Fantasy League

by Mike Lupica

  Every single time he was on the line making a pick.

  Things only got worse for the Bulldogs in their rematch the following week against the 49ers. Tom Pinkett had an up-and-down day, throwing three touchdown passes and two interceptions. And the Dogs’ rookie kick returner, Isaiah Browne, fumbled one punt after a twenty-yard return, and then just flat missed another—with both leading to San Francisco scores. The Bulldogs lost, 41–28, their third loss in a row.

  Jack Sutton’s game was more down than up. He had a couple more costly penalties—a defensive holding call that gave the 49ers a key first down, and then a hit to the helmet penalty that ruined what would have been an interception.

  He did show flashes of the old Sack Sutton talent, though. There was one play when he blew past two blockers as the 49ers’ QB was trying to run an option, swung his arm and knocked the ball loose, giving the Bulldogs a turnover that Tom Pinkett took advantage of by driving the offense right down the field for a touchdown that, for the moment at least, gave everyone hope.

  It was like Jack was teasing Bulldogs fans, showing them just enough to keep him in there, showing he still had big plays and big moments in him.

  But Charlie—Charlie the numbers guy—knew that Jack was still giving too many big plays to the other team.

  Charlie was with Anna the day after the 49ers game, the Bulldogs having hardly any turnaround time because they had the Thursday night game against the Browns at Bulldogs Stadium. As usual, Mr. Warren had invited Charlie to sit in the suite even though Charlie wouldn’t have blamed him if he didn’t want him around, at practice or at games, the way things were going.

  Charlie had told his mom he might not want to go; the last thing Mr. Warren needed was to be seen sitting next to him on national television, something that would give the Thursday night announcers a chance to make fun of both of them.

  “You should go,” his mom had said before Anna came over. “If Joe Warren didn’t want you there, he wouldn’t have invited you.”

  “So you’re, like, ordering me to go to a football game on a school night?”

  “Pretty much,” she’d said, and kissed him on top of his head. “Go figure.”

  “Why couldn’t I have kept my stupid opinions to myself?” Charlie’d said.

  “They weren’t stupid just because they aren’t working out right now,” she’d said. “And anyway, that’s not the way you roll.” She’d given her head a quick shake then, like getting cobwebs out, and said, “Did I just say that? The way you roll?”

  Charlie had just replayed the conversation for Anna, finishing by saying, “My mom’s hardly ever wrong on the big stuff. But I should have kept my big fat mouth shut.”

  And that’s when Anna said, “You should have.”

  Sitting cross-legged on Charlie’s rug, leaning back against his bed, laptop and microphone and power cord between them, a plate of cookies next to her, having just finished The Charlie Show.

  Charlie said, “Not exactly the answer I was looking for.”

  “Then maybe this is another time when you should have kept your mouth shut.”

  She added: “I mean, you did a pretty good job of that when you didn’t tell me about Jack Sutton.”

  “Wait a second,” Charlie said. “You acted like you were cool with it when it happened. You hardly said anything about it at all.”

  “There’s no law that I have to tell you everything I’m thinking,” she said.

  “So you’re saying you weren’t cool with it?”

  “Wasn’t cool with it then, not cool with it now,” she said. “You and your little secrets with Gramps.”

  “He asked me not to tell anybody for one day,” Charlie said.

  “I’m not anybody,” she said.

  “I just figured that if he wanted you to know, he would have told you himself.”

  “Knowing him as long as you have, you mean?”

  “Now you’re just being sarcastic.”

  “Gee, you think?”

  “Great, more sarcasm.”

  “Deal with it.”

  Charlie couldn’t explain it, he just felt like they were in a car now that was starting to go faster and faster, no way to put on the brakes.

  “What are we really talking about here?”

  “Okay, this time I’ll tell you exactly what I’m thinking,” Anna said. “And what I’m thinking is that we’re supposed to be a team. You and me. I told you that after your big press conference with Tom Pinkett. Only we weren’t a team with Jack Sutton. You know how people are always joking that there’s no i in team? Guess I found out that there sure is one in Charlie.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been holding a lot in,” Charlie said.

  Anna said, “It’s like something I almost told you in the park that night, but didn’t. And you want to know why I didn’t? Because I could see that you couldn’t see how you were starting to get a big head. That your ego was getting in the way.”

  “You said nothing was bothering you.”

  “You really are dense, aren’t you? That was the night you told me how you crushed it with the reporters.”

  Putting air quotes around “crushed.”

  Before he could respond she said, “Maybe I’m just sick of how much you’ve changed.”

  “I haven’t changed.”

  “Really?”

  “You know what this sounds like to me?” Charlie said. “Like you’re piling on along with everybody else right now.”

  “How am I piling on when all I’m basically doing is agreeing with you? You say that you should have kept your mouth shut about Jack Sutton and I agreed. It’s just that your ego doesn’t like hearing the truth.”

  “My ego again,” he said. “You make it sound like it’s to blame for everything except smog.”

  “Nah,” she said, “my biggest problem isn’t your new supersized ego. It’s that I liked the old Charlie better.”

  “I told you, I haven’t changed,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “you have. You started liking the attention you got from Tom Pinkett so much that you had to get that feeling again with Jack Sutton.”

  “That’s not fair,” he said.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not. You know me better than that.”

  “You know what I know? How soon you forgot that you never would have told Gramps about Tom Pinkett if I didn’t make you. If I wasn’t behind you the way I always am. But once it was out there, you started to like people treating you like a star.”

  “But I do seem to remember it was your idea to make me a star with our podcast.”

  Anna ignored that one.

  She said, “This time you were going to go one better with Gramps than you did with Tom Pinkett, sitting there on the bench in Cincinnati. This time you found a guy . . . in the movies!”

  Charlie felt himself getting hot now, knowing it was a terrible idea with her, knowing getting mad at Anna never ever worked, even when they were just having one of their normal debates about almost anything, ice cream or music. Or football.

  But right now he didn’t care.

  “You’re the one who should have a talk show,” Charlie said. “You seem to know everything about everything.”

  “I’m just telling you what I think.”

  “I did what I did because I love the team,” Charlie said.

  Standing up now.

  Anna stood up, too.

  “You ever think about loving it a little less sometimes?”

  “You ever think about shutting up?” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You ever think that you’re not always smarter than everybody else?” Charlie said.

  Feeling like the car wasn’t just going too fast now, feeling as if it was out of control. And there was nothing he could do t
o stop it.

  “Excuse me?” she said, her voice as low as he knew his was loud.

  “You think you’re the only one keeping things in?” Charlie said. “You think I never do? You think I don’t get sick of you being such a know-it-all? Oh, I forgot, that’s perfectly all right, you’re always telling me you’re doing it because you care about me so much. How about this? How about you care about me a little less?”

  Now her voice was so low Charlie could barely hear it. Not that he wanted to in that moment.

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said, “for being your friend.”

  And walked out of his room, down the stairs, Charlie hearing her on the phone, asking her mother to come pick her up now.

  Then he heard the front door close.

  When he heard the car about ten minutes later, he went to his window, watched her get into the backseat.

  She turned and looked up at him, as if she knew he was watching.

  He didn’t feel like Brain then. He just felt like a dope.

  Twenty-Nine

  MR. WARREN CALLED DURING DINNER the next night and asked if Charlie wanted to come to practice the next day. Charlie thanked him but said, no, he had some studying to do.

  He wasn’t lying, Charlie hated lying and liars, he did have a