cartilage. It’s not an emotion that I’m familiar with, not at all. It makes my
eyes wobble and my face hot and my nostrils flare hard and fast. “He’s doing his best.”
“The fuck he is! Me and the guys at work got bets that this game will be his last. And good fucking riddance!”
He whacks the table with his fist hard in exactly the way Eric used to do. It inspires such a sudden rush of fury and fear that I clench my fingers against my thighs and start counting back from twenty.
“I’ve even got a bumper sticker that says ‘Fuck Falconi,’” he snorts. “Not bad, right?”
There is a time for calm. There is a time for quiet. There is a time for meditation. And then, there is a time for something else entirely…
And so, in one smooth movement, I cross my legs, bringing my right thigh up over my left, wedging my leg between my knee and the table. And that’s when I do it. I tip his Old Style, my vodka tonic, a basket of bread, and a small menacing bowl of hot pepper oil right into his lap.
“What the fuck!” he bellows, leaping back from the table so that his chair goes clattering and flying behind him, landing sideways in the middle of the room. All the awkward conversations around us come to a sudden stop.
“Sorry!” I pretend demure horror. “I’m so sorry!”
The hot pepper oil seeps into his pants, making a big oily hot glop right over his fly.
I scooch out of the banquette. “I’ll go get some paper towels.” But as I pass him, I take one second to add, “You know something? I think he’s doing a wonderful job. He’s working through injuries. People can change. Players improve. I think we’re lucky to have him.”
The Brute doesn’t answer. Just picks up his chair, rights it, and sits back down, staring at the seat where I was sitting, looking at me exactly the same way he did when I was sitting there. Nothing special, nothing exquisite, just another woman on another bench seat.
In other words, exactly the opposite of how Jimmy Falconi looks at me, in even the quietest of moments. Or even when he was coming back to consciousness in the ring.
I hustle past Bridget with a glance and go to the bathroom. Delightfully, this bathroom doesn’t have paper towels—only high-speed hand dryers—so good old Close Eyes is going to have to lump it. I take the moment to myself and let the anger subside, my fingers perched on the wall pressing into the grout lines between the tiles that make a wainscoting. I let my head drop down slightly and take a deep breath, focusing on the quiet in the bathroom. I realize that I’m about two inches from the word FUCKING painted elegantly on the drywall at eye level. The scrolls and twirls of the f are luxurious and old-fashioned, and the tail of the g makes a smooth kind of repeated infinity sign. The most elegantly typeset expletive I’ve ever seen. I step back and see the quote:
Hail Mary Page 16