the Big Time (2010) (10 page)

“
I TOLD YOU G
Money has the keys to this city,” Troy's father said.

“But,” Troy said, hustling to keep up along the concrete sidewalk, “it's a fish tank. You can't just swim in it, no matter who you are.”

“Well,” his father said, still walking, “technically speaking, we're not going to swim; we're going to
dive
. But you could say swim.”

“Dive?” Troy said. They had reached the door to the entrance now, and his dad stepped up to the members window, where he gave his name to the person inside. A woman wearing a blue blazer and carrying a radio appeared, introducing herself as Christine Swimmer, the assistant manager of the aquarium.

“Right this way,” she said.

“I don't know,” Troy said, whispering to his dad. “I had a goldfish once, and they make a disgusting mess.”

His father smiled down at him and tousled his hair.

“Don't worry,” he said, “you're going to love this. I promise. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You'll be in a wet suit and breathing through a tube.”

They climbed a set of back stairs and emerged into a huge open space with a salty marsh smell like the time he'd gone crab fishing off the bridge leading to Jekyll Island on the coast. A metal mesh floor surrounded a round tank of water bigger than any pool Troy had ever seen. He sniffed and watched as a young woman wearing a wet suit dug her hands into a huge cooler, coming up with fistfuls of dead and bloody fish, which she tossed into the water. Colors flashed beneath the water's churning surface, and two dark shadows cruised through the frenzy like a bad dream.

“Sharks,” his father said, nodding at the water. “You ever hear of that saying?”

“What saying?” Troy asked.

“‘Swim with the sharks'?” his father said, pointing to the water, then at two sets of wet suits, masks, and fins hanging from hooks on the wall. “Don't worry. It's perfectly safe. They just ate. Come on.”

Troy followed his father through a door and into a locker room, where they changed into their bathing suits, then returned to the tank.

“Charlie and Melissa will help you out,” Christine Swimmer said, and two young people in wet suits appeared and showed them how to get into their gear.

Troy found himself stepping into a wet suit, wiggling his feet and hands to push them through their openings, and then sucking in his breath as Charlie zipped up the suit from behind. Troy slipped his feet into flippers and helped fix the mask on his face. Then Charlie strapped a belt around Troy's middle that had pouches filled with plastic-covered weights. When Troy's father put an arm around his shoulders, it almost made Troy's worry disappear, but not quite.

“Okay,” his father said, “here's the thing: You're scared.”

“I'm not scared,” Troy said.

“Yeah, you are,” his father said happily, “but that's okay. That's the point of this. It scares me, too. Look at that whale shark.”

Troy looked to where his dad was pointing. A shadow twice as long as Gramps's fishing boat cruised across the tank. Troy gulped.

“No way should we be jumping into the water with that thing,” his father said. “It's a primal fear. It comes from our forefathers, all the way back to the cavemen. People who mixed with things like that got eaten. Only the ones smart enough to be afraid survived.”

He looked at Troy, and Troy couldn't help feeling confused.

“The big-time people overcome that fear,” his father said. “They don't pretend it doesn't exist. They deal with it and dominate it. They take the stage. They write the great novel. They drop back and throw the touchdown pass that wins the game. It's all scary, because most people don't make it. Most people fail, so they never even try.

“This is just a symbol of what we've got ahead of us, you and me. There's going to be scary things—things big and dark that you can't quite see—that you'll have to jump in the tank with. It starts here. Come on. I'll be with you. Trust me. I told you I've always wanted a son. I'm sure not going to lose you this quick.”

Drew reached for a long yellow hose coiled neatly on the side of an air compressor. He flipped the switch so that it whirred to life. “Here, you put this regulator in your mouth. Stick with me. Charlie will be in there with us, too. I promise, this is something you'll never forget; and when you come out of there, you'll never be the same.”

Charlie gave Troy some basic instructions and showed him how to go in with his hand covering his mask as well as the regulator, which stuck out of his mouth like a small can of tuna. Troy watched as his father shrugged into a buoyancy vest with its own air tank and weight pockets, then nodded at Troy and stepped into the water. Troy bit down on the rubber mouthpiece, covered his face, and stepped off the ledge,
plunging into a swirl of bubbles and the kingdom of monsters.

