"She said that some members of the NFL act like troglodytes. And anyway, how can you be offended by that when you don't even know what it means?"
"I know when I've been insulted. Anyway, go tell her the whole dirty story, and be sure to include yourself in the telling."
Quinn moved to the door.
"Of course," Mal added, settling in, "it's you who'll be responsible for the hit to your beloved's reputation, because my lawyer and I will have to counter with a portrait of Tam as the miserable little bitch he was, manipulating me until he won the city championship and then blithely announcing he was dumping me as he headed off to U of Penn. I'm sure he left out that part of the story."
"Whatever he did or didn't do, it's no reason to rape—"
"You don't get it, do you? It's not just your little boyfriend, whom I'm sure has already dumped you, and his squeaky-clean family who'll be affected. What about Brenna, your wannabe girlfriend? I've seen the way she looks at you. Think how devastated she'll be to have her worst fears confirmed: That her favorite is nothing but a fag. And how long do you think you'll last in the NFL once word gets out? Oh, I'll survive and probably Tam will, but you, under Pat Smalley? The guy hates you. And what then of all those checks you send to your family down in Misalliance, Missouri to keep that dump running or to feed the addictions of that whore of an aunt—"
"You watch your mouth—"
"Or support that little pet project of an orphanage back in your little banana republic. And what of my Tiffany?"
"What about her?"
"Well, maybe she'd be interested in playing some of our games. Or maybe not, now that she's pregnant."
"Pregnant?" Quinn broke out in a cold sweat. "You wouldn't do anything to hurt her or the baby."
"What do you care? It's not like you could be anyone's baby daddy. It's not like you even have an example. I mean, who's your daddy?"
Quinn banged his head against the door three times. He would've dashed his brains out, but what good would it do? Instead, he waited for the inevitable, Mal's breath on his neck.
"Don't bother to turn around," he said as he yanked his clothes from him.
Sixteen
"I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen," Quinn said with the congregants at the 5 p.m. Saturday Mass at St. Francis.
But did he? To believe in the Christian afterlife was to believe in that neat tripartite, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. And what Hell could be worse than the one he was already in? For Quinn, Hell was the loss of freedom, and he was held fast, bound by obligations, expectations, commitments, and, especially, fears. The more feverishly he worked those chains, the more entwined they became.
"Let's play a game," Mal said in his now not-infrequent-enough visits. "Let's play Strip Search."
"I don't like that game," Quinn said.
"OK, let's play Slave Auction. You'll be the slave and I'll be the master and—"
"Are you kidding me?" Quinn snapped. He had been exposed enough to slavery's remnants growing up in a place where people had displayed needlepoints of the Confederate flag until only recently. "After everything the African-Americans have been through, I will not demean their experience, even for your perverted fantasies."
"OK, OK," Mal said. "Spare me the lecture. Strip Search it is. Turn around. Now take off your shirt slowly."
Quinn told himself it was no different than getting a physical. It was no different than being inspected by Smalley. It was no different: This is what he told himself so he wouldn't tear up.
"Don't make me do this," Quinn said. But he did it anyway, because that was all he deserved, he reasoned. He had betrayed the great love of his life. Didn't matter that he didn't know about Tam and Mal. He loved Tam, but he had wanted Mal, too. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, and that never worked. Even now as he reached out to Tam, and tried to explain himself, it was to no avail. Tam didn't return his texts, phone calls or emails. And when their teams met in the August preseason, Tam snubbed him at the end of a game in which the Temps shocked the Miners 45-7—a breach of postgame protocol that did not go unnoticed by the teams, the press, and the fans, thereby deepening Quinn's humiliation.
He tried to tell himself it was all right, that you can't be humiliated if you refuse delivery of said slight, but whom was he kidding? He was more than mortified. He was heartsick, plagued by palpitations, dangerously low blood pressure, nausea, dizziness, loss of appetite, and exhaustion. Before, he hadn't thought it possible to die of a broken heart, to be mad for love. People died from disease, accidents, war, and other acts of violence or something that rocked their core identity and, so, forced their hand. Lovesickness was the stuff of opera and movies. But now that he saw it in reality, he felt like a fool, a stupid, little fool, and the thought that he had brought it all on himself—that he had cost himself the one thing, the one person, he had wanted most—well, that was more than he could bear.
