Over Time

by Kyell Gold

  “No.” Hal pauses again. “Look, I’m gonna tell you this in confidence because you’re a friend and I think you should know. I don’t think it’s anything you can take action on, but…you should know, that’s all. If you don’t want to tell Lee, I’ll understand.”

  “Lion Christ, Hal, what happened? Did Fisher murder someone?” I try to make it jokey, but it falls flat.

  “No. He was a good interview. I got a lot of stuff out of him about his concussions, about the way all the teams handled it—don’t worry, I ain’t gonna nail the Firebirds on anything, this is bigger than them. I got to experience his memory loss and include that as part of the article, I talked to Gena, got her perspective…it’s good stuff. Er—useful stuff, I mean.”

  “Okay.” None of that seems relevant to his tone.

  “It was toward the beginning of the interview. I asked him about retiring, and he said something like, ‘I’d still be playing if it wasn’t for that goddamned Leroy.’ I asked who Leroy was—”

  “His former agent.”

  “Yeah, Gena told me that later.” Hal breathes in again. “But Fisher just said, ‘Leroy’s the asshole. He said it’d be okay. He said I’d heal faster, said nobody would care about it.’”

  The significance hits me right away. “Holy shit. So it was Leroy who got him the stuff?” And then I can’t remember whether Hal knew about the serum, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t. “I mean, something illegal to make him heal faster?”

  “Don’t worry,” the swift fox drawls. “That ain’t the hornets’ nest I’m pokin’ at. Don’t know what it was, and I’m assuming you don’t know nothin’ about it either.”

  “Right.” My heart slows. “But it was Leroy?”

  “We-ell.” Hal draws the word out. “I asked Gena about that. Not in so many words, mind you, just asked the last time Fisher talked to Leroy.”

  Another possibility is taking shape in my mind, the way I can see a play developing on the field, and I have the same kind of dread I have when I see a play that we’re not ready for, that I’m not in the right position for. “He got the names of his agents mixed up when I was there last week.”

  “Yeah. Gena went and got his phone, and Leroy’s number ain’t even in it. I just got off the phone with Leroy and he says he ain’t talked to Fisher in more years’n he can remember. Might be lying, of course. If there’s illegal stuff involved, he probably would be. But he didn’t feel like he was worried about talking to a reporter.”

  “Shit.” I think about Damian’s smooth voice, his assured manner, his confidence in telling me he would do whatever needed to be done for my career.

  “Like I said. I don’t think you can do squat about it. But thought you’d like to know.”

  Would I want to do anything? Damian makes me feel so much better about my career than Ogleby did. I know I have other choices, other agents I could call, agents who have called or written me in the last few months, but how do I know whether any of them would be better? “You think there’s any danger he’ll be arrested or something?”

  “Always that danger if you’re into something illegal.” Hal sounds amused. “Sorta what that means, you know? But if you’re worried about Fisher letting something slip…I don’t think his testimony’d be worth much until he’s over the concussion.” He stops long enough to let us both wonder whether that will ever happen. “But if your guy’s doing that with Fisher, he’s doing it with other players, and yeah. Something to be prepared for, I guess.”

  “All right. Thanks for the heads up.” I break out of my self-concern for a moment. “You gave Fisher the support group number? Is he going to go?”

  “I think so. Gena’s going to make him, and Cara’s on board with it.”

  “Cara’s the nurse?”

  “Ayup.” When I don’t say anything, he goes on. “Don’t know if this’ll make you feel better, but in one of his lucid periods, I asked him whether he regretted it. If he would change it, would go back and not play football.”

  Over the trees, the top of the new stadium shines in the sunset light. I think about all the boys who can’t wait to have their turn on the field there. “What’d he say?”

  “He said, ‘What would I have done? I’d be working construction like my dad. We wouldn’t be living here. We wouldn’t have the championships. No, I don’t like the ending, but I wouldn’t change the story.’”

