Over Time

by Kyell Gold

  I consider that and find myself agreeing. “All right, then. Let me know when would be a good time.” I pause. “I guess not Sunday morning.”

  “No, that might be nice,” she says. “I’d love for you to meet the pastor down at the church.”

  “Uh.” Now I feel awkward. “I was kidding.”

  “I know.” She surprises me with a sly smugness. “I’ll figure out a time and I’ll call you.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Maybe things are getting better if she can joke with me like that.

  “Wiley?” She pauses. “Thank you. For calling.”

  “Oh,” I say, “thank you for answering.”

  And after we hang up, I wonder if there’s anyone else I should call in Forester. I try Salim, and to my surprise he picks up his cell.

  “Allen asked for your number,” he says.

  I’m more than a little surprised. “When?”

  “Yesterday. There was a message on the FLAG alumni list that your boyfriend will be coming to campus.”

  “Wow, okay. Why didn’t he call me directly?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I think for a moment he’s talking about when I got the new phone from Dev. “Oh, wait…yeah, that first year out of college, I started using the phone the Dragons got me and I stopped using my personal one. I never thought about it because Dev and my parents had the number and nobody from FLAG ever called me.”

  “You did not encourage us to.”

  “But wait! You texted me when Dev came out!”

  “I have your new number. I do not believe anyone else does. At least, Allen said he does not.”

  “Ah, jeez. I’m sorry. But I was going through a lot with Dev, and everyone was pressuring me to talk about it. I mean, you know.”

  Family and boyfriend, for Salim, are separate things. The marriage and children are for his parents and his religion; the boyfriend is for him. “Yes,” he says, “but I still talk to my friends.”

  “So who are you still in touch with from FLAG?” He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and I chuckle. “So it’s not just me.”

  “The baby made things very busy—she is sick again now—and Jeremy got a promotion, so I can only see him certain evenings.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve had a few busy months myself.”

  I give him the capsule of Dev’s season and my struggles, and right before he hangs up, he asks, “Do you hear much from Brian?”

  “I—no. I tried to work with him on some charity stuff, but he was very—very Brian about it. We’re not talking now.”

  Salim chuckles. “All people are divided into three classes: the immovable, the movable, and those that move.”

  “Is that a proverb?”

  “Perhaps. Good-bye, Wiley. I will try to make it down to Forester campus on Sunday, if the cub is better.”

  “Best wishes to her,” I say.

  It’d been such a nice week, and then Salim had to go and remind me of Brian. Well, I don’t need to think of him. He had his moment with Dev, and I’ve already said my good-bye to him.

  So I call Father and tell him I’m getting together with Mother, and he congratulates me on not saying anything that makes her hate me (not his exact words, but close). I’m not sure whether to feel proud of that or not. And he says that Dev and I seem to be doing well together, and that’s what I think about after we’ve made arrangements to meet up that evening.

  We are doing well together, and yet I’m still insisting on taking the month to make the decision. Haven’t the past four months—let alone the prior two years—taught us enough to know whether this will last long-term? What am I waiting for, what sign will tell me that Dev really is the one for me, the relationship I need to put all my energy into? I keep looking at our friends and family as though there’s a solution there: Father, Fisher and Gena, Hal and Pol, Ty and Arch and mystery future wife, Gerrard and Angela. But none of those people are me and Dev, so ultimately I come back to realizing there’s nobody I can count on but myself, and that’s where it falls apart. Because I love Dev; there’s no question about that. I’m just not sure I deserve him.

  21

  Confessions (Dev)

  Gerrard got us use of the field, of course. I find it hard to imagine that the Firebirds would deny him anything in their power to grant.

  The stipulation is that no team personnel can be around, because we’re not allowed to have contact with them. So the locker room is closed and the halls are eerie and vacant. I park in the athletes’ lot and then have to walk halfway around the field to find the one open gate, where a few other trucks are parked.

