The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  The final speaker against the project, a diminutive woman in her sixties, introduced herself as Sonia Trachtenberg. Not much more than five feet tall and with a graying pageboy and large glasses, she wore a denim skirt, white blouse, and a loose-fitting jacket that appeared woven from the wool of a horned animal that shared a postal code with the Dalai Lama. In an accent that was a mixture of Eastern Parkway and eastern Europe, she identified herself as an author who had done research in libraries all over the world and avowed that this one should not be torn down, “no matter what castle in the sky is being fabricated to replace it by the slick flimflam of late stage capitalism.”

  Jay reflected that, to the untutored eye, he and Sonia Trachtenberg represented the two most common anti-Semitic tropes of the past century, the avaricious moneyman, and the left-wing revolutionary. Jew-haters would have a field day with the pair of us, he thought, two sides of the same shekel. Jay imagined telling the fuming Sonia that they had a great deal in common—starting with their ancient religion but encompassing the love of culture, of literature and libraries, hatred of anti-Semites and Nazis—as the tiny agitator hectored, gesturing with her hands, fingers opening and closing. Her passions continued to rise, and her arms began to semaphore through the air as if she were guiding a 747 into a parking space, all the while imploring the commissioners not to allow this terrible, civilization-shattering transaction to go through. She never glanced at Jay, but he could feel the utter disdain for him and his kind seeping from her pores. He hoped she would grow to enjoy the new library he was going to build.

  When the session finally ended after nearly three hours, Jay shook hands with every committee member. Several seemed genuinely glad to meet him and none of them, to Jay’s great relief, mentioned D’Angelo Maxwell. Only then did he and Boris leave the chamber. Rather than ride the elevator to the lobby, they walked down five flights. In the event Jay had misread his opponents, he wanted to avoid an unpleasant encounter in a confined area.

  It was the kind of morning when office workers take al fresco coffee breaks, savoring the early days of spring. On the sidewalk Jay checked messages on his phone—Nicole wanted him to call her back, Church Scott needed to talk about Dag’s new problem, still nothing from Aviva in Israel. He was waiting for Boris to bring the car around when he noticed what he thought was a child move quickly toward his flank. Jay swung his head to the side and realized this was Sonia Trachtenberg, liberated from the relative decorum of the City Planning Commission hearing, her face righteously ablaze.

  “You’re a criminal, Gladstone,” she said, maneuvering directly in front of him. Jay had faced irate citizens for much of his career and was accustomed to these kinds of personal confrontations. Sonia Trachtenberg could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds. “How can you sleep at night?”

  “Sometimes I need a martini,” he replied, trying to defuse this bespectacled grenade. Jay’s cavalier response seemed to further agitate the crusader and her eyes, magnified behind smudged lenses, blackened. She stared at Jay as if trying to decide what kind of disease to wish on him. He smiled at her, but she did not smile back.

  “You should rot in Hell,” Sonia said in her geographically nonspecific accent, “But you would probably just build condos there.”

  Jay’s look of wry amusement at this witticism froze when the globule of saliva propelled from her angry lips landed squarely on his face. With great restraint, he said, “If your books are as crude as you are, they must be wildly popular.”

  Sonia Trachtenberg sneered and walked away just as Boris brought the car around. Jay took out a handkerchief and wiped the gout of spit hanging off his smooth cheek.

  At the office, he described the meeting and the encounter with Sonia to Bebe who congratulated him on not allowing himself to be provoked. Nicole texted him that she was flying to their house in Aspen for a few days and was presently on her way to the airport. She kept a horse in Colorado and wanted to ride in the mountains “to shake out the cobwebs.” He wouldn’t mind a few days apart.

  Then Jay called Church Scott to talk about Dag. If the team failed to make the playoffs, the Los Angeles escapade would provide an acceptable pretext should they decide to cut him loose.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Several hours earlier, in the chemical dawn of northern New Jersey where pink light refracted through a particle haze, the private jet made a bumpy landing. Dag had been dozing fitfully, and the impact jounced him awake. The first thing he noticed was that the over-the-counter painkiller the co-captain fished out of the plane’s first-aid kit had worn off and his right hand hurt. It was his shooting hand and a broken bone in that location at this stage of the season was the last thing he needed. He examined the hand as he flexed it. The pain was behind the knuckle of his middle finger. He massaged the tender area with his thumb and flexed the hand again. If he broke it, he would have to play through the discomfort. There was no other choice.

  The second thing he noticed was on the screen of his phone: A website that trafficked in the sorrows of celebrity was reporting that there had been an altercation at Brittany Maxwell’s home the previous evening. Details were hazy, but witnesses said—

  Dag didn’t bother to keep reading; he could imagine what witnesses said. It was naïve to think that what he had done would not immediately blast its way into public consciousness where his lack of control, bad decision-making, and a newfound penchant for self-destruction would streak like a comet across the media firmament.

