Out of Position (35 page)

I sigh. She doesn’t seem to be freaking out. “No, you’re fine. It’s just this guy who has a thing against me. I need to get home, okay?”

She nods. “I’ll be in touch,” she says. It doesn’t occur to me until later to wonder whether she means it. I’m already dialing.

Of course, I get his voicemail. He’s traveling all day. “Hi,” I say before the tone has even finished sounding. “It’s me. Listen, ignore anything you get from Brian. I’ll talk to you tomorrow about it when I pick you up. Love you.” And then I feel I should say more, but I can’t think of anything, so I just hold the phone in my paw, and eventually bring my thumb down on the End button.

I think about him all the way back, wanting to strangle Brian and myself depending on how my mood swings. Back at my loft, I try again, and this time he picks up.

“How were your flights?” I ask.

“Ugh,” he says. “Crying cubs on two of the three legs. Middle seat on the third. But on the bright side, I get to do it again tomorrow.”

“But I’ll be waiting to pick you up.”

“That helps. So who’s the panther in the pic Brian sent me?”

“Shit. That prick…” Rage tightens my paw into a fist again.

“I got your voicemail, hon. I’m not mad. Who is she?”

I breathe out. “She’s the starlet my flea set me up with.”

“Your what?”

“Ogleby. Sorry. It’s publicity for both our careers, that’s all.”

He’s quiet. I can hear him moving around, unpacking maybe. “So you took her to the dinner,” he says finally.

“Yeah.”

I hear more noises: clothes, dresser drawers, wire hangers. “Okay.”

“Okay? Just that, okay?”

“I dunno, stud. You want me to get mad? I’m a little tired for that right now. You say it’s just for show, fine, it’s just for show. If you want to talk about it s’more, we can talk tomorrow, okay?”

“No, okay, that’s fine.” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

“Me too,” he says.

I have to be happy with that, until I actually see him at the airport the next day. The ride back to my apartment is quiet, and not the nice, comfortable kind of quiet. It’s not a mad kind of quiet, either; I know those. No, this is a “Lee is thinking about things” kind of quiet, which makes me nervous, because I know he’s thinking about Caroll, but I don’t know what part of the whole Caroll thing he’s thinking about.

At first, the quiet isn’t that big a deal, and it’s not like he’s shutting me out. If I talk, he answers, and he seems to be in a good mood, if a bit distant. I think he’ll cheer up when he sees the place, and his ears do perk up a little. “Whoever picked this couch for you should be shot,” he says.

I laugh, and take him to the dining room, where the bottle of wine I bought for him is sitting next to two glasses. He doesn’t react to what I thought was his favorite chardonnay, except to say, “not champagne?”

“Why champagne?”

“To celebrate your new place.” He turns the bottle over.

I hadn’t even thought of that. “I thought you liked that one,” I say.

“I do.” He smiles at me, puts the bottle down, and walks over to hug me. “Thanks.”

“The food should be here any minute,” I say. “Want to open that?”

We do, and it’s actually closer to half an hour later that the food shows up. I’d thought, or hoped, that the wine would help matters, but Lee is still withdrawn, still quiet, staring out the window when the conversation falters, which it does a lot because I’m not that good at it when he’s not really working to keep it going.

He perks up again when the food shows up, both of us starving, and it’s a real gourmet meal from the steak house over on Fourth: filet mignon, potatoes au gratin, crisp veggies still steaming, a half-loaf of warm bread, even their own creamy butter. He asks how I got Murray’s to deliver, and I tell him that when you’re a Firebirds backup, you can get all kinds of special perks. He wants to know what the starters get, and I tell him when I start, they’ll send a waiter over.

When he laughs, for a few minutes, everything is just about as right as it’s ever been. We curl up on the couch and watch a movie, but it’s not that good a movie, and I see his eyes trailing out to the window and the neon glow of downtown.

After the movie, I ask him about his weekend. “It wasn’t a bad game,” he says. “Titus was down eleven with three minutes to play. They’ve got this freshman wolf QB, Higgins, who scores on a run, and then Cansino College fumbles on their first play after that and Titus gets the ball back. Higgins launches the ball, I kid you not, sixty yards, drops it right into the arms of their best wideout—fox—who, wait for it… drops it.”

“Agh.” I clutch my head.