  “Not all players end up like him, right?”

  “Right.” He answers quickly. “Then he asked me not to tell Gena that he said that. Didn’t think she’d understand. I don’t know if he remembered I’m writing an article, but…” I can almost see his shrug. “Eh, I’ll talk to her later. I think she’ll understand better than he thinks she will.”

  “I think so too. I don’t know her that well, but…yeah, I think so.”

  “So I asked if he would change that last game, if he’d sit out the championship, all other things being the same.”

  Of course he wouldn’t, I want to say, and Hal goes on, affirming that I know my friend well. “He said no. He said odds were he wouldn’t get hit again in that game, and it was just a fluke. He thinks if he played the whole game, the Firebirds mighta won, and I couldn’t say no to that.” He sighs. “Then he started talking ’bout the Rocs again.”

  It’s sad, but I’m glad Fisher still has those championship memories. And I know he loved those years and that he loved the time he spent with me, too, even if it was just one year that he has trouble remembering. That doesn’t change the experience we both had.

  I thank Hal and hang up, walking through campus to a small collection of restaurants that’s grown two new ones in the two years since I left. I think about Fisher and what’ll happen if in fifteen years that’s me, and Lee’s playing Gena’s role, fretting, mourning the loss of the partner he knew.

  But Fisher still loves Gena, and he still knows me. He’s still the same person. A lot of the anger issues might come down to using the serum, and I’ll never do that. Never. Even if Damian says it’ll miraculously cure me, add three years to my career. He says I can make forty-five, sixty, seventy million—who needs more than that?

  Though now I wonder if that includes years added by taking illegal drugs. Shit, what am I getting myself into with this guy? What if he’s busted and all of his clients fall under suspicion?

  I’m being paranoid, I tell myself. When was the last time anyone cared about performance enhancing drugs in football? This isn’t baseball, for fuck’s sake, where reporters write huge long articles about how horrible it is that players tainted the game. Here, you get caught doing steroids, you’re out four games and then you’re back. Yeah, that serum shit is worse, would probably make some headlines, but I’m not doing it and nobody will ever be able to prove I’m doing it.

  I don’t have to decide about Damian right now. Of course I’ll tell Lee, and he’ll help me figure out what to do the way he always does, the way he’ll help me with decisions—and I’ll help him—through the rest of our lives.

  The rest of our lives. As I think that, it feels right. Because if I am left with only the best memories of my playing days, I realize, I’ll want him to be in them.

  I’d been thinking that it wouldn’t be fair to Lee to saddle him with a broken-down player in fifteen or twenty years, to put him through what Gena’s going through now. I’d been worried that committing to me now isn’t fair to him. But what Hal said rings true to me. Gena would understand Fisher’s answer. She knows how much football meant to him. And Lee knows how much it means to me.

  We share more than just football, too. For so many years we had only each other, afraid of what exposure of our relationship would bring. I look back and forth at the students I pass, snow crunching under our paws. How many of them are gay? How many of them are closeted like Jason, worried about how their sexuality will hurt their career? How many are like I was, wondering why sleeping with girls isn’t quite as exciting as their friends say it is? How many will be helped by my
appearing here to tell people it’s okay?

  It feels very noble. And yet I know that when June rolls around, my mind will be one hundred percent back on football, on trying to get back to that championship game and win it this time. When I’m on break, like now, it’s easy to think about that kit I met at the Chevali airport, about that poor bear who killed himself, about Jason and his boyfriend and all the other people I don’t know. But I know it won’t last.

  Lee probably knows that too. Maybe that’s why he’s been so supportive and yet subdued, not fiery as he often is about the subject. Enjoy the time while it lasts, I guess, and don’t push me to do more.

  So am I staying with him just because it’s easy (ha)? No, I’m pretty sure I’m not. For one thing, it’s not easy, but that’s okay. Like Fisher said, nothing worth doing is. The fact is, I don’t really want anyone else, and I don’t want him to want anyone else. But he’s the one who insisted on this month, which makes me wonder if he’s talking himself into being with me.