So he turned his anger outward and did the unthinkable: He began to see Mal's point of view. Tam was a priggish control freak who expected perfection of everyone else. OK, Quinn thought, reviewing the situation yet again, he himself had made a serious mistake. But he couldn't be held accountable for a past that wasn’t his. Hadn't he suffered enough?
Would you like to see the scars? he longed to ask Tam. They were the trophies of each encounter with Mal—the night he came over plastered and frustrated, because Tiffany was too sick for sex; the night his team had been crushed in the season-opener, and he, humiliated, had to dominate someone; the night he had been sacked seven times in another losing effort. Quinn counted the brutalities in the bruise near his temple that he covered with his hair, the welts on his back, the marks on his wrists and ankles where Mal bound him. What frightened him even more than the bruises themselves was how much he liked them; how they, along with the meals he skipped and the tiny cross-stitch marks he made on his arms with a penknife, challenged his body; how they represented for him a life pushed to and lived on the edge.
They at least were the signs of passion, preferable to the cold nights when Mal arrived bearing strange gifts, like cigarettes and a football-shaped cigarette lighter with which to burn him.
"What, I thought your people did all that tattoo stuff?" Mal said, flicking the flame.
After that, Quinn determined to get rid of him. He fantasized about killing him, maiming him, phoning Tiffany, sending an anonymous message to Brenna at The Wreck, showing up at Tam's doorstep and throwing himself on his mercy—none of which, he knew, were real options and almost all of which would make him no better than Mal.
He searched his Lower Manhattan loft for the card that Dr. Matthew had given him for the domestic abuse hotline. Absent that, he Googled "domestic abuse" and came up with A Place for Us, a shelter not far from where he lived. It took everything in him to walk through the door.
"May I help you?" a young woman said, eyeing him coldly. It was a minute before he understood: He was the enemy, not the victim—a six-foot, four-inch, 230-pound, ripped behemoth in a ski cap, hoodie and dark glasses that he wore not to menace but to shield himself.
"I, I'm, excuse me, I've come to the wrong place," he said, fleeing.
There was no place, he realized, no choice but to endure. He would've buried himself in his work but Lance was back as QB, and he had been demoted to number three behind Nero Jones—this despite protest columns from Brenna and other journalists and boos that rained down as the team began the season 0 and 4.
"You're douches. You're nothing but scum," fans shouted.
Violent emotions but football was a brutal, beautiful and brutally beautiful game, he thought as he went in for Jones in the third quarter of a 34-0 blowout by the Omaha Steers—Lance having left the game with a leg injury that turned out to be another break. Dispensing with the huddle and working quickly, Quinn was nonetheless sacked by two 300-pound linesmen. He felt as if his brain would burst through his skull, then his helmet. But what hurt even more was what followed.
"You're no Shepard," one of the goons said, referring to their star quarterback, Alex Shepard. "You don't even have a daddy from what I hear. You nothing." With that, he flashed Quinn a derisive smile that was almost a leer.
"Come on, bro," the other goon said. "He's a brother, man."
"He may be dark but he's no bro, man."
Why should words devastate more than 600 pounds of blubber ramming you into the ground? Quinn wondered. But they did.
"Shake it off," Derrick said, helping him up, throwing an arm around him and glaring at the opposition. Quinn wanted nothing more then but to shake Derrick off, as well as the hapless trainer who no doubt had his hands full sending crybaby Lance-o-little off to the hospital with his busted leg—to say nothing of consoling Smalley in the wake of his favorite being injured, again—and now came hopping out onto the field to tend to Quinn. He could bear anything but their kindness.
Come on, Novak, Quinn told himself. This is no time to feel sorry for yourself and withdraw like Achilles, sulking in his tent. So he gave Derrick a reassuring pat and waved the trainer away with a laugh, even though his head still ached like a sonofabitch. How he'd love to hogtie those Steers, he thought, mixing his animal husbandry metaphors.
