Sore and breathing hard, Quinn struggled to shower and shave, pausing every once and a while to rest. Toweling off, he felt a little wetness in the crack of his butt—his virgin blood.
Quinn took his time with his appearance, like the driver who doesn't want anyone to know he's drunk so he drives too slowly. It was no use.
Leaning against the wall in the elevator—he was glad to ride down alone—he willed himself across the lobby, went outside and had the valet hail a cab.
"Take me to the nearest hospital," Quinn told the driver.
Inside, all he had to say was, "I'm having trouble breathing." There were no forms, no questions about insurance. Just a gurney and people stripping away his clothes with an urgency that Mal and Vienne might've envied.
His six-pack laid bare, electrodes, monitors: He thought one said "Eighty over forty." A doctor leaned over him—blond, handsome, smiling.
"I'm Dr. Matthew Harrington. It's OK. You're not having a heart attack." Hand on his shoulder—compassionate, brotherly. "You're going to be all right."
"You're going to be all right"—another hospital, another doctor, comforting his younger self screaming in Bahasa for Aunt Lena.
He shut out the image—remembering the words of T.S. Eliot, memorized in a Stanford English class, as he drifted off:
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
Nine
When Quinn woke, he thought for a moment he was in Jakarta again. The TV quietly carried the nature sounds and images that hospitals used to try to soothe—check that, control—patients. As his eyes adjusted to the darkened, antiseptic room—drawn curtains and blinds, monitors, metal beds—the old dread rose and leveled off. Then he flipped the channel, and all hell broke loose.
"Sources close to the New York Templars tell me that they'll discipline quarterback Quinn Novak for failing to return to New York after Sunday's loss to the Philadelphia Quakers," Ric Wynters was intoning. "Novak was believed to have been partying with a blonde and friends after the defeat. I spoke just moments ago with Coach Smalley, who was livid, just livid about his MIA star. Here's what the coach had to say."
"Well, it shows you the gutlessness of the guy and the contempt he has for the fans, the media, the whole organization that he couldn't bother to face the music with us in New York."
Quinn reached for his cell. But his clothes and phone weren't there. He rang for the nurse.
"Do you know where my cell is?" he asked.
"I wouldn't worry about that," she said, as if addressing a child. "You need to stay quiet and rest."
When she left, he reached for the phone by the bed, despite a stabbing pain in his side.
"Hello."
"Brenna, it's Quinn," he said, breathless.
"Quinn, thank God. The whole town's looking for you. I thought the Small One would blow a gasket at the press conference. Where the hell are you?"
"I'm still in Philly. Brenna, listen: Smalley, Ric Wynters, they're bullshit. The blonde is my aunt and I wasn't out with her. I don't even know where she is."
He almost said, "I thought she was the one knocking on my door early Monday morning," but caught himself.
"I'm in the hospital. I think I busted some ribs. But that's not the point. I had the team's permission. Check with Jeff."
"I will. What do you need?"
"Nothing except to set the record straight. I'll be fine. I was just uncomfortable after the game, stayed the night in Philly, and when I woke up, I couldn't breathe very well. Can you get the word out?"
"I'm on it. Feel better, and don't worry about a thing."
When Quinn was finally able to secure his phone from Nurse Ratched, he checked his Twitter account.
"Quinn's in hosp. Busted ribs," Brenna tweeted. "GM OK'ed Philly stay. More at nyrecord.com/red zone."
The next thing Quinn knew, his room was flooded with teddy bears, flowers, balloons, and cards from well-wishers, and he couldn't breathe for a whole different reason. He paged the nurse and asked that the lot be distributed to the pediatric, geriatric, and maternity wards.
As usual, the media seemed to know more about his condition than he did.
"OK," Dr. Matthew Harrington was saying on the International News Network (INN). "I'm not going to be holding these chitchats daily, only when there's real info. Mr. Novak is alert, stable, and in good spirits. He thanks everyone for his concern and good wishes. But as his doctor, I have ordered complete rest for the patient and no visitors. He was admitted with a couple of broken ribs, one of which punctured his left lung. And it's this that we're most concerned with."
Yikes. Had Dr. Matthew told him all this? Probably, and just as likely he didn't remember.
"So we're going to have to keep a lid on things while he heals. That's all for now, ladies and gentlemen. I'll be back if and when there's news."
Quinn surfed the tube, stopping at INN's sister station, Sports News Network.
"We won't be disciplining anyone," Jeff Sylvan was saying. "Quinn had my permission, and, looking back on it, it was the right decision. Who knows what might've happened had he not rested the night in Philly and sought medical treatment the next day."
"But Jeff," Ric Wynters spoke up, "did he have Coach Smalley's permission?"
"Coach Smalley's permission, my permission, Mr. Jefferson's permission, he had permission from someone in charge," Sylvan snapped. "He didn't have to get it in triplicate. This isn't the IRS."
"The point is I should've been informed, and I wasn't," Smalley countered at a later news conference. "Yes, we're all part of the same team. And last time I checked, there was no 'I' in team."
No, but there is in egomaniac, Quinn thought.
So escalated the war of words between Sylvan and Smalley that Quinn had not so innocently started. It was true that he had gone over Smalley's head to Sylvan, in part to annoy him. But he was also certain that Smalley would've said "No" to his request to stay overnight in Philly and given him the usual long song-and-dance about what a prima donna he was, how inflexible he was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Smalley always finished these diatribes behind closed doors with this flourish:
"You mustn't take this personally."
No, of course not. Because it wasn't meant personally, right? Quinn thought, disgusted.
As opposed to the time when some reporter for Sportin' Life magazine had done a less than flattering profile on Smalley and the missus.
"You're dead to me, you hear?" he shouted into the phone, presumably at the reporter. "Dead to me."
"We should all be so lucky," Derrick said to Quinn as Smalley's voice exploded from his office. "Never to hear his fat-ass mouth again, God, that would be like you stopped hitting your head against a wall."
Instead, Derrick and the rest of the Temps had been condemned to that special circle of Hell known as Smalleyville. Still, Quinn was ashamed of himself. His cross wasn't particularly heavy. He thought of the men and women in Jakarta who worked the tin shacks clustered on the corners of the streets bearing the McMansions that resembled the 10,000 block on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard, huddling under palm fronds in the rainy season as they displayed their shiny goods.
"I'd like a New Year's horn, Sydney," Quinn's child self asked as they drove by.
"Would you also like tuberculosis?" Sydney replied by way of "No."
He remembered the women in the coolie hats on the beaches with their pearls for sale and their patter, the merchants who stroked your arms and your ego on the streets of Kuta in Bali.
"Get your hands off me," Chandler would say.
"Try to relax, Chan," Sydney would offer. "They have to make their rupiah now, because for them now is all there is."
In Kuta, watches and wallets weren't the only things for sale. At night, Quinn had heard, the Kuta Cowboys plied their trade on the public beaches, searching for rich
, lonely European women.
"You're excused from the table," Sydney would say whenever that conversation arose. And Quinn would blush in shame.
Better to be a whore honestly, Quinn thought now, than merely to be treated like one.
It could be worse. He remembered a beggar woman beating her stumps against the window of his family’s car near the statue of Prometheus as he and Sumarti waited for the rare traffic light.
Quinn went to open the window to give her some of his allowance.
"No, no, young master," Sumarti said, checking that the windows were shut and the doors locked as they sped off.
I see you. I will always see you, Quinn thought then as he turned back in his seat and gazed at a flitting butterfly. But not before he watched her hobble away undaunted, patiently waiting for the next red traffic light, the next possible benefactor in what Mal would call "the fierce hunger of now."
TEn
Quinn received an offer from Sports News Network to serve as guest commentator for the Super Bowl pre and postgame shows, and so, against Dr. Matthew's orders, gingerly prepared to leave the hospital for his new gig after a two-and-a-half-week stay.
"As your physician, I advise against it," Dr. Matthew said ruefully, arms crossed as Quinn packed the stuff he had accumulated. "But as a fan, I guess I understand it."
"It's not that, doc," Quinn said. "The money will come in handy for the orphanage I'm building in Jakarta. I think that's what I was really born for. Football is just a means to that end. Anyway, I want to do it. My Aunt Lena always said you should say 'yes' to life's opportunities."
"Well, just remember there are no life opportunities without life. Your health has to come first."
"I know it does. It will," Quinn said unconvincingly. He stopped packing to consider Dr. Matthew in an attempt to hide how winded he was.
"Now I know where I remember you from," Quinn said. "I thought I recognized you the morning I came into the emergency room, even in the state I was in. You're the doctor who treated the tennis player Alí Iskandar after he was knifed by that deranged fan."
"That's right," he said. "And if you know that, then you know I can't talk about my patients, beyond what they and the hospital may permit me to say. That goes for you, too."
Here Dr. Matthew turned all sotto voce.
"I would advise you always to use condoms."
Quinn started to protest, blushing.
"It's OK. I'm not here to judge. I'm gay myself. So you're using protection, right?"
Quinn nodded.
"And just as important, if I thought for a moment some of the bruises I saw on you were from domestic abuse rather than the football field, I would have to report them to the police immediately."
Quinn flashed on Mal unthreading the belt from his pants and snapping it between hands.
"No, no, it was from the game where I cracked my ribs."
"Uh-huh," Dr. Matthew said, unconvinced. "I have no proof, and that's the hell of it."
He offered Quinn a card for a domestic abuse hotline.
"I don't want you to be afraid to use this. And I'll expect to see you in a week."
Dr. Matthew was a toughie. But Quinn knew he was right. He'd have to be careful, not that there was much chance of seeing his "boyfriend" with him playing in the Super Bowl. Plus, just preparing for his commentating stint was a huge deal. The digital playbook on each of the two teams alone would engage him, never mind the camera angles he had to note.
"Don't be nervous," executive producer Neal Morocco said.
Didn't people realize, Quinn wondered, that saying "don't be nervous" only tended to make people nervous?
"I won't, sir," he said.
"Please, it's Neal. OK, places everyone."
As if memorizing the Super Bowl media guide and learning the camera angles weren't enough, dealing with hyperactive analyst Rufus Washington was almost more than Quinn could bear. Rufus had been a linebacker with the Chicago Brass, and he and former Brass Coach Joe Nowicki were now together again on the SNN team.
"And you know, Coach," Rufus would always begin, "I think, Coach, for a team to win today, Coach, it's gonna take offense and defense."
OK, Coach, Quinn thought, not exactly Hamlet, is he? Worse yet, whenever Quinn tried to throw in an observation, ooh-ooh-ooh-teacher-pick-me Rufus cut him off at the pass.
"I'm so sorry about that, Quinnie," he said during a commercial break. "After all these years, I still get so nervous."
"No problem," Quinn said, smiling. He couldn't figure out if Rufus were that much of an idiot or just a passive-aggressive Macchiavel.
Finally, it came time for each analyst to give his Super Bowl prediction.
Everyone—including Rufus, after saying "Coach" forty-five more times—predicted the Quakers would win. Everyone, except Quinn.
"I'm going to have to go with the Miners," he said. "I think it's going to come down to quarterbacking. In last year's Super Bowl, Tam Tarquin kept the Miners close. I think this time he and they are going to do it."
After the Miners won 17-14 on two last-minute bullet passes from Tam—who somehow managed to remain poised and upright despite the onslaught of Quaker defensemen—Quinn looked like a genius. So much so that Morocco selected him for the postgame on-field interview. Quinn tried to appear objective when what he wanted to do was hurl himself into Tam's arms and say, "Take me."
Instead, he said, "Tam, a great win, a magical win. What was the difference between this year and last?"
Tam laughed as the crowd at Arizona Canyons Stadium erupted.
"Well, um, divine intervention. No, I think faith in myself and my team. And I guess I just got tired of being number two all the time. I knew our guys were better than that, and they proved it."
"Again, a memorable win. Congratulations, Tam."
"And congratulations to you on a great rookie season with the Temps."
"Thanks and back to you guys upstairs."
Upstairs, Morocco was as giddy as a lottery winner.
"You were terrific," he told Quinn, "and the chemistry between Tarquin and you—the present and the future of the NFL—also terrific. Listen, you don't have to worry about your post-gridiron career. It's here."
It was nice to know his future was secure. But it looked to come at a steep cost to his present.
"How could you, how could you pick him over me?" Mal asked, barging into his room at the Sonora Desert Inn at 3 a.m. "What are you, fucking him?"
It was one of those instances in which a lie voiced a wish, Quinn thought. No doubt it was why he felt so guilty when he said, "Of course not. But they asked me for my professional opinion. Now if they had asked who'd win the bedroom Super Bowl, I'd have gone with you, but then, I have nothing else to compare it to."
It was a flippant answer, for which Mal slapped him hard across the face.
"OK," Quinn said, stunned. "Get out. Get. Out."
"I say when I leave, and I'm not leaving till I get what I came for."
He grabbed Quinn, who fought back with a fury that surprised them both.
"Oh, you want to play rough?" Mal said. "Baby, nothing gets me hotter."
Finally, he pinned Quinn and his aching ribs to the carpet but instead of mounting him collapsed on top of him, sobbing, the salt of his tears mixing with that of their sweat.
"I wanted to win so bad, so bad," Mal kept saying.
"I know. I know," Quinn said softly. "It's OK. Why don't you let me turn over, and I can hold you."
Mal slid off him and curved against Quinn, fondling his chest and then sucking one of his nipples as Quinn held him in his arms.
"Why are you so good to me," Mal whimpered.
"I don't know, maybe because others have been kind to me."
"You won't tell about our little game, will you? It's just a game men play."
Quinn turned his throbbing head toward his pinging phone, among the items that lay scattered beside him. There was a text from [email protected]—Tam. "Breakfast this
morning?" it read.
Quinn's heart leapt as his stomach sank—a dangerous game indeed.
"No," he told Mal. "I won't tell a soul."
Eleven
Crazy, just frigging crazy, Quinn thought as he sat in the Tombstone Diner outside Phoenix, jiggling one leg under the table and flipping through the song titles in one of the old individual jukeboxes that stood at attention at each table. He had to be crazy in love, or just plain crazy, to be out on what he assumed was a date with the chief rival of his volatile lover.
Or maybe not. Maybe the invite was just that—breakfast at a diner. Anyway, he loved diners, loved the way the early morning light slanted through the windows, as in a Hopper painting, slicing through the space with the promise of a new day.
Mostly, he loved the huge menus. You could get anything you wanted, from banana pancakes to fried clams, maybe both at one sitting. (He really did love to eat.)
Normally, a diner menu would set his mouth watering. Now the mere thought of sipping water left him ready to retch.
"Can I get you something while you wait, darlin'?" the waitress—part mother, part vixen—drawled.
Why did diner waitresses always look like something out of the movies—big, dyed black hair, big makeup, big crimson lips, big boobs, bigger-than-life personalities?
"No, ma'am, I'll just wait."
"Not even a cup of coffee?"
"Uh, no, ma'am."
"Well, then at least make yourself comfortable, honey. Take off that baseball cap so we can see that gorgeous face and all that lovely, curly dark hair. Mmm, mmm, if I were twenty years younger… Well, never mind. Though you would do nicely for my niece, Ruby Junior."
"Yes'm."
As if on cue to rescue him, Tam sauntered in, wearing fitted, khaki-colored jeans and a short-sleeved, three-button, camel-colored shirt that teased the skin and fine bones at his throat, offering the possibility of so much more. His sandy hair, which was swept back from a high forehead, and his tawny, sculpted features were a thousand shades of blond and brown—like the luxuriant fields in a Thomas Hardy novel or a Van Gogh landscape or an American song. Amber waves indeed. The wheat palette offset Tam's limpid, lushly fringed gray eyes—oh, how Quinn long to plunge into those pools—which wore the amused expression of one of those rare people who finds life perpetually delicious, perhaps as a safeguard against its actual disappointments. But then, why shouldn't he? Quinn thought. He was "F***ing Tam Tarquin," as Sportin' Life magazine called him, no longer a mere golden boy but a desert god, a gridiron Apollo, born of the sun.
The Penalty for Holding Page 6