Tigers and Devils

by Sean Kennedy

  A couple of people on the street began to take notice of us. All I could think of was getting back to my car, which was only a block or so away. I had a feeling if I tried to seek refuge in a shop he would only follow me, and things would get worse in a confined area.

  “Hey, tough guy,” he said, “where are you running to?”

  I could feel my face burning. Most people who were watching us had sympathetic looks on their faces; I think maybe I was more recognisable than I ever thought. Of course it didn’t help I was on the front page of the paper today.

  “I’m talking to you!”

  Just don’t fall into replying to him. You’ll make it worse. Just get to your car and keep your trap shut.

  “They should run your fucking faggot boyfriend out of the league! There’s no place for people like him in it!”

  Now, I was in no way the tough guy when I turned on him. It was a fluke, really, I just caught him by surprise when I pulled my fist back and landed it on his cheek. He stumbled and fell backwards onto his arse, while my fist pulsed with pain. Later, Roger would inform me only amateurs go for the face when in a fight. That was me, of course.

  But my opponent returned the shock of surprise. He looked up at me and licked the small trickle of blood coming from the edge of his lip. With a grin, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile. “That’s assault, I’m calling the fucking police!”

  By now a small crowd had formed around us. I felt a small surge of panic and pulled my wallet out of my bag. I had never thought I would have use for it, but I knew it was probably my best bet.

  I called the number on Ed Wallace’s business card. It was time to bring in the big guns, and there was none bigger than the CEO of the Devils.

  “WHAT do you mean, it’s all sorted?” Declan asked.

  “I told you, Dec, we took care of it,” Ed replied smoothly.

  I sat silently across from Dec, staring at the surface of the table. We were in one of the boardrooms at Etihad. Ed had sent a lawyer down to the station for me, and talks had taken place between her and my “victim”, whose name turned out to be Jason Terne.

  “Simon?” Dec asked.

  I continued to stare at the table.

  My lawyer—fuck, I had a lawyer now—spoke up for me. “Declan, I’m Nancy Hersh. I met Simon at the station and managed to speak with Mr. Terne—”

  “Who?” Declan asked.

  “My victim,” I told him. It was the first thing I had said to him since he came into the boardroom looking tense and worried.

  “Don’t use that word, Mr. Murray,” Nancy instructed me.

  I could feel Declan’s gaze burning through my skin. I looked up and our eyes met. He had a thousand questions to ask, I could tell, but he wanted to ask them when we were alone.

  Nancy turned to him. “There are six witnesses willing to come forward for Mr. Murray and state that he was harassed by Mr. Terne, and when the alleged punch was thrown—”

  “Punch? There was a punch?” Dec asked.

  I lifted my hand. The skin on a couple of knuckles had split, and there was a butterfly bandage covering them. There had been some worry that I might have fractured one of them, but one of the on-call doctors at the Etihad gym had looked at it and declared me fine.

  “You punched him?” Declan demanded.

  “Allegedly,” Nancy said quickly.

  “No allegedly,” I said softly. “I did it.”

  “You can only say that in this room,” Nancy reminded me.

  Ed watched this with some amusement. “As soon as the guy heard the other witnesses would testify against him, he dropped any threat of making charges. And just to make sure it would stay that way… well—”

  “You bribed him?” Dec asked.

  “Not a bribe,” Nancy jumped in. She always liked things to be worded her way so there was no chance for recriminations later on. “We paid him for the exclusive rights to his story. That way he can’t tell it to anyone else.”

  I started staring back down at the table again.

  Declan sighed. “Unbelievable.”

  “You can’t afford the controversy, Declan,” Ed told him. “There’s been enough already. Have you seen the papers today?”

  Still not looking up, I awaited Declan’s response while forgetting to breathe.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you understand.”

  “I guess.”

  I guess? No they’re wrong? No denial of any kind? I looked up, but it was Declan who was now staring down the other end of the table at anything but me.

  “The contracts have been signed,” Nancy said, starting to pack her briefcase up. “So there’ll probably be nothing more said of it. Thanks for calling me in, Ed.”

  “No, thank you for clearing this up.” Ed rose to shake her hand. “I’ll walk you out.”

  He nodded at Declan, but ignored me.

  That was because he had taken me aside before Declan had arrived and asked me if I thought things had changed. When I was perplexed by his question, he reminded me I had assured him the first time we met I had Declan’s best intentions at heart.

  He then insinuated that I was becoming a liability, especially with my “reckless behaviour.” Although I knew he had only arranged this to stop further bad press for Declan, he had still been the only way I could get out of the situation relatively unscathed. But now he had something over me. And I had no doubt he would probably use it against me at some point, maybe in an effort to try to make Declan see that what everybody else said about me was true.

  And it seemed that Declan didn’t need much convincing at the moment. “What the fuck were you thinking, Simon?”

  It was the question I was dreading, but I really hadn’t expected him to say it with such vehemence. I thought he would have been concerned about me first and then let me have it.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I murmured.

  “That’s for fucking sure.”

