by Kyell Gold
“That was the least of it. The press conference about being gay? The fake girlfriend?”
“Oh, right. Good for you. You’re a professional and you deserve a professional agent.” A short pause. “So, see you for a workout Saturday?”
“Okay.” I want badly to ask him how Angela found out, but I can’t think of how to do it, and so we just hang up there.
Lee’s unpacking when I come into the bedroom. “We should go in about fifteen,” he says.
I put Gerrard out of my mind and move on to the other call I wanted to make. “I want to call Ty and ask him what he was talking to you about.”
He raises his eyebrows, and his whiskers lift as well. “Okay. Let me know what he says.”
So I call, but I don’t get an answer; maybe he’s traveling or something. I grab my clothes just as my phone rings. I put it up to my ear and say, “Hey,” thinking it’s Ty calling back.
“Devlin.” Damian’s voice. I straighten up and steady the phone with a paw. “Slight change of plans.”
“What? What’s happening?”
“I’m at the Firebirds office. Can you go by Fisher’s and pick him up? He’s being obstinate.”
“Obstinate how?”
“He’s refusing to come to the offices and Gena can’t get him in the car. Locked himself in his den, I guess. Can you go talk to him? I’d go, but I’m working on contracts with Rodriguez and I think you’d have a better shot anyway.”
I drop the clothes. “Yeah, I’ll head over there now.”
“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll tell Gena. See you here in a couple hours.”
Lee gives me a questioning look, so I fill him in quickly. “All right.” He fingers my shirt. “Take ten minutes and change. Here, wear one of your new shirts and these slacks. I’ll grab a jacket and your Firebirds tie.”
It takes a little longer than ten minutes, but I get dressed and we get to Fisher’s by quarter to two. Gena meets us at the door. “Is he still in the den?” I ask as we come in.
She rubs a paw between her ears and then fiddles with her shirt buttons. “Thank you so much. I tried talking to him, but he’s…he says I don’t understand.”
Lee goes to talk to Gena while I try the door of the den. It’s locked, but Fisher yells, “I told you, I’m not doing it!”
“Fish,” I call. “It’s me. Come on.”
There’s silence. Maybe he’s coming to unlock the door? No, the next time he talks, his voice is lower, but it’s still back at the desk. “Dev?”
“Yeah. You wanna let me in?”
His voice is deep and scratchy. “I can hear you just fine.”
“I can’t see you, though.”
“Don’t need to see me, do you? They want me to go make this statement and retire and I’m not doing it. I’m not hanging it up. They can do whatever they want, but Leroy’s gonna get me signed to another team.”
Shit. “You mean…Damian.”
“Yeah, whatever. Look, they’re blowing this whole thing outta proportion. Everyone does it, nobody gives a shit, the league’ll bury it so they don't get embarrassed, and I’ll play a couple more years.”
Lee’s down the hallway with Gena and I don’t have anyone to turn to for advice on how to handle him. What do I do here? “They’re not kidding,” I say, hoping maybe he’s just drifting and I can pull him back to reality. “If you don’t retire, you won’t get another job. Damian told me.”
“Damian. That fuckin’ prick. He said…” His voice drops and he mumbles. “No, I talked to a guy from Chevali, he says they’ll take a chance on me.”
“Fish,” I say. “You play for Chevali now.”
“I know that,” he snaps. “I meant…I meant Kerina. I just said the wrong word, that’s all. Don’t make a fuckin’ federal case out of it.”
“You can’t talk to Kerina right now.” I lean against the door. “That’s tampering. They can’t make you any promises.”
“I know.” The words come slower now. “But I talked to them…”
“Recently?”
The pause is longer, dead silence stretching on for seconds before it’s broken. “I don’t know,” he says, finally, and there’s something raw and scared in his voice.