  How easy would it be for him to find another boyfriend, one who cared about gay rights and didn’t put life on hold for two thirds of the year? Look at him, he walked into the student union for two minutes and came out with a gay guy. A committed one, but whatever. And he’s going to that meeting tonight, and he has all his friends from the old days. If he wanted someone else, if he’s trying to make me prove that I’m the one for him, then what have I done in the last two weeks?

  More importantly, what more can I do?

  26

  Old Home (Lee)

  Father and I talk on the way to the house about what to expect. I tell him about the last conversation I had with her, and he tells me that he’s talked to her too.

  “She’s certainly feeling differently,” he says, “but you should still watch what you say.”

  “Father,” I say, “I am always watching what I say.”

  He shakes his head. “Then you should watch what you say and also stop yourself from saying certain things before you say them.”

  “We’ll be fine.” I slouch back in the seat and stare ahead at the snow-covered road. “How did the rest of your meetings go?”

  “Fine.” He taps the steering wheel. “Nobody else was sending money to their mistress without his wife’s knowledge. Any news on him, by the way?”

  “Dev says he’s putting his mind completely into football. He wasn’t even going to go to Hellentown to visit his other family.”

  “Sometimes that’s the choice you make.”

  I’ve thought about it a little since Dev told me Gerrard’s attitude. “I wonder if he even cares about that family.”

  “Enough to send them money and lose his legal family.” Father shakes his head. “I still feel bad about that. I told Angela that she should consider doing what she can to make sure the cubs have a father.”

  “Huh.” I turn and look at him. Wonder if his own divorce affected that. “What did she say?”

  “She said her brother is going to come stay with them for a bit.”

  I chuckle. “She has an unmarried brother?”

  “Divorced.”

  “Well, not everyone can be gay.” I smile. “So an uncle is an okay substitute for a father?”

  “For some people.” He looks at me.

  “Hey,” I say, “I wanted Uncle Roger to adopt me because you threatened to cut my tail off and sell me to the gypsies.”

  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything about cutting your tail off. But you ruined an expensive suit.”

  I flatten my ears. “I was ten. How was I supposed to know that chocolate syrup doesn’t come out? I was playing…” I pause. “What was I playing?”

  “Hamlet, I think.” He takes a turn slowly in the snow and looks over his glasses at me. “You had just been stabbed by Laertes.”

  “I was playing Hamlet at ten? Oh, we saw the movie, didn’t we? Why was I using chocolate syrup?”

  “That one you’ll have to answer. I assume your mother hid the ketchup.”

  I shake my head. “I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life.”

  “Speaking of which, how are things with you and Devlin?”

  “You think he’s one of the stupid things I’ve done?” My tail bristles.

  “No; I think he’s one of the people who’s suffered from the stupid things you’ve done. But also one of the people who’s benefited from the good things, so smooth your tail down and don’t give me that attitude. You guys were apart for a while and now you’re together. It seemed to be going well at our dinner in Chevali, but I didn’t get to talk to you there. So…is it?”

  It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for the last two weeks, and especially now that we’re here in Forester and the month I’d given us is half over. More than half over; in about ten days I’m going to have to start getting to work on the players on Yerba’s board, packing to go to the combine, moving into a new place… “I think they’re going well,” I say, checking the mail on my phone. “The agent put in our offer on the house. No word back yet. She said we might hear tomorrow or Tuesday.”

  “Good. I hope you get it.”

  “It’ll be a good investment for Dev, if nothing else.” I sigh. “I don’t know what to think. I keep thinking I’m insane for putting off a decision, for considering we might be better apart, but then I think maybe I’m thinking with my—you know, not my brain. I mean, we’d barely been living together a month when I snuck out in the middle of the night after having a huge fight.” A fight where he was trying really hard to be understanding and I couldn’t tell him what was bothering me; that might be the worst part of it.