  “You see this?” Dag said, showing his phone to Trey.

  “Too late to worry about it now,” Trey said as the jet taxied to a stop. “How’s the hand feel?”

  Dag told him he needed to get it looked at immediately.

  A person as famous as D’Angelo Maxwell can’t just show up at an emergency room for an X-ray so as the Maxwell brothers headed north on the Turnpike, Trey called the team trainer and told him Dag had suffered a minor accident, could he alert the team doctor? Five minutes later the doctor called Dag directly and said he would meet him at his office.

  A tall man in his fifties with thinning blond hair, Dr. Harlan Latimer was the leading orthopedist of northern New Jersey. He was waiting in his office dressed in a tracksuit.

  “I was on the third mile of a five-mile run when you called,” he said.

  “Kind of an emergency, Doc,” Trey said.

  Attempting to be clever, Dr. Latimer said to Dag, “I guess we’re not shaking hands today,” and offered his elbow, which Dag indulgently bumped with his own.

  “I haven’t talked to Church yet,” Dag said. “Let’s keep this on the down low.”

  Dr. Latimer regarded Dag skeptically. Secrecy was not proper protocol (the organization needed to be apprised of every ding and bump a player suffered) but he said nothing.

  Team memorabilia decorated the empty waiting area, and the familiarity of the colors and graphics was a comfort to Dag as he nervously contemplated his future. It was probably nothing, just a scare that would teach him to control his impulses. Maybe it was a blessing. That’s what he’d tell the coach. Church loved that word.

  “Bone bruise,” the doctor said from behind his desk. “There’s no break.”

  Dag stared at the X-rays, mounted on a light box, and thanked the universe.

  Trey asked, “Can he play?”

  “If it were the non-shooting hand, I’d suggest we put a splint on it.”

  “I can’t wear a splint,” Dag said. “Gotta gut it out.”

  Biggie greeted Dag, stuck a wet snout into his thigh, and waited for his master’s attention. Dag ignored the dog. Babatunde and Lourawls were in the kitchen eating breakfast keen to hear what was going on, but Dag went straight upstairs without greeting them. He retreated to his bedroom, drew the shades, and crawled under the covers. Emotionally sapped, he was the sick tired where his limbs tingled with fatigue. But as he lay in bed, instead of falli
ng asleep, he found himself reliving the events of the previous night and imagining what he might have done differently. To start with, he never would have flown to Los Angeles, gone to his old house, confronted Britanny, or assaulted Moochie. In other words: Everything. He imagined the number of times he could have hit the brakes—before climbing on the plane, before stepping out of Brittany’s kitchen and into the backyard, before he chased Moochie down. Before he got out of bed yesterday morning.

  He pondered what had caused him to do something so out of character, so against his interests. This kind of violence was not going to help in his search for an acceptable contract. And as far as endorsements, what soft drink company would want as their spokesman a player who was in danger of being indicted for felony assault? Moochie had said he was not going to press charges, but it was already clear he could not be trusted. Dag had humiliated him and there was a good chance he would seek redress. At the very least Dag would have to write the man a large check. None of these thoughts were conducive to relaxation, but sheer exhaustion finally lowered him into sleep.

  “How’s the hand?” Church Scott asked when he entered the room.

  Dressed in practice gear of a team sweatshirt and shorts with a layer of compression shorts beneath, kneepads around his ankles, Dag was seated in the small cinderblock office of his coach, just off the gym at the team practice facility in South Orange. Church closed the door and sat behind his metal desk. On the wall, a picture of the University of North Carolina team “sophomore sensation” Church Scott had led to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament before turning pro. There was a family photograph on his desk. Five kids and married to the same woman for twenty-seven years. And he had won an NBA championship. Dag felt rebuked by the man’s entire existence. The coach himself, however, appeared nonjudgmental—a great relief. Dag was in no mood for a lecture. He had managed a few hours of sleep earlier, so he was feeling slightly more himself.

  “I can play,” Dag said.

  “Bone bruises in your hand are pretty painful. I had one.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Coach.”

  Church placidly nodded although he wanted to do to Dag what he surmised Dag had done to Moochie Collins. But the coach/superstar relationship precluded this. Although Church was nominally in charge, everyone in the league knew that superstars called the shots. Dag’s actions were going to compromise the coach’s job. If the team failed to make the playoffs, both their careers would be damaged.

  “Media relations wants to talk to you,” Church said. “Media relations” consisted of several people whose job it was to maintain the wall between the players and the press and propagate the illusion that every guy with a league contract was a cipher and thus incapable of antisocial behavior. “I told them we weren’t going to make you available to the press for the foreseeable future.”

  This was a relief. Every sports journalist in the country was going to want a piece of him. Dag’s media skills were impeccable, but he had no appetite for being grilled on the subject of what would invariably be described as his “rampage.” He planned to apologize to the team before practice for bringing this unwanted attention when all anyone should have been concentrating on was qualifying for the playoffs.