On the next drive, he planted his legs in a perfect triangle, cocked his hips and waited for what seemed like an eternity for Derrick, Greg—someone, anyone—to be open. He felt one of the Steers tug at his jersey, but he yanked himself free and took the ball down the field himself for an 81-yard touchdown. We might lose, Quinn thought as he knelt, crossed himself and rose in one swift, graceful gesture. But he would be god-damned if they would be shut out, if anyone would make fun of him. He may not be Alex Shepard, but he was still himself. And no one—not his mother, Smalley, Mal, or even Tam—would tell him or make him otherwise.
Quinn's touchdown would be the turning point—of the game and the season as the Temps scored five touchdowns to come back 35-34. Quinn gave the stunned Shepard a big grin as he hugged him in the phony postgame ritual.
"Tell Tweedle Dee Dum and Tweedle Dee Dee I said I'm their daddy now," he whispered into Shepard's ear.
He didn't think Shepard got the reference. It was probably too old school for him. But hey, Quinn didn't give a rat's ass. As he sat in front of his locker, he marveled at the strangeness of life and of the game he played, in which "holding" cost you, but it was perfectly legal to dash someone's brains against a bit of bone and plastic before delivering what passed for a verbal coup de grace in the NFL.
That night—or rather, early that morning—Quinn received a phone call that was unsettling though not entirely surprising. His first thought was that something had happened to Aunt Sarah or Aunt Josie and Uncle Artur—that was always his greatest fear. Then he figured it must be Mal demanding phone sex as he often did when he was on the road.
"I'm in no mood for this," Quinn said. Good thing he didn't use Mal's name.
"Well, you better get in the mood, whatever that means," Smalley snapped, "and get your ass down to the 54th precinct, where they're holding Nero on gun possession charges. This is your fault, mister, and you better make it right."
As Quinn hopped into his convertible, fighting to keep his eyes open, he tried to comprehend how in God's name this was his fault. But then, everything that went right with the team was Smalley's and Lance's doing. (Was Smalley in love with him?) Everything wrong was on Yours Truly, Quinn thought.
At the police station—a depressing place with scarred benches, big, filmy globe lights, dirty windows and, perhaps not surprisingly, unfriendly people—he met Drew Harrington, blond, handsome, and definitely gay, who looked just like Dr. Matthew. Quinn would later discover they were mirror-image twins.
Drew was clearly the commanding yang to Dr. Matt's compassionate yin in his role as legal eagle to the stars. Quinn recognized him from "Nutgate," that tempest-in-a-teapot of a few years back involving the dishy former number one tennis player Alí Iskandar, the equally gorgeous Evan Conor Fallon, the current tennis number one, and an Eagles Airlines altercation that began when a flight attendant refused Evan's request for an extra package of peanuts. Drew, Quinn reasoned, must sleep at the airport, the better to take off to wherever there was a star in need.
In a few minutes, he emerged with a shaken, chastened Nero.
"I didn't do nothing wrong," Nero wailed onto Quinn's shoulder. "I didn't do nothing wrong. A man has a right to protect hisself. That's why I took the gun to the club. How did I know the safety wasn't on? I didn't hurt nobody—nobody except myself, except myself."
Quinn and Drew decided that the best thing would be for Nero to stay at Quinn's loft to throw off the press. With Mal and the Quakers on the road, Quinn thought, there was no chance of awkward encounters.
As Quinn tucked him into bed in an area of the loft that served as the guest room, Nero grabbed his hand and pleaded, "Please, I don't want to go to prison. They'll kill me. I don't want to die."
How young he was, Quinn thought as he soothed him—even though he was only two years younger than Quinn—and how foolish young men were with their little boy-macho posturing. But then, who was he to talk or judge?
The next day, Smalley gave Quinn another of his irrational tongue lashings: "The QB is responsible for everything—everything, do you hear me? Once again, you've let down the team, this time by failing to mentor Nero." Smalley pronounced the word "men-tor" dumbly, with equal emphasis on each syllable.