  Gerrard, Carson, and Marais are tossing around a football. Gerrard’s in a Firebirds shirt and athletic shorts, and every time he tosses a football it’s got a crispness to it, like he’s trying out for quarterback. Carson, in a plain white tee with a warmup jacket over it, lobs the football carelessly, but when he catches it, his paws are quick and sure. And Marais, the big cougar, looks like he’s tossing the football around with a couple buddies, in sweatpants and a Firebirds sweatshirt.

  “No Firebirds gear?” Marais asks as I stroll up.

  “Shop’s closed,” I say, holding out my paws. Gerrard fires a pass at me, and I try to catch it as cleanly as Carson has been, mostly succeeding. I hold the ball a moment before tossing it to the leopard. I haven’t held a football since the championship game, haven’t even been near one, and it’s a curiously intense, sharp feeling, like an alarm going off in my head. It’s warm, the surface scuffed from dozens of claws so it’s easier to grip, and the distinctive leather smell along with the surrounding field transportsz me back weeks, months, years, and I’m a football player again.

  I walk over to the group and they spread out to make space for me. “Is Zillo coming?” Gerrard asks.

  “I called him on the way over. He said he’d be here. What about the other guys?”

  Gerrard whips the ball to Marais, who bobbles it and then drops it. “Nobody else is interested yet.”

  “Give it a month,” I say.

  “Or not.”

  We chat as we wait for Zillo. Marais talks a lot about going back to New Kestle and the school he’s helping build there for the children of immigrants. I mention the art exhibit we saw with Hal and Pol, and he’s interested; he hadn’t heard about it. The others stay quiet; Carson’s not a cat of many words, and I don’t want to ask Gerrard about what’s going on with his life. So when Marais asks what the rest of us are up to, I talk about going to Yerba and looking at houses with Lee.

  “Ah,” Marais says, and grins. “Buying a house in Yerba. Maybe your agent knows something he ain’t supposed to?”

  “My agent doesn’t know anything,” I say. “At least, he’s not telling me anything. Lee’s got a job there and his job is probably more stable than mine.”

  I’m starting to feel the throwing motion as I shoot a pass to Gerrard. He gets it easily and looks at me as he tosses to Carson. “You’ll be a Firebird as long as you want to be. Least, as long as I’m here.”

  Carson, unexpectedly, fills the silence in which I can’t think of the right way to say thanks. “So you got at least two more years.”

  We laugh, and that enables me to say, “Thanks, I appreciate it. I want to stay here.”

  “Hey,” Marais says, “This guy gonna be a coach when he’s done playing, no doubt. He pretty much a coach right now.”

  “If they want me to be,” Gerrard says. “But I’m not worrying about that right now.”

  What is he worrying about, I wonder? He looks loose and untroubled, ears up, sharp muzzle keeping an eye out for each of us. With each throw, he shows the grace that makes him a premier athlete, the focus on the present moment that makes him a terrific linebacker. And, maybe, a terrible husband. I wonder briefly whether I could commit to Lee if I could think that way, if I could just understand that he’s what I want now, and to hell with the future. Then again, that kind of thinking got Gerrard into the mess he’s in now. Which,
to be fair, doesn’t seem to be bothering him.

  “Hey,” Marais says to me as Zillo walks through the gates. “You got a house in Chevali?”

  I shake my head. “Only been here less than a year.”

  “You buy your boyfriend a house first?”

  Zillo hurries up. “Sorry I’m late. The other gate was closed. I parked by you, Dev.”

  “He’s moving now,” I tell the cougar. “I’m not.”

  Carson, again, chimes in. “I bought my grandmother a house before I bought one for me. Family needs it more, take care of them first.”

  “Yeah, but—that’s your grandmother,” Marais says. “Boyfriend, it’s like if I bought a house for some girl in Hellentown gave me a few blow jobs.”

  All the rest of us go quiet, trying not to look at Gerrard. I don’t even know if his Hellentown mistress has a house or what, but it’s just too painful. Marais obviously doesn’t know about it yet; he can’t possibly be that tin-eared.