“Look, Fish, trust me. Just come down with us and retire. Everyone’ll say how much they love you, the team’ll take care of you and the family.” I look back to where Lee and Gena are now standing with Junior and Bradley. The two young tiger brothers standing together reminds me of me and Gregory again, of being teenagers when we heard that our grandmother had suffered a stroke. We stood in the front room dressed in suits and ties and didn’t say anything to each other, as though each of us had lost a different grandparent. It wasn’t until Mom came and told us what to expect that we started talking to each other.
I shake Gregory out of my head and turn my muzzle back to the door. “Gena and the cubs will come down too, everyone’s waiting for you.” He doesn’t respond. “Come on, Fish, just open the door and come on out.”
Gena takes a step down the hallway. Lee smiles encouragingly. I lean against the door. “Fish?”
The scratch is back in his voice. “Tell Gena and…and the boys to go on ahead. I’ll ride with you in the truck.”
“You going to come out?”
“I’m getting my suit on,” he growls. “Tell them to go on ahead.”
When I walk down the hall, Gena steps forward toward me. “What did he say? Is he okay?”
“He’s getting his suit on. He told you and the boys to go on ahead in the car and he’ll ride with me in the truck.”
Lee takes Gena’s paw. “I’ll go with you guys, okay?”
“Yes.” She looks toward the den door. Bradley and Junior don’t look at any of us.
My fox gestures with his muzzle for me to go back to the den. “He probably just wants some private time with Dev before he goes.”
“Retiring is so difficult. All right, come on, boys.” Gena gathers her sons and they file out the front door. Lee gives me a quick kiss on the nose and then follows them.
The den door is still locked when I get back, but when I press my ear to it, I hear movement inside, the creak of a chair. Then there’s a sound like a distant car door slamming, and the scrape and thunk of a window closing.
It’s quiet for one heartbeat, two, three. Then my head explodes.
16
Emergency (Lee)
I’ve just rolled down the window of the passenger seat of the car when I hear the muffled sound, like a car backfiring in the garage of Gena’s house. The tigers in the car look around, but I guess it wasn’t as clear to them as it was to me. Gena starts the engine. “Wait,” I say. I look back toward the house.
Nothing’s moving there. My fur prickles, though, and I know something isn’t right. “What?” Gena flicks the key back and the engine dies.
The boys shuffle restlessly. Junior leans forward while Bradley looks out his window toward the house. “Did you hear something, Mr. Farrel? I thought I heard like a crash.”
I flick my ears and nod. “I’m going to call Dev.”
But I’ve no sooner gotten my phone out and in my paw than it buzzes. Dev: Come back.
“Stay here,” I tell them, throwing the door open with the relieved thought that at least Dev is all right, and the growing certainty that Fisher probably isn’t.
Dev texts again as I’m running up the lawn toward the house. Can you see into den?
There’s a convenient button to call him back, so I hit it and put the phone to my ear as I get to the house. I scramble through their front yard and around to the side of the house, ignoring flower beds as I go from one window to the next, peering in.
“Hey.”
“I’m outside. What happened?”
I find Fisher’s den at the second window, the model trains all along one wall, the big desk close to the window. The chair is pushed back at an angle, but nothing else looks out of place.
“Loud explosion. Gunshot may
be. My right ear is ringing. Fisher’s not answering me anymore. Lee, is he—”
I get up close to the window, and then my blood goes cold. Fisher lies on the floor, still. Even his tail isn’t moving.
“I’m calling 911,” I say, and hang up before Dev can answer.
Gena comes up slowly from the car, where Bradley’s head pokes out of the open window. She stops halfway up the walk. One of the neighbors, an older cougar, pokes her head out of her front door and asks if anything’s wrong.
“911, what is your emergency?” sounds in my ear.
I give them the street address and tell them there’s been a gunshot fired and someone may be injured. They tell me they’re dispatching an ambulance and will be there shortly, and in the meantime they ask me for more information: do I live there, do I know the identity of the injured party? I tell them I don’t live here, and I almost tell them who it is before my fox brain kicks in and I think about Fisher’s name being splashed all over the news with a 911 recording. “I don’t know who it is,” I say. “I was nearby and I heard a gunshot, and I saw someone through a window lying on the floor.”
