The Last Whistle

by Jamie Bennett

  “Do you? I can’t imagine that you do. You’re like an open book.”

  I looked down at my lap. “You mean that I blurt stuff out without thinking, and I do, but I can also keep secrets.”

  “Hallie?”

  I looked up, across the table at Gunnar tilting his head a little. “What are your secrets?” I asked before he could voice the question I saw on his face. “What were you trying to sneak past your sisters that they always caught you at?”

  He laughed then. “How much time I spent playing video games, how much candy and pop I was buying without our mom knowing, the girls I was seeing.”

  “Girls?”

  “I always had an interest,” he said, and laughed again. “My sisters made it their lives’ missions to ferret out who my girlfriends were and make sure that they were good enough for me.” He shook his head. “According to them, no one is.”

  “Who would be?” I asked aloud. His girlfriend would have to be all the things he was: gigantically attractive, successful in her work, and kind to other people. Oh! I had a sudden thought. Gaby. Gunnar and Gaby would be perfect for each other. Roiling jealousy filled me.

  “Lots of women are good enough,” Gunnar was saying above my thoughts. “I’ve had plenty of great girlfriends.”

  I was sure that he had.

  “What about you?”

  “Me? Are you asking if I’m with someone? No,” I responded. “I went out once or twice in Chicago, but I’ve been busy since I came home.”

  “You made time to eat with me,” he pointed out. “I’m glad you actually ate your food, too.”

  I looked at my empty plate.

  “I can’t stand when women don’t eat,” Gunnar explained. “My sister Grete never would, like the guy she was out with wouldn’t guess that she needed calories to survive or something, and then she’d come home and clean out the refrigerator. I always told her how dumb that was.”

  Then maybe he wouldn’t like Gaby. I had never seen her actually consume very much. “I eat plenty,” I answered. There was no way to miss that fact if he looked at my figure. I was sturdy, as the woman working at the diner had pointed out when she decided that I would be able to handle the deep fryer. I wondered if they were still looking to hire there, and if so, if they had some less-dangerous positions available now that the teenagers were heading back to school.

  “We should go out again.”

  My head snapped up. “Huh?”

  “I like being with you. You remind me of my sisters,” Gunnar told me, smiling.

  That was close to the worst thing that anyone had ever said to me. My mouth dropped open. “I do?” I croaked.

  “They tell me like it is and they don’t fawn over the fact that I play football. It’s not like I’m solving some kind of global crisis, but people can act like I am. I get embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t like the attention very much. You don’t care at all and it’s easy to be around someone who isn’t interested in anything more than being, you know, friendly.” His smile was breathtaking. “Neighborly, right?”

  “Right,” I managed to say. “I’ve noticed that you don’t care for the attention from fans. And I’m certainly not a groupie.” My voice sounded like a frog with laryngitis, but Gunnar didn’t seem to realize the impact of his words on me.

  “Do you want dessert?” he asked casually, squinting through the darkness at the list on the table. I shook my head, and he didn’t, either, so we left slowly as he kept his long stride measured to accommodate my limp.

  He sighed deeply when we got closer to our street, and when I jumped at the sound, he laughed. “I don’t want to go home,” he explained. “I wanted to make a few changes, like taking out that jacuzzi from my bedroom, and now…what did you call my house? A lotus pod?”

  I nodded. “That’s what it looks like, but I swear it’s going to be great. I looked at the plans today with your contractor and he gave me a tour and I can see how it’s going to turn out.”

  “He showed you around the construction site?”

  “I asked him to. I’ve been reading a lot about architecture and I need to know about construction, too, to fix my own house. I had a lot of questions for him. It was important to get some first-hand information outside of books, although those are always my first resource.”

  “What did your books say about safety restraints while you’re up on a roof?”

  “I’ve been learning about more than just roof repairs,” I said. “I have a lot of football books, too.” I told him about What Ho, the Gridiron! and he thought he could recommend something of more recent vintage.