Troy felt his father's strong grip on his upper arm, and he turned to see Drew's questioning look and the “okay” sign he made with his fingers. Troy nodded and signaled “okay” back, even though he felt his heart bumping in his throat.

Beneath them, the spotted whale shark swept its tail back and forth like a pendulum. All around, the smaller and more colorful fish zoomed back and forth. Troy and his dad sank slowly, the coral formations crowding in on them. The hiss and click of a million air bubbles exploded all around them.

Then Troy's dad nudged him and pointed, and there it came: a ten-foot hammerhead shark, with its nasty sneer and its dull dead eyes, snaking up toward them through the water. The pale chin dropped open, and Troy could see the jagged rows of teeth. Without thinking, he broke for the surface, kicking madly, but his father held him down. He wrapped his muscular legs around Troy's legs, pinning him in a human vise so that Troy stopped struggling.

The shark came right at them, its mouth grinning wildly at the sight of Troy's terror. Its eyes seemed to dance at the thought of his blood.

THE MASSIVE FISH VEERED
off and swam away.

Troy felt his body go limp. His father's regulator exploded with bubbles and a burst of underwater laughter. Then his father jiggled an “okay” sign in front of Troy's face, nodding his head to ask if Troy was all right. Troy held up his own sign, weak but with the warmth of avoided danger blossoming in his chest.

The reef sharks, sawfish, barracudas, and even the docile whale shark soon became novelties, like puppet dragons hung backstage after a show. Even the nasty hammerhead soon proved he wanted less to do with the divers than they wanted with him. And once when Charlie wasn't looking, Troy even flicked a hand at it, causing it to flinch and hurry away, wagging its tail like a puppy.

That's when Troy noticed the evening crowd. Ordinary people—men, women, kids, and teenagers—all pressed to the glass, all pointing at them, the ones who swam with the sharks.

When Charlie signaled for them to head up, Troy felt a disappointment he couldn't have imagined a half hour before. Still, when they broke the surface, the exhilaration of it all made him whoop and slap a high five with his father before they even got out of the tank. They shed their gear and changed back into their clothes in the locker room, his father toweling off with brisk strokes. Before they left, Troy noticed his father slip folded bills of money to the people who had helped them, even Christine Swimmer. When they broke out into the evening light on the sidewalk, he asked about it.

“Did you have to pay them off?” Troy asked.

His father chuckled and said, “No. The aquarium did that as a favor to me. I helped set up G Money to do a charity event for them. Those people got the word from way up high to give us the VIP treatment. They do dives like that for other people, but it takes a long time to get in. I just gave them that money as a tip, just to say thanks.”

“That's how they do it in the big time?” Troy asked.

“Exactly how,” his father said. “When you make big, big money, you don't mind throwing it around a little. People appreciate it, and it comes back to you in
ways you can't imagine.”

“Do you have big money?”

His father gave him a knowing grin and waved to the orange Porsche on the street. “Big enough so I don't talk about it,” he said.

“Sorry,” Troy said.

“No, that's okay. You're my son.”

They ate thick steaks at Chops and had lobster tails drenched in butter. Troy dug into a strawberry short-cake, while his father had a glass of thick purple wine called port. On the drive home, Troy begged to have the top down, even though the temperature had dropped sharply without the sun. As they got off the highway near Troy's home, he pointed at the clock on the dashboard.

“It's only nine,” he said.

“I know,” his father said. “I'll get you home early.”

Troy's face fell, and his father reached over to muss his hair.

“Don't look like that,” his father said. “It's not because I don't want to be with you. It's the exact opposite. I get you home early and it does two things. First, it puts your mom in a good mood; and second, it gives me time to explain to her why she needs to let you miss school tomorrow.”

“To fly out to New York?” Troy asked, excited now. “You really think she'll let me?”

“I know her pretty well, Troy,” Drew said, his eyes
narrowing at the road ahead, “and, like I said, I haven't forgotten how to deal with her. Yeah, I think we got a pretty good chance she'll let you go, but we'll see. It's just like football. You never know for sure you've won until that final gun.”

THEY PULLED UP INTO
the dirt patch in front of Troy's house, and Drew snuggled the Porsche right up next to the VW bug.