  “Dec—”

  “All those times you had a go at me for fighting on the field—”

  “And did you ever listen to me?” I reminded him.

  “But at least I wasn’t acting all holier-than-thou and then turning around and doing the same thing!”

  I felt like I was going to throw up. Or hit him. “‘Holier than thou’?”

  “When you go on one of your superior rants—”

  “‘Superior’?” It seemed like all I could do was mimic him at the moment.

  “Yes, superior! Because that’s the way you act sometimes, like you’re above everybody else. That you’re right about everything, and everyone should act the way you think. Except you never do it yourself. You just do what you like—”

  “Maybe I do, sometimes! But I make mistakes. And I did that today.”

  “Why couldn’t you have just ignored him?” Declan was going red in the face; I had never seen him look so angry before. At least, not at me.

  “The same reason why you couldn’t ignore them when they sledged me on the field!” I yelled. “Because I can cope with getting shit about me from strangers on the street, but I hate hearing it said about you!”

  Instead of telling me he understood, because I knew it was the same from his point of view, he was still too angry. “You just don’t think things through!”

  I was starting to feed off his mood, and I was on the defensive. “I don’t think things through? Everything I think revolves around you and how it affects you. And it doesn’t matter what I do, it’s all my fault. I have enough people telling me that, and then when they’re quiet I have the media saying it. Even your fucking boss today said I was a liability to you.”

  The last sentence didn’t seem to register with him. “Then why did you hit that guy, if you knew all of that? You must have known it would only make things worse!”

  I slumped back into my chair. “Because I’m tired. I’m sick of it. I want a break.”

  Those words were out of my mouth before I even realised it. In my head
I was having this beautiful, romantic fantasy of Dec and I loading the car and running away for a month, holing up in some deserted cabin somewhere… maybe along the Great Ocean Road. Where we could just be us without everybody else sticking their oar in.

  That’s all I wanted for a while. I needed it. And I knew he did as well.

  But Declan misinterpreted it. “That’s what you want?” he asked coldly.

  I nodded.

  “Then you’ve got it.”

  I couldn’t comprehend the link between what he was saying, and the expression on his face. They were completely different. “What?”

  “Enjoy your break,” Dec said. Standing before me, he looked like a totally different person. A cold, robotic man in shut-down mode.

  I then realised what I had said, and how it could be misinterpreted. “Dec, that’s not what I meant—”

  He shook his head. “It is. Bye, Simon.”

  I called out his name, but he closed the door behind him. I sat there for a moment, my mind racing over everything that had just been said between us. Was this really how quickly things could end, over such a stupid and simple sentence? I got to my feet and ran to the door, about to yank it open, when the knob turned under my hand.

  Thank fuck, Dec—

  It was Ed. “Everything okay, Simon?”

  “Thanks for today,” I said hurriedly as I pushed past him.

  “Remember our little talk,” he called after me.

  I didn’t give a fuck about our little talk. I ran down the maze of hallways, trying to find my way to the car park. In my frenzied state I got myself lost, but even with such a diversion I should have been able to catch up with Declan easily. Unless he was running from me.

  By the time I pushed open the big doors to the car park, the space reserved for the players was empty. I hurriedly pulled out my mobile and dialled his number. The other end of the line rang for ages and then diverted to his message-bank.

  I think I called it about six times, and on the seventh it diverted straightaway. He had switched his phone off.

  Slowly, I made my way back to my own car, which Nancy had driven me from the police station to collect on the way to Etihad.

  I hoped my mobile would ring and show Dec’s number.

  But it didn’t.

  Chapter 29

  I DON’T know how Nyssa did it, but she managed to keep pulling the festival together despite my absence. Opening night was less than three weeks away. She sounded panicked when I said I would be off work for a while, but I must have sounded awful enough for her not to doubt I was sick.

  I still couldn’t believe it had come to this. I couldn’t even claim Declan and I were in relationship limbo, because I couldn’t even speak to him to confirm it. There was such an air of finality to it all, like he had given up on me completely and had shut me out so he didn’t even feel the need to give me any details.

  Roger and Fran finally realised something was up on Wednesday when they hadn’t been able to get in contact with me the day after the Brownlows. Nyssa told them I was sick, and when they still couldn’t reach me at home, they tried calling Declan. And apparently Declan was unreachable and never returned the messages they left for him.

  So they let themselves into my house with the spare key and found me catatonic in my bedroom, listening to every depressing song I owned over and over again.

  Joni Mitchell was singing about how she made her baby say good-bye, and I was singing along with her about how I had lost the best baby I had ever had.

  “Oh crap,” Fran muttered to Roger. “This is breakup territory.”

  “You’d be better dealing with him,” Roger said, panicked. “I’ll go and make tea.”

  She waved him away. Joni stopped singing, and I realised she had switched the stereo off.

  “Don’t,” I moaned.

  “Hon, you can’t keep listening to that. What happened?”

  I buried my face deeper into my pillow. “You already guessed.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” I said. And I waited until Roger returned, and we all sat on my bed as I told them the whole sorry story.