They tell me to be careful, that the shooter might still be in the house, and I don’t say anything to that except to tell them that I’m not going inside, which is true. But as I say that, the office door slams back against the wall with a crash and Dev runs into the den. He looks around for a moment and I point to where Fisher’s lying, unnecessarily.
After kneeling beside his friend, Dev comes to open the window. I put the phone on mute. Already I can hear sirens getting closer.
“He’s alive,” Dev says grimly. “But his face is…a mess. I don’t see the gun. Don’t look in,” he says as I start to lean past him.
“Don’t move him. Ambulance is on the way. Police, too, maybe.” I hold up a paw, because the 911 guy is asking if I’m still there, and I unmute the phone. “I’m here,” I tell him. “I can hear the sirens. Thanks so much for your help.”
Dev’s whiskers are flared and his eyes widen as I hang up. “Police? They’re going to think I shot him!”
“Well, I couldn’t tell them I knew he shot himself. Don’t touch anything,” I say, “and don’t worry. Is he conscious at all?”
Dev shakes his head. “His eyes are partly open, but he didn’t respond when I…” He swallows and looks back into the den. “Jesus, Lee,” he says, and now his voice shakes. “Why…?”
“Hopefully we can ask him later,” I say, bracing myself. I’m trying not to think about Gena, edging forward along the sidewalk, or the cubs waiting in the car, so big but still really just kids, or Fisher lying on the den floor. I need to keep it together at least until the ambulance gets here, and hearing Dev shake reinforces my determination to shove the rest of it aside. “Just be calm. You did the right thing.”
“What right thing?” He flicks his ears back toward the den and then forward at the wailing sirens, closer now, only a couple streets away.
“Breaking in.” I glance down to where Gena’s waiting. “At least we can tell her he’s still alive, and keep her back. She doesn’t have to remember what it was like to find her husband bleeding on the floor.”
“I do, though.”
“You’re a tough tiger.” I look past him, but keep my gaze above where Fisher’s lying. “We have to be tough for a little longer, then the medics will handle it.”
The ambulance arrives with a scream of siren and a screech of tires. An armadillo and a raccoon hurry out of it, both carrying big duffel bags of gear. “Stay there,” I tell Dev, and hurry over to meet them.
Gena’s coming up too, but I reach them first. “He’s inside,” I say, “and there’s no other shooter. Dev—my friend is with him.”
“It’s my house,” Gena says. “It’s my husband. Please…”
“You know him?” The armadillo points at me.
“Yes, yes,” Gena says. “He and Devlin are friends. Please hurry!”
“He’s in the den.” I point to the window. “In the house to the left.”
The armadillo nods to the raccoon, and the two of them rush into the house. Gena starts to go after them, but I grab her paw. She turns, eyes wide. “Is he…?”
“He’s alive,” I say. “He’s not conscious. Dev’s with him.”
The wild tension drains out of her and her face crumples. “Alive?” she says, and then she puts a paw to her muzzle and starts to cry. I reach out to hug her and she clings to me, body shaking with tears. After a moment she waves at someone, and I turn to see Bradley getting out of the car. At his mother’s motion, he gets back in.
A police car turns down the street, siren blaring, and pulls up next to the ambulance. A uniformed kinkajou comes out and walks up to us. “Are you the family?” she asks.
“She is.” I pat Gena’s shoulder. She’s still crying, shaking.
The kinkajou doesn’t try to pull us apart. She asks me if the shooter is still around, and then if we’re okay, and I tell her the EMTs and my friend are in the house. She says she’ll go in and get an update for us.
Gena keeps sobbing on my shoulder, saying incoherent things like, “I thought he sounded…I never imagined…why would he…” and I don’t have any answers. I just pat her on the back and hold her, and review the evening in my head.
I wish I’d insisted Fisher come out while we were there (but he’d refused Gena; he would never have listened to me). I wish I’d noticed how he was acting, had suspected something (but his wife didn’t; how could I?). I wish I’d been able to say something that would’ve made him feel better (like what?). And I wish Dev would come out. I can’t imagine what he’s going through, sitting with Fisher’s body in there.
That last wish gets granted, at least. Dev and the kinkajou come out together, soberly, quietly. The officer stands near us and I release Gena. She clings to me and then lets go after a second, lifting her muzzle and wiping her eyes.
“He’s going to be okay,” the kinkajou says, smiling reassuringly. I notice her pressed navy blue uniform now, the name “E. Mallory” on a patch on the front. “They’re just getting him on a stretcher and we’re going to take him to the hospital. Do you want to ride with us?”
Gena nods, and then says, “The boys.”
“I’ll drive them,” I say. “Go with Fisher.” Here, at least, is something I can do.
So Gena gives me her keys, and the armadillo EMT comes out of the house to fetch the gurney from the ambulance. Dev and I wait with Gena until the EMTs wheel Fisher down the walk, and then Officer Mallory gestures for Gena to go with them.
“We’ll see you there,” Dev says. She doesn’t acknowledge us, looking down at the still form as she walks alongside. The EMTs say encouraging things to her like “looks a lot worse than it is” and “superficial damage” and “breathing normally” even though Fisher has a tube in his muzzle and the side of his face turned toward us is so matted with blood that I can’t tell what’s still there.
When they load him into the ambulance, Dev and I walk back to the cars. The police car trundles by us, and Emily waves from the front. I wave back, reflecting that I’ve met more police in the past six months than probably the whole rest of my life.
Dev doesn’t even look at the police car. “You okay?” I say softly, squeezing his paw.
“Not really.” He squeezes back. “But enough for now. You?”
“Same.”
When the police car and ambulance are gone, everything goes quiet again. Birds chirp and cars drive by, and it could be any suburban afternoon. Several people are looking out of their windows, some standing at open doors. We pass the cougar, who calls out, “What happened?”
“Accident,” I say. “He was cleaning the gun and it went off.”
She believes that only marginally more than I do, but she says, “I hope he’ll be okay. They’re such a wonderful family.”
At Dev’s truck, we pause. “I’ll see you at the hospital,” I say. “I should get back to the boys.”
“Yeah.” He pauses, and then grabs me and kisses me, right there in the middle of the street.
I hold him and kiss back. Not for long, but long enough. When we pull apart, he rubs at his eyes. “Be careful.”
“I’ll follow you,” I say.
Bradley gets into the front passenger seat as I climb into the driver’s seat of Gena’s car, he and Junior chorusing, “What happened? What’s going on? Why is there an ambulance? Where’s Mom?”
I start the car. “Your dad had an accident,” I say. “Your mom’s going with him to the hospital and I’m going to drive you guys. That okay?”
“I can drive,” Bradley says.
Dev’s truck pulls out ahead of us. I release the parking brake and pull my seatbelt on. “It’s no problem,” I tell them as we pull out to follow Dev. “Don’t worry, your dad’s going to be fine.”
“We heard them talking about a gunshot,” Junior says, and I don’t know what to say to that. I can’t say that it wasn’t him, because they’d see right through that, so I repeat that there was an accident. They ask me more about what happened, but hesitantly, like they don’t want to know. I help out by pretending to know even less than I do, saying that the paramedics said he would be fine. They stay quiet, and I do too, until we pull in to the hospital parking lot where the ambulance’s lights are still flashing. “Go with your mom,” I say as we stop behind the ambulance. “I’ll park the car.”
Junior gets out right away, but Bradley stays in the front seat. “You don’t wanna go?” I ask.
He shakes his head. Junior’s already at the back of the ambulance. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” His voice is rough. “I mean, someone has to tell Mom where the car is.”
I could as easily do that, but I’m not going to press him. “Okay,” I say. I wheel the car toward the visitor parking. Dev spots me and follows in his truck.
“I didn’t want to say it in front of Junior,” Bradley says as we park, “or Mom. But…you think…he might’ve done it to himself?”