“Excellent,” Drew said, his eyes scanning all around them. “Seth's got some manners.”

“What do you mean?” Troy asked.

“A lot of guys in his shoes would be upset about all this,” Drew said, sitting and looking at the small saltbox house. “The old boyfriend showing up. Father of the kid. Me and your mom? We've got some catching up to do, and we sure couldn't do it with Seth hanging around. I respect him.”

“You mean, like, he'd be jealous?” Troy asked, his heart thumping. “Like you and my mom getting back together?”

“I doubt that,” Drew said, chuckling softly until he looked at Troy's face, “but you never know, right?”

“That's what I was thinking,” Troy said, following his father as he hopped out of the car, then trailing him up onto the porch.

“Okay,” Drew said, taking hold of Troy's shoulder. “You let me do the talking in there. Just do what you normally do.”

“Like get ready for bed and say good night?” Troy asked. “But how do I know if I'm going to New York with you?”

“You don't,” Drew said, “but you trust me. If there's any way of you going, it won't happen unless you just go to bed like you're not expecting anything other than a day of algebra, or whatever it is you take in whatever grade you're in.”

“Seventh,” Troy said.

His dad shrugged and angled his head at the glow from the big front window.

Troy opened the door and wasn't surprised to see his mom reading a book on the couch with her feet curled up underneath her. Drew stepped inside but stayed on the mat.

“Okay if I come in?” Drew said in a voice Troy hadn't heard before.

“Sure,” his mom said, closing the book but without getting up.

“Well,” Troy said, extending a hand to his father, “thanks…”

Troy blushed, unsure of what to call him.

“Thanks, Dad?” Drew said, raising his eyebrows and then grinning as he shook Troy's hand. “You may as well get used to it.”

“Thanks…Dad,” Troy said, and it felt oh so good.

Even his mom smiled, and Troy kissed her and said good night. On his way into the hallway toward the bathroom, he heard his dad ask, “Mind if I sit?”

“No,” his mom said. “Please.”

From the corner of his eye, Troy saw his father sit on the couch, careful to leave an empty cushion between them before he turned and winked at Troy. Troy hurried out of sight.

When he was ready for bed, Troy moved slowly down the hall, his ears aching to decipher the low murmur of his parents' voices. He stopped and listened hard, until they went silent and his mom shot her voice his way.

“Troy? Get to bed.”

Troy scuttled into his room, closing the door and plastering his ear to its smooth, cool surface.

Nothing.

For quite some time he paced his room, listening for something, anything. He considered slipping out through the window but knew better. He made up wizardly devices he wished he had, things that could
snake silently through the air vents with a microphone or detect words from the vibrations of sound moving through walls. In the end he lay down on his bed, yawned, and waited for the sound of his mother's bath and the water groaning through the pipes. When she went to bed, he could sneak out to the kitchen phone and call his father to get the scoop. His mind whirled around the different possibilities between his parents, his contract, the TV interviews he would soon be doing, and his entire future.

The thirst to know what they were saying and doing battled with his drooping eyelids and the yawns that snuck up out of his throat. Eventually, he surrendered to exhaustion with the final thought that if he allowed himself to close his eyes, the next time they opened he would know his fate.

TROY AND HIS FATHER
sped down not the interstate that led to the Atlanta airport but a back road that took them to the DeKalb Peachtree Airport, a place his dad said was less than a half hour from Troy's home.

“How'd you do it?” Troy asked.

His father shifted the sunglasses on his face, then smoothed the slicked-back hair that held its shape even with the top down.

“Magic,” his father said.

“Come on,” Troy said, stuffing a knuckle into his yawn. “My mom let me miss Home Ec yesterday and that went into the
Guinness Book of World Records
. She doesn't let me miss a day of school for anything.”

“Anything except Seth Cole, who happens to own the New York Jets,” his father said as he spun the wheel.
They turned in through an open chain-link gate and came to rest outside a white concrete terminal with an air traffic control tower sprouting from one corner like the turret of a castle.

“It had to be more than that,” Troy said.

“I can't teach you all my tricks,” his father said, grinning.