  “So it’s just a stupid miscommunication,” Roger shrugged. “Nothing new between the two of you.”

  “It sounds different to me,” said Fran, the smarter and more intuitive one of the partnership. “Declan won’t even talk to us.”

  “I wonder if Abe and Lisa know.” I pulled Maggie onto my lap, and she struggled to get free, but I wouldn’t let her. I had already let Declan escape; Maggie was now my prisoner for life.

  “Call them,” Roger said.

  “I don’t think I could handle it if they ignored me as well.”

  Maggie sank her claws into my arm, and I yelped and let her go. Even my cat hated me.

  “Well, you can’t sit in here forever,” Roger told me. “You have a festival to run. And Nyssa won’t tell you this, but she’s stressing out.”

  “She is?”

  “She’s got some of her friends in to help her, though,” Fran said quickly. “She can probably handle you taking another few days off.”

  “This will all blow over,” Roger said, trying to sound reassuring.

  “You didn’t see Declan’s face,” I reminded him.

  “But we know how much he loves you,” Fran reminded me.

  “Love doesn’t always win out,” I sniffed.

  Roger wrinkled his nose. “Are you quoting Joni Mitchell again? And what’s up with Joni Mitchell, anyway? It’s not like you’re a fifty-year-old hippie.”

  I whacked him over the head with my pillow; it gave me a momentary satisfaction.

  THE next day I decided that I couldn’t leave Nyssa in the lurch for any longer and drove into work, reverting back to my old public transport-avoiding ways.

  She was surprised to see me walk through the door, and she instantly ran up to me and gave me a huge hug.

  “Fran told you,” I said flatly.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “Just wait and see. You’ll hear from him soon.”

  I didn’t answer. She pushed me back so she could have a good look at me. Her brave smile almost made me break down.

  “I’m going to make you a coffee. Go and sit down, I’ll bring it in to you.”

  I thanked her and dragged myself into my office. The glare coming in through the windows made me wince, and I pulled the blinds down.

  There was a pile of messages and mail stacked on my desk. I knew there wouldn’t be one from him, but I searched for Declan’s name anyway. The new Reach Out fell out from the pile; I couldn’t face reading it so moved to bin it. But I saw there was a picture of Declan and me on the front page, taken at the Brownlows. The box beneath it crowed about how it was a defining moment in the history of gay sport. I wondered how long before the same photo would be used with a new caption once word got out about our breakup: the oft-used and clichéd In happier times.

  In larger print to the side of the photo: EXCLUSIVE: DECLAN TELLS US ABOUT HIS NIGHT. PAGE 2.

  I quickly flicked to the second page, and there was a photo of Declan by himself, beaming at the camera. It was taken the same night, but obviously when I wasn’t around.

  The byline for the article read An exclusive by Jasper Brunswick.

  What the hell? When did Dec speak to Jasper? Jasper freaking Brunswick?

  Nyssa entered the room silently and set a cup of coffee before me.

  I held up the newspaper. “Have you seen this?”

  Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No. What does it say?”

  “I’m just about to read it.”

  “Do you think you should?”

  I gave her a slight smile. “I’ll be fine, Nyss.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Nyss?”

  She turned back, a look of concern still in her eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  She nodded and closed the door
behind her.

  I turned my attention back to the paper. Jasper seemed to be trying to turn himself into a proper journalist now. His smarmy gossipy tone was almost completely gone as he wrote about how Declan was a groundbreaker and a role model, and what he was doing would make things so much easier for people in the same situation in the future.

  It turned out Dec had done a phone interview with him on Tuesday afternoon, obviously before he had found out about my misadventures on Brunswick Street with Jason Terne.

  I skimmed the article, hearing Declan’s voice in my head as he responded to Jasper’s questions about the past year. I felt an ache worse than any I had ever experienced, especially when he got asked about the Brownlow:

  Jasper: Do you really think being gay, and having a partner openly, hurt your chances of getting a medal?

  Declan: I don’t think that in itself cost me the medal. It was just that I let go of my temper on the field sometimes during the year for various reasons, and I guess that went against me when it came to the voting. I mean, if the umpires themselves were being homophobic in that regard, I wouldn’t have even come that close to winning. I just wouldn’t have gotten any points.

  The man was classy. I was so fucking stupid.

  Jasper: How did you feel on the night?

  Declan: It sounds stupid, but like a million bucks. When you don’t have to live closeted, people don’t realise how much they take for granted… just the privilege of being able to be out and about with the person you love. For so long, I’ve wanted that, and this year it happened. I got to share that night with Simon, and it was the best feeling.

  Jasper: So if he “cost” you that medal…

  Declan: Then I think the price was more than worth it.

  Jasper: Thanks for your time, Declan.

  Declan: Thank you.

  I ripped the page out of the paper, folded it up, and put it inside my wallet. I knew I would torment myself thousands of times by rereading it, memorising the beautiful things Declan had said about me, and berating myself for fucking it all up.

  Unless I gave up.