  “I appreciate that,” Dag said.

  “Nobody talks to the media today except me.”

  Dag heard a knock and then the sound of the door opening. No assistant coach or player would think to enter Church Scott’s office without waiting for permission.

  “How’s the hand, Dag?” Jay Gladstone looked fit and rested, like a man without a worry.

  Dag had been hoping to delay this encounter. That the incident had occurred on the heels of their lunch at the Paladin Club did not redound to Dag’s benefit. But the look on Jay’s face was sympathetic. If he was angry, Dag could not tell. The owner was unreadable.

  “Feeling okay,” Dag said.

  Neither Dag nor Church stood. Both men waited for Jay to speak. Dag wished the coach had told him Gladstone might show up. He didn’t want to deal with the owner now. They were facing the Pistons in Detroit in two days, and Jay asked Dag if he expected to play.

  “Oh, hell yeah,” Dag said with what he hoped was the right measure of don’t-worry-about-it. Jay clapped Dag on the shoulder in a friendly way. This gesture gave Dag the opening he needed, and he stood up.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jay,” Dag said. “I want to apologize to you personally for my conduct.” Dag could read the surprise on Jay’s face. Superstars were not usually so quick to take responsibility. “I acted a fool, I regret it, and I’m going to make it up to you and the team.”

  Jay was craning his head to look up at Dag. He blinked a couple of times and said, “I genuinely appreciate that apology, Dag. All I want is for you to succeed.”

  “We’re all trying to win a championship,” Church interjected.

  “I guarantee we’re going to make the playoffs,” Dag said.

  “Let’s hope so,” Jay said.

  “And after that,” Dag said, “Sky’s the limit.”

  “Bang bang, motherfucker,” Jay said.

  Dag laughed at Jay’s invocation of the D’Angelo Maxwell catchphrase. “Bang bang, motherfucker, indeed,” he said, and offered his left fist for the owner to bump, which Jay did. That it was Dag’s left (non-shooting) hand did not escape Jay’s attention.

  When Dag excused himself to see the trainer, Jay asked the coach how he thought the player was doing. Church repeated what Dag had told him. There was no point reviewing what had happened, only in finding the best way to navigate the aftermath.

  “We all do stupid things,” Jay said.

  Jay paused, in the hope that Church would bring up the topic they were both avoiding. As the seconds accumulated, he saw the coach glance at a scouting report. Jay was going to have to initiate the conversation.

  “What do you think we should do about Dag?”

  “Do?”

  “Fine him, suspend him. You’re the team president, Church. It’s your call.”

  The coach laid the scouting report on his desk. He looked at Jay, waited to see if he would speak. Jay knew that Church was managing him and rather than begrudging it, respected his approach. Usually, people just deferred.

  “What Dag was involved in was a non-basketball matter. It happened on his time, away from the team. I don’t like it but it’s not our business.”

  Church’s stance surprised Jay. The coach preached the Gospel of Accountability and Team First. Dag had ignored it. One of the reasons Jay had hired Church was because the coach believed in discipline. Men like Church Scott were a big reason the whole world, despite always being on the verge of coming apart, continued to function. Was Dag to suffer no consequences for jeopardizing their teetering season?

  “So that I understand, your position is to take no action?”

  “We’re trying to make the playoffs, Jay. I’m not suspending him.”

  “Don’t we have to do something?”

  “Yeah, win.”

  Church uncoiled from his desk. It was time to start practice.

  Church stood at center court and blew a whistle signaling practice was about to begin. Players stopped their warm-up routines, stretching, and half speed games of one on one. All of the guys jogged toward him. When they had gathered around, Church told them that their captain had something to say. An assistant coach signaled to Dag, who had been waiting outside the gym because he didn’t want to talk to his teammates individually before he addressed them as a group. Now he ambled toward the scrum of players, a piece of protective plastic taped to the back of his shooting hand. They greeted their leader with friendly shouts. To a man, they had read the accounts of what had happened and wanted to show him some love.

  Jay stood on the sidelines with Boris. He stared at Dag’s hand and wondered if it augured the end to another disappointing seas
on.

  Church, the three assistant coaches, and the eleven other team members all waited for the star to tell them what was going on.

  “I signed with this franchise to win a championship,” Dag began. And then he stopped, uncharacteristically gripped by emotion. There was Drew Hill, the point guard whose slick, no-look passes Dag relished, and Odell Tracy, the lanky center with whom he often played cards on team flights, and Giedrius Kvecevicius who was always inviting him to visit Lithuania in the off-season. He genuinely enjoyed knowing these guys and was touched by their support. “And everything I’ve done has been with that goal in mind. Yesterday, I talked to my son on the phone. The boy was upset. Hearing my son upset, I got upset. I thought the best way to deal with the situation was to go to Los Angeles. When I got there, I did something I shouldn’t have done. I apologized to Coach and Mr. Gladstone, and now I want to apologize to you all.”