Two glass doors yawned open as they stepped inside the terminal, following a red carpet to the desk where a young woman asked for their names. She showed them to a doorway where a man in a blue jumpsuit waited with a golf cart. They climbed into the backseat and the cart lurched forward, dodging through a jungle of jet airplanes whose tight white skins gleamed in the sunlight. Troy had to blink to study their different designs and the barrel-shaped engines each one of them sported in pairs.

Once through the jungle, they emerged on the edge of the runway near a bigger plane, with an engine the size of his mom's VW bug. Its stairs were down. The pilot next to them stood checking a clipboard. He tipped his hat to Troy and his dad before following them up the stairs and into the airplane.

A man in a different kind of uniform greeted them politely and told them to let him know if there was anything they needed. Troy lost his breath when he smelled the leather and saw the gleaming brass and the swirling grain of the dark wood. The cabin looked like an
elegant living room, and Troy didn't know what to do, even when his father flopped down into a plush leather seat and extended his feet.

“Where should I go?” he asked, directing his voice away from the attendant and trying not to sound like a fool.

“Anywhere you want,” his father said, removing a laptop from his briefcase and booting it up.

“What about everyone else?” Troy asked, looking about at the empty room.

His father glanced around, then smiled. “Oh. There isn't anyone else, buddy. It's just us.”

The sound of the door being pulled shut from the front proved his father was right. Troy sat down in the other big chair, facing forward like his dad. While his father's fingers jittered across the computer's keyboard, Troy studied the big screen on the wall in front of them. Various maps and charts took turns filling the screen like a slide show. The attendant hurried to finish fussing in the small kitchen area by the front and ducked out to say that he'd be with them in just a blink.

The plane turned fast, and the engines howled, thrusting them forward. Troy felt the wheels leave the earth. Up they shot, nearly straight, engines groaning under the strain so that Troy's stomach clenched with the fear of dropping from the sky like a brick.

Instead, they sailed ever higher until they began to level out. As they approached the Georgia mountains,
the earth below lay spread out like a rumpled blanket. His father didn't even look up.

“You can get internet service?” Troy asked.

“Yup.”

“You working?” Troy asked.

His father glanced up and said, “For you, I am.”

“Doing what?” Troy asked.

“Whipping them up.”

“Whipping who?”

“Them,” his father said, waving his hand at the world below. “The teams, the media, the fans.”

Troy tilted his head, and his father's hands rose up from the keyboard to gesture as he spoke.

“Remember that hockey player who broke his neck, and they thought he'd never walk again but he did?” his father asked.

“The one from the Blackhawks?”

“Right, him,” his father said. “I sold the movie rights to that story. Got him half a million dollars.”

“I think I saw that movie on TV,” Troy said.

His father's eyes gleamed. “The day after he took his first step, I had ten TV cameras at the hospital and twenty print reporters. After that I started whipping up the producers and the studios. I got five times what that story would have been worth if I'd just put it out there. You can't just put things out there; you have to whip them up. You make up a number and say you
already got an offer from some big name. Then the rest get scared they're going to miss something. They get hungry. They stop thinking with their heads, and they let their stomachs take over. They drive the price up into the stars. That's when I ink the deal.”

“Is that,” Troy said, hesitating, “honest?”

His father shrugged, grinned, and said, “I don't know. That's being an agent.”

He offered Troy a final nod before turning his attention back to the computer screen. Troy studied his dad's flurry of typing and then turned to look down at the wrinkled mountains below.

Troy watched the mountains, countryside, and small towns and cities slide by beneath them. Still, it was sooner than he imagined it would be when the buildings of New York City appeared in the distance, surrounded by water, closely packed together and stretching for the sky. Troy stared at the enormous city on their approach—marveling at its buildings, its bridges, and the pale green Statue of Liberty poking up from its harbor. His eyes couldn't get big enough to take it all in, and he craned his neck for one last glimpse of the skyline as they took the final plunge, then thumped down to land at the airport. The plane taxied to a stop just outside the terminal. They descended the steps and his father searched the area outside the chain-link fence, smiling with a satisfied
nod at the sight of the cameras and the milling crowd of reporters who surrounded a long black limousine just outside the terminal.

“Is that for us?” Troy asked.

His father grinned and gestured for him to walk on. “Son, welcome to the Big Apple.”