  “You didn’t tell me you snuck out in the middle of the night.” We turn onto less-plowed streets and skid slightly; Father corrects automatically and keeps going. “I would’ve expected you to storm out after a screaming match.”

  “I can’t do that to Dev,” I say. “I’ve walked out on him twice, once because I hurt him, and once because I was afraid I was going to hurt him. I wasn’t ever yelling at him.”

  We go a little farther down the road in silence, and then Father says, “Does that tell you something?”

  “Besides the fact that I don’t want to yell at him?” Well, I have yelled at him a couple times, I guess, but never as angrily as I did at Mother a few blocks from where we are now. “I don’t generally yell.”

  “You’re worried about hurting him.”

  “Right. I’d sort of figured that out.”

  He sighs. “It means you care. There are a lot of people you don’t care about hurting. Not that,” he holds up a paw, “you go around hurting people. But you often say things, and your tongue is pretty sharp. You get that from your mother, by the way.”

  I laugh. “You’ve said some sharp things too. The point is, is it good that I’m worried about hurting him or bad because I think I have the capacity to? Do I want a relationship where I’m constantly second-guessing myself?”

  Father shakes his head. “If you find a relationship where you’re not, then tell me.”

  “There was Misha.” I wonder if the arctic fox will be at the meeting tonight.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I dated him for a year in college. He graduated and we broke up rather than try to keep going out long distance. I didn’t really worry about what I was saying around him because we were mostly on the same page.”

  We stop at a red light. Down the road, semi-anonymous in the row of houses but always distinctive to me, is Mother’s house—that’s how I have to think of it now. Father flicks his ears toward me as the light turns and we crunch forward over the pressed snow. “And why not try to keep going out long distance?”

  “I don’t know.” I push my memory back into the mists of Before Dev. “There were other guys in FLAG, he was moving back home to Mt. Royal…it didn’t seem worth it.” Plus, not as discussable with Father, Misha and I were both bottoms, and while the sex was good, neither of us was very enthusiastic about topping. There was
that one time when we picked up a guy who did both of us…I stop that train of thought and try to adjust my pants discreetly.

  “You’re moving to Yerba and Dev’s staying in Chevali. And you made it work long distance for years. Maybe with Misha you didn’t challenge each other. Are you good for each other?”

  “That’s not the point.” Misha and I did challenge each other, but again, not in ways I can discuss with Father.

  “So…yes?”

  I nod. “We are. I really believe we are.”

  “Then is it worth trying to make that work?”

  I reach down and pick up the end of my tail and hold it in my lap. “It’s not that simple,” I say, but I follow that up with a question to myself: Isn’t it?

  “All right,” he says as we pull in to Mother’s driveway. “I’m glad you’re at least making an effort to make this work.”

  Mother doesn’t have things boxed this time, although I do catch a glimpse of empty boxes in the hallway upstairs. She greets us at the door in a pair of jeans and a red sweater. “I was cleaning,” she says, picking at dust clumps on the arms of the sweater. “Hello, Wiley.”

  “Hi, Mother.” I clear my throat, trying to shake the memory of the last time I saw her. It’s been a month and a half and I already know the bad part is behind us, so I don’t feel any tension, only a kind of emptiness that I didn’t expect. The house is so familiar and yet different, even the scent. No matter how often we’d redecorated in the past, the scent had always been the three of us, but now as I stand in the foyer and breathe in, it’s her and nobody else. There’s a roasting chicken, but I’m sure it’s not a permanent resident.

  At least there’s no church-going otter. Mother stands alone in the hallway and keeps her muzzle lifted so that her eyes meet mine and Father’s. “Do you want to go look at the room before or after dinner?”

  “How long until dinner’s ready?” Father asks.

  By the smell, I’d say probably about twenty minutes, and when Mother confirms that, I say, “Let’s do it after.”