He smiles. “Gets better. Next play, same exact play. Wideout under-runs his route, Cansino’s cornerback makes the interception.”

“You’re kidding.”

He holds up a paw. “He doesn’t drop to the ground. He tries to run it back.” He shakes his head. “You believe that? Three-point lead, a minute to go, and he tries to run it back. So of course, the fox finally redeems himself. Catches the corner from behind, pops the ball out and falls on it. Titus gets it back, forty-five seconds to go.”

“He tried to run it back?” My cornerback training seems ages away now, but I remember that clear as day: interception at the end of a game, with the lead, equals “fall on the ball.”

“With a lead. Anyway, they line up, Higgins fires to the end zone, misses. Second down, he throws short, and the runner doesn’t get to the end zone. Clock running. Twelve seconds. Another throw to the end zone, missed. Fourth down and two, Higgins scrambles, gets the first down. Clock stops to move the chains, and as soon as they get set, Higgins spikes the ball. Two seconds to go. Last play of the game, about twelve yards from the end zone. Down four. They show pass, Higgins drops back, and runs straight up the middle. Touchdown.”

“Wow.” I rub his ears and grin. “So nice of your job to send you around to see good games.”

“That’s the first good one this year.” He closes his eyes and leans into my rubbing. “Mostly they’re 48-7 blowouts. It’s actually not good when it’s a good game, because then I get wrapped up in the game and end up not watching the players. And watching the film afterwards, it’s not nearly as effective. You don’t catch the feel of the game, the confidence that this Higgins kid radiates, how his guys all believe he’ll pull it out for them.” He trails a paw over my leg lazily. “If he had any kind of good support, he’d be on a lot more scouts’ radar.”

“Anyone else good in the game?”

He sighs. “Cansino’s left tackle isn’t bad. Borderline pro material.” His muzzle twists around to look into mine. “How was your dinner?”

“Not as good as it would’ve been with you,” I say.

“Anybody do anything embarrassing?”

I slide my paw under his shirt while I think about that. “No more than usual.”

I’m not sure whether I’m just paranoid or if he really does take more coaxing than usual to get into the bedroom. What I am sure about is that once we’re in there, and things are going the way things always go, well, they don’t quite go the way they always go. I mean, we’re both ready, don’t get me wrong about that. But he’s on his stomach, and I’m under his tail, and he’s just lying there. Usually even in this position he’s moving around, thrusting back against me, really getting into it. All I can feel is the tension in his back, and every so often a motion back from his hips, as though he’s remembered I’m back here. His tail flicks against me, but doesn’t wrap around me.

I slide my arms around him, holding him as my shaft slides back and forth in his warmth, trying to recapture the feeling of oneness that makes our times together so good. He’s slim but powerful, strong for his size, but I’ve always loved holding that body and knowing so well all the things that go on in his head, his spirit, his heart. He responds, puts a paw over mine, but that doesn’t help the feeling that there are things he’s not sharing with me. I worry about that until it’s not really possible for me to worry about anything any more, and then I reach down to make sure he’s not worrying either.

It ends in the usual way, with both of us panting and sticky, but something’s missing, something’s a little off. I won’t say it was bad, but it wasn’t as good as it could have been. I don’t want to say anything because I know half the time when I talk I just make things worse. But he doesn’t say anything either, just falls asleep against me with one arm over my chest.

I wish I could fall asleep. It would help if this were a familiar place. Even though it’s my bed, my posters, my fox, the window reminds me that outside is a landscape I’ve only lived in for a few weeks. My fox, too, is strange, and I start to wonder if things are changing all over.

It takes me an hour to get to sleep. When I wake up, I remember dreams of vague, disconnected shifting landscapes in which I was some kind of secret agent, but the villain I was fighting turned into the building I was chasing him through, and then into a star in the sky. I had a little computer that helped me keep track of what he was, but somehow it kept getting one step behind him. Then it insisted he was me, and I had to reboot it. That’s when I woke up.

Lee’s a little more animated in the morning, if not by much. We grab breakfast down at Chip’s Java, around the corner, and sit quietly at a table, him with his latte and me with my black coffee. He gets a chocolate muffin, I get a bearclaw and a bagel, and we sit and eat without much conversation. He smiles at me a couple times, but not much else.