  He does, however, mistake the cause of our silence. “Hey,” he says to me, “look, I’m sorry, he’s more than a blow job, right? It was a joke. I didn’t mean it really. Hey, Zillo, what you been up to?”

  The other coyote (also in a Firebirds t-shirt—where was I when they were handing those out?) gives me a look with splayed ears and then just mutters, “Oh, just playing FBA on the box and chillin’.”

  Gerrard clears his throat. “Calisthenics first,” he says, “and then we’ll do sprints and drills. I figure a few hours. No plays this time, but a few weeks down the road we’ll start doing some basic movement and practice working as a unit.”

  “Be nice if we could get one more player to be the other outside linebacker backup.” Marais gestures around. “Me an’ Zillo can’t run plays ourselves. You guys know anyone?”

  I wonder if Polecki would want to come work out with us, but he’s a middle linebacker anyway, so probably not, even if he wasn’t going to be busy being a world champion this summer. I run through the Dragons, but I wasn’t a linebacker there so I don’t know that group well. Gerrard speaks up. “There’ll be more guys here by then. This first one is just to keep us in shape, keep us together.”

  It’s only been two weeks and we’re all still in good shape, but even on the best days, most of us couldn’t keep up with Gerrard, and he seems intent on proving that. After the jumping jacks and sprints, he does fifty pushups—only Carson and I keep pace with him—and then he points at the stairs of the stadium.

  We all hit the base of the stairs in a line, but Gerrard is first to the top. Carson’s second, and Zillo and I get up there right around the same time (he wins by a whisker, if we’re really keeping track). I think the downhill will be easier, but Gerrard doesn’t turn around; he runs across the top of the stadium, and so we all follow him, and that’s where Zillo falls back. He might be lighter than I am, but I used to be a cornerback. I’m faster on my feet.

  Still can’t catch Carson, though, and neither of us is catching Gerrard, five feet ahead of us, then ten, then twenty. He runs with a purity of concentration that makes me wonder whether he’s actually thinking about anything but the process of running, his tail streaming out for balance, his feet hitting in a precise rhythm.

  When I’m playing football, I can empty my mind that way. When I’m just running, my mind has a little time to wander back to Forester and my family. I tense when I think about Gregory and then I wonder whether he’ll even be there, and then I think that I want him there, I want to confront him about this, and then I think that putting Gregory and Lee in the same room is probably a bad idea, and by then I realize that Zillo is right behind me, so I shift my focus back to the hot concrete under my paws, the rhythm of my breathing and the flow of my muscles.

  Gerrard gets halfway around the stadium and then runs down the stairs. We all think we’re done, but he keeps going, across the field and back up the original stairs. I’m tired but not exhausted, and Carson follows, so I do too. Marais gives up, but Zillo stays with us until Gerrard completes the second circuit, standing on the logo in the middle of the field to welcome the three of us who finished with him.

  “Good workout,” he says, and pats each of us, and then, like it’s a game week and he’s going to see us again tomorrow, he heads for the gate.

  “Thanks for coming,” I say to Zillo as we follow Gerrard.

  “I’m gonna be sore tomorrow.” He stretches his arms over his head and then stops. “Better get some stretches in. But you know, this was good. Didn’t realize until I came here that I miss having workouts, a schedule, something to do.” He looks around the stadium. “This gives me somewhere to be. Yeah. I’ll keep coming.”

  Somewhere to be. “All right,” I say, and I’m back in the real world, and Gerrard is a friend who’s going through a divorce and Zillo is adrift after a breakup and I’m a tiger trying to figure out my own relationship. My legs are killing me and I should probably join Zillo in his stretches, but I want to talk to the other coyote. So I jog and catch up to him about ten feet before the gate. “Hey,” I say.

  He keeps going, so I walk alongside. “Look, I just want to say, I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Wasn’t your fault,” he says.

  “Lee’s sorry, too, and his—nobody intended for this to happen.”

  “It’s my fault,” he says calmly, keeping a paw on the gate when we reach it. He stops and waits for the other guys, panting slightly from the workout, but his ears and whiskers are up and he doesn’t appear to be at all affected by talking about his separation. “I have to lock up. You can go.”