  “I think the rules have changed since that was written. For example, we don’t play both offense and defense now.” He laughed again, which he had been doing a lot this evening. “You should come to a game and learn first-hand, like you said. The next homestand is our season opener. I can get you a pair of tickets.”

  “Really? Then my friend Gaby could come with me. She’s a huge fan.” I felt another swell of jealousy even as I said her name. What was wrong with me? “I’d love to get a chance to see you play in your last season.”

  Gunnar pushed hard on the brake and the car jerked to a stop in front of my house. “What are you talking about?” he asked me. His voice was harsh and angry.

  “I just…aren’t you going to retire? From some of the things you’ve said, that’s what I thought.”

  “I never said that to you. I never said anything about that!”

  “But…” I trailed off. “It’s just what I assumed. I guess I was wrong.”

  Gunnar stared hard at my cottage, but I didn’t think he really saw it. “I didn’t realize I was dropping hints. You’re right,” he said finally. “No, you’re exactly right. This will be my last year with the Woodsmen, my last year playing football. I haven’t told anyone yet, not anyone on the team or even my agent. No one can find out about this without my friends, my teammates, and my coaches knowing first and I’m not ready to say it yet. I don’t want them to know until we win the championship. I would be a big distraction.”

  “I can keep secrets,” I told him. “You think I’m an open book but I won’t tell anyone. I really won’t.”

  He looked over at me, clearly doubtful. “I swear,” I said, my voice loud in the quiet car.

  “Swear?” He held up his pinkie, and I hooked mine around it.

  “Swear,” I told him. I looked at our fingers locked together; his, long and tan, mine four sizes smaller, with a cut on my knuckle and the milky-white skin that refused to do anything but burn.

  Gunnar squeezed slightly and looked into my eyes, still not sure of me, but I knew that I would show him.

  ∞

  “So, this is it.”

  “Is it?” I responded vaguely. My mind was elsewhere. I had accepted Gunnar’s offer on the store that morning, and it was all I could seem to think about. At every step along the way of putting it up for sale, I had told myself that it was finally over. But now my signature was on the papers that Trista had dropped off, and all we had to do was the closing. Then it would be finally and irrevocably gone.

  “Hello! I’m talking to you. Am I not the client here?” Marley demanded.

  I looked up from the learning center’s laptop, where I had been perusing her possible coursework for next year, depending on if she passed the summer school classes. “This is it?” I repeated. “Are you saying that you aren’t going to come back here in the fall?”

  “I meant that you probably won’t. Today is probably your last day. Right?” She swiped over the screen of her phone and frowned.

  “No phone,” I said automatically and she put it down. “We have a week off and then I’ll be back to help you with your sophomore year,” I said, ignoring the guilty pang that maybe no, I wouldn’t, not if my phone interview from that morning had gone as well as I thought it had.

  Marley played with a pencil now, picking off the eraser so that it would be useless. “Yeah, ok.” She pointed to the la
ptop. “You’re looking at that stuff because you think I passed the summer school classes and I can do tenth grade. Right?”

  “I think you did,” I said cautiously. “It seemed like you were studying at home, too. What’s your opinion?”

  She shrugged a little, not very assured, and I really, really hoped she had passed. Not just for her, but for me to hold on to this job.

  It was very quiet in the learning center today. “Where is everyone?” I asked, looking at the empty tables surrounding us.

  “They went out to celebrate since it’s the last day of the summer session. Like, to get ice cream, or whatever. We should go, too.”

  I was immediately suspicious. The blue rules binder that Linda, my boss, had given me specifically forbid doing outside activities with the students. “Really?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Really,” she answered. I tried to read her face, staring at her intently, because I had no idea if she was lying or not. “Go ask Linda if you don’t believe me!” she flared up.

  Linda was at the oral surgeon, as I had found out when I went to borrow the laptop. “If we were allowed to leave, why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked. None of the other teachers, to whom I sometimes said hello, had mentioned it.

  “It’s, like, something that everyone just knows. Like how everyone knows that you’re totally poor.”

  “They do? I’m not!”

  Another shrug. “You dress like you are,” she told me. “Maybe they didn’t mention it to you because they thought you couldn’t afford ice cream.”

  I ground my teeth. “Why didn’t you say that we were allowed to go out today?” I challenged her. “I would think you’d have been the first to volunteer that information.”

  Marley stared at me for a moment before returning her gaze to her phone. “I didn’t think you’d want to go with me,” she said softly.

  I felt extremely uncomfortable. I had been trying hard to disguise my feelings, but it wasn’t that I didn’t like her. “No, I don’t…we have a difficult time together,” I tried to explain. “We aren’t supposed to be friends. You’re supposed to learn from me.”

  “Like, how to dress?” She looked pointedly at my grandpa’s old shirt, the sleeves rolled up in thick rings around my wrists. I’d wanted to cover the bruises on my arms that I’d gotten with I took down the curtains to wash and the rod in my bedroom had fallen on me and I’d fallen into the bureau. I’d gone on a slight cleaning spree and had received a few knocks while I did it.

  I sighed, remembering how, weeks before, Linda had suggested that I could be an inspiration for Marley. “No, I probably don’t have much to teach about how to dress. I meant school stuff.”

  She was still staring at my shirt like it smelled bad. “You could wear clothes that aren’t a thousand years old and disgusting,” she said. “That’s why people think you’re so poor, you know. That, and also the beater you drive.”

  “Yes, I get it. Not a role model.” I rubbed my hands together. My skin was so dry from all the washing I had done that it was starting to crack and hurt. But maybe I’d be moving on, from the dirty cottage and from this job where Marley was learning nothing except what not to wear. Maybe the interview this morning would pay off, and I’d get the position in San Diego. I opened a new window on the laptop and started to look at apartment rentals there.

  Marley watched me, thankfully silent and not insulting me for a brief period. “I do think I passed my classes,” she suddenly announced. “I did study at home. And you explained that shi—stuff ok, so I understood it.”

  “Really?” I asked hopefully. “I really helped you?”

  “None of it was that hard anyway,” she said, looking at her phone. “I could have understood it on my own.”

  Oh.

  “But yeah, you helped,” she conceded. She typed and music blared in the quiet room.

  I stood up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “A walk?” she asked doubtfully. “Aren’t you still gimpy?”

  I hadn’t hidden that as well as I’d thought. “My ankle is totally better,” I said, because it mostly was. I peered through the tinted window. “Let’s go. We can walk on the bike path.” I was very surprised that when I went toward the door, she followed me.

  Marley squinted at the fall sun like it was foreign to her as we started off. “On your left!” a man hollered, and I moved obediently out of the way as he rode past.

  “I hate bikers,” she said conversationally. “I wish I had a stick to put through his spokes.”

  Charming.

  “My brother hated them too. He used to swerve at them in his car.”

  They were a family of sociopaths. “Is your brother still in the service?” I asked, wondering if he had access to weapons.

  “No. Bo died three years ago.”

  “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry,” I told her.

  She shrugged and looked up at the trees. “Yeah.”

  I looked closely and realized what she was doing: holding in the tears. Sympathy welled up inside me, making them come to my own eyes, too. I touched her shoulder. “I’m really sorry about your brother,” I said again. “I’ve lost people too, and if you want to talk about it, I’m right here.”

  “I can see you,” she snapped back. “I’m not blind!” But then she nodded. “Ok, yeah.”

  We walked along the path together for a while, not saying very much besides me warning her to watch out for other bikers and to put down the stick, but I was there, and I was glad that she knew it.

  Chapter 8

  The noise, the crowds, the excitement. The nachos. I ate another cheese-covered chip and fully understood why people liked to go to Woodsmen games.

  Gaby had a huge smile on her face. “Isn’t this amazing?” she yelled at me over the roar as the team entered the stadium, and I nodded back, feeling myself smile. This was amazing. And when I saw Gunnar jogging toward the sidelines, I started to yell just as loudly as everyone else.

  Gaby and I had met up in the parking lot to go tailgating before coming inside, because her friends were all here, of course. A lot of them had season tickets, or at least went to as many games as they could. I’d hung back some as they ate and drank and talked but I managed not to blurt out anything offensive, and I also tried to smile rather than scowling people away as maybe I sometimes did. Often did. I hadn’t experienced the level of fun that she had while hanging out with them, but it also hadn’t been terrible. Tolerable, was more the word. Then we had streamed into the stadium with the rest of the crowd…and wow. This was much, much better than the high school games I had forced myself to attend.

  “Do you know what’s happening now?” Gaby asked me, her mouth close to my ear. “Do you understand everything?”

  I gave her a thumbs up. The week before, I’d gotten a box delivered and it was full of books about football, about strategy and game planning, about the positions and the players who held them, about rules and statistics. I had looked at every volume, then shamed myself by hugging them. They were from Gunnar—he had sent me books. I reminded myself sternly that it was a neighborly gesture, because we were neighbors, and that was all. I’d read every one cover to cover, and now, despite a lack of prior eyewitness experience, I considered myself a bit of a football expert.

  Then, a few days after the books, there had been an envelope propped on my porch, and inside were two tickets to the first regular season game. I had studied my name scrawled on the outside of the envelope and told myself that it wasn’t a big deal that he’d remembered and then gone out of his way to hand deliver tickets to me. Then I’d hugged them, too.

  I watched Gunnar walk out to the fifty-yard line with the other team captains to flip a coin for possession, and for the rest of the game, Gaby nudged me hard every time the ball came anywhere near him. She really didn’t have to. My eyes were on him the whole time he was out on the field, and most of the time he was off it, too. I watched him on the bench, talking to his teammates, talking to the coach. I watched to
see if he was moving gingerly or if the trainers went near him, but everything seemed fine. He had played well in the last preseason game, too, but when I’d worked out some probability charts, I found really disturbing odds about the possibility of injury for a starting right tackle in the United Football Confederation. The corresponding recovery times were equally unsettling. So I kept my fingers crossed inside my sleeve for just in case.

  “How have you been?” I asked Gaby during halftime. I stood up to stretch out some of the aches I’d acquired the day before when I’d had a small problem exiting my car. And my car was pretty high off the ground. “I haven’t seen you for a while,” I added casually. We had been in touch about the pending sale of the store, but our texts and calls had all been business related and we hadn’t talked about anything important, romance-wise. I hadn’t actually seen her since I’d stumbled onto her outing with the silver fox guy, which I reminded myself not to mention now. I firmly believed that Gunnar was right, and that I shouldn’t bother her about private things. Even if I really wanted to know, and was having a very large problem keeping the words inside my mouth.

  Gaby’s eyes were on the Woodsmen cheerleaders as they started a dance routine. “Aren’t they great?” she answered. “Really talented. Um, I’ve been busy, but fine. You?”

  “Fine,” I agreed. Both of us studied the field.

  She turned to me with a funny, half-smile. “Ok, I’m bad at lying and I can’t pretend like this. I know you saw me at the restaurant, Hal. It’s ok, you can say it,” she told me. “I spotted you right away when you came in with Gunnar. You guys are both a little hard to miss.” She mimicked the height and breadth of him with her hands, then tilted her chin toward my hair to indicate what made me stand out, in case I wasn’t aware that it looked like an emergency flare was alit on my head. “I was really excited to see the two of you together,” she mentioned. “What was that about?”

  “He just asked me go because he was hungry after I got mad at him about the bid on the bookstore,” I dismissed this. “It didn’t mean anything.”