So when we get back to my place and he starts to pack up, I realize I can’t just let him go like this. “Hey,” I say, “you’re pretty quiet for a fox. What’s going on? The thing with Caroll bothering you?”

“Nah,” he says, and keeps packing his bag. “I told you, it’s cool.”

“What is it, then?”

He stops and looks around. “Well, this is a really nice place.”

“Thanks,” I say. “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t pick out most of the decorations.”

“I know.” He fingers the bed. “You need new sheets. No, I mean, I guess I always thought of this as temporary, that you’d come back to Hilltown. This feels permanent, is all.”

“I’ll still come back in the off-season. I can afford to have two places now, y’know.”

“I know, I know.” He smiles, slings his bag over his shoulder, and stands on tiptoe to kiss my nose. “It’s just stuff I need to work out.” His cell phone goes off just then. He checks the number and ignores it, then looks at the time. “We should get to the airport.”

Usually when something like that bothers him, he snaps at me and tells me to leave him the fuck alone. This quietness worries the hell out of me. And I can’t shake the feeling that he is, if not lying, at least not telling me the whole truth.

I can’t help it; I nudge at him a couple more times on the way to the airport, but he changes the subject each time. I give up and let him off with our public version of a kiss: a one-armed hug and brushing my muzzle across his ear. I watch him walk through the security gate. From the other side, he turns and raises a paw. I smile, wave back, and then he’s gone.

Back in the world of football, with the regular season around the corner, things heat up. Playbooks and practices, drills and getting drilled. I can’t get Lee and his problems off my mind, so my first practice is a disaster. Once we get past the really basic footwork, I screw up all over the field. I’m supposed to run a 57 Baked Alaska, and I mix it up with the 39 Crepes Suzette, and I end up banging into Colin, running a short route to cover the slot. “Watch where you’re going,” he says.

“Watch yourself, rook,” I snap, turning my back on him.

“Back in the game,” Steez says to me.

He hates “I’m sorry,” so I just nod and jog back to the start. But even as he’s barking out plays and instructions, I’m remembering how Lee looked in the car, and feeling guilty about Caroll. I realize I’ve completely missed what was called, so I try to figure it out from where everyone else is lined up and what they’re doing. I guess wrong.

This time, Steez gets up in my face. “Head! In! The! Game!” he yells.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“Don’t give me sorry! Give me game!”

I jog back to the line and focus my full attention on him.

The third time I screw up, he sends me to the figurative showers. “You come back this afternoon, head on straight,” he yells. “Go take five, take nap, take hangover cure. Whatever.” Then he comes up close to me. “Starters,” he says, tapping his head, “have head in game always.”

So I sit in the empty locker room next to my locker and I put my head back against it and I feel myself getting angry. God damn Lee for his secretive moping. I need to get this starting position, and instead I’m standing out on the field worrying about him. He’s smart, he knew I would. That’s why he told me not to.

Well, fine. He doesn’t want me to worry about him, I’m not going to. I’ve been doing well with Gerrard and Carson, and Killer keeps screwing up. I have a chance to start if I can keep my head in the game. This practice might’ve set me back for another week or two, and that gets me good and worked up. If Lee would just talk to me, I wouldn’t be this upset.

I start pacing the locker room. Forget him, I tell myself. Get back in the game. Go through the playbook. That works. I start reciting the plays to myself, doing footwork on the concrete of the locker room floor. A couple of the guys come in and look at me like I’m crazy. I ignore them, too. Shut out the world and focus on what needs to be done.

That afternoon, I am so ready. We go out for drills and I’m itching to get to the scrimmage, second team versus second team in a simulated game. Football is all that’s on my mind. I run every route. I bark at Dix when he misses a step. I watch a play develop and abandon my pattern to break it up. I get hot and sweaty and I don’t think about Lee once the whole afternoon. At the end of practice, Steez gets my attention across the sideline. He taps his head and nods. I nod back and run to the showers, for real this time.

That night, I go out with Charm, though I convince him not to go to a strip joint. We go to Mick’s and get pretty trashed. I walk home after calling him a cab, and lie down on my bed. The smell of fox gets me worked up again, angry at him for his attitude, for not calling me today, for the uninspired sex, for not getting angry about Caroll. I’m not drunk enough to throw up, but I am drunk enough to call him.