  “Are you—I mean, are you going to go to Hellentown?”

  His eyes narrow and meet mine. “Why would I do that?”

  My tongue trips over itself. “You have—I mean, family—there’s another—you—”

  “My family is here,” he says, and whether he means it or not, he sticks out his chest so the Firebirds logo rises out at me.

  I hold up my paws. “Okay. Look, if you want to hang out—have dinner or something…”

  “I’m fine.” He locks the gate and walks over to his truck, parked nearby.

  My truck is partway around the stadium, so I stand there feeling helpless while Gerrard drives away.

  The emptiness of the stadium area feels weird. During the fall, I wouldn’t be able to get a block without running into throngs of fans, stopping to sign autographs. But now the streets are bare of fans, bare of groupies, bare of people selling drinks and snacks and drugs to the fans and groupies. I can look up along the outer wall of the stadium, the tiers of exposed ramps along which people stream before and after games, the cold dark lights at the top.

  The morning was sunny; the clouds are gathering but haven’t blocked out the sun yet. It’s pleasantly warm on my ears as I think about Gerrard and the groupies that line the street during the season. Would I really catch the eye of a tigress, maybe in a few years when Lee’s and my relationship has become routine and predictable…?

  Then I laugh, loudly enough that a guy sweeping the steps on the restaurant across the street looks up. Even if we buy a house, even if we settle into jobs and families and he settles things with his mother and I settle things with Gregory, how could our relationship ever become predictable?

  But maybe I’d want something more predictable? Maybe I’d get tired of the endless bickering, the tension over any kind of gay rights issue, the headstrong attitude…

  …the warmth, the passion, the embrace waiting for me at the apartment, the football mind, the courage?

  I shake my head and touch the wall of the stadium. I can’t see it. I can’t see how Gerrard could give up his family life. What could be that tempting? And now he doesn’t even want to go be with this coyote and cub that he threw away his family for?

  Maybe he’s hoping Angela will take him back. Maybe he wants to stick around and see his boys. Maybe he really only cares about the team.

  I hope he takes me up on the offer of dinner. I really wan
t to understand what’s going on with him. But until then I’ll have to settle for driving home and grabbing Lee and telling him I love him. Somewhere to be, Zillo says. That’s funny; I didn’t feel that sense of being adrift, and maybe it’s because I always have somewhere to be.

  But as I pull out of the lot and get on the streets to return home, the problem of Gerrard stays on my mind. Did he always mess around? Or was it something that happened because of the life? I’ve only been starting for half a year and I almost cheated on Lee. What happens in another year, or two, or five?

  I obviously can’t ask Gerrard, although he’s the person I should ask. I could talk to Lee about it, but he wouldn’t know any better than I would. And then I think that there is someone else, someone I know who used to play around and stopped. And I have an excuse to go visit Fisher.

  Lee is happy to go visit the Kingstons again. He calls Gena to make sure it’s okay, and Gena thinks it’s a great idea. She’s doing fine, but she says Fisher would really appreciate the company. So we head over there and Lee goes into the living room to talk to Gena. I head out to where Fisher’s sitting on the patio, right where I left him last time.

  Trees rustle around the open brick patio, and the grass is brown in front of us, which is really the only reminder that it’s winter. A faded, forlorn volleyball, half-deflated, lies in the scrub under the trees, a pale white against the sandy beige of the ground; otherwise the yard is pretty well kept. Only two chairs sit together on the patio, so I take the empty one next to Fisher. His tail curls and his mouth twitches; he looks at least somewhat pleased to see me. He doesn’t pick up his whiteboard, but he watches me as I sit down.

  A couple glasses half-full of some greenish-brown slop sit with dirty straws on the side table near where his paw rests. The bandages around his jaw are dirtier now, or duller with the sun now hidden by the clouds, and I try not to look at them. “So, how you been?” I ask.

  He rolls his eyes and gestures at the glasses. Then he waves a paw at me, and his eyes rise in a question.