Afterward, Quinn asked to address the players alone without any coaches present.
"As you no doubt know," he began, "Nero was arrested last night at a club downtown on illegal-handgun possession charges and is facing some serious jail time. He's staying at my place for the foreseeable future. Let's keep that among ourselves.
"Sometimes we make mistakes.” Here Quinn flashed on Tam and nearly lost it. "What matters is what we do with those mistakes. There's no question that we as a team have our work cut out for ourselves. But there's also no question that there is a way through this. There is always a way through things, and we'll get there together, because we have no choice and because I not only think we can win but I know that we will."
Quinn listened to his own words. He called plays until he was hoarse. He threw to wide receivers and tight ends until he thought his arm would fall off. He attended Nero's court dates, kept up his visits to Dave, and even dropped in on a fashion show organized by Tiffany under the pretense of wanting to save the whale, or whatever the hell she was saving this month, but really just to see that she was all right. She was as happy and oblivious as always.
"Of course, I'm fine, too big to model right now," she said, proudly showing off her small bump and flashing a huge sapphire and diamond engagement ring. "Just call me fat and sassy."
"Glad to hear it," Quinn said, smiling. "Say hi to Mal. Tell him to keep treating you right, or he'll answer to me, OK?" he added, laughing so as not to alarm her.
He wished he felt as good. He told himself that this then was love: Not that we are loved but that we love and go on loving, even in the void. If he did everything else perfectly—ran the plays, worked out, ate right, kept his overhead low and his loft clean, made sure his family and friends were fine and met his charitable commitments, then it shouldn't matter whether or not he felt loved.
But it did and others were beginning to notice something was amiss.
"You look as bad as I feel," Dave Donaldson rasped. He was confined to a hospital bed now, off the living room of the family's Jersey home. His skin was the color and quality of yellowing parchment, his eyes circled by darkness, his cheeks sunken and his breathing labored. There was more than a whiff of the fetid about him—like the stench of decayed hostas at the end of summer. Quinn thought he smelled like death.
"Well, I was never a beauty," Quinn replied, only half-joking.
"I think you know that's not true," Dave said. "Come on, they say dead men tell no tales, nor do soon-to-be dead men. You can trust me."
But he was going to have to try, he decided as he took Mal’s call in his car before heading back to Manhattan.
"What the fuck do you mean I can't see you?"
"You can't, Mal," Quinn said. "I'm sorry but Nero's staying here now."
"Are you fucking him?"
"No, no. He's in trouble. You must've read about it. I'm the starting QB again. It's on me to set an example. You know how it is."
"I know I'm not paid to be anyone's babysitter."
"Well, I’m sorry, Mal, but I am," Quinn said, not sorry at all.
"Then we'll use Tiffany's place. She's back at the house in Philly most days now. Or do you want me to make things ugly at your place?"
"I'll text Nero I'll be home in a few hours."
Absence had made the heart grow more inventive if not fonder. He was glad Nero was asleep when he got back to the loft. Quinn turned on the shower as hot as he could stand it. He wrapped his bruised hands. The next day, he asked the team's permission to visit a sick relative in Philadelphia. Instead, he had made a 5 p.m. appointment for himself at Dr. Matthew's office.
Quinn was grateful that the receptionist in the otherwise empty office was more interested in copying his insurance card and filling out forms than in actually looking at him with his knit cap, hoodie, dark glasses, and fingerless gloves.
Once inside Dr. Matthew's office, however, the gloves came off—as did his clothes and any pretenses. Dr. Matthew gently examined his hands, the bruise at his temple, the welts on his back, the burns on the back of his neck.
"Why? Why do you let him do this to you?"
"I don't know. I don't know," Quinn cried. "I tried. I looked for the card you gave me. I did. But I couldn't find it."
His brain, freed from the confines of plastic, was on a tear now, charging down the field of the imagination.
"So I Googled this place in Manhattan, only the woman behind the desk looked at me with such hatred, as if I were the enemy, which I guess as a man I am."
The Penalty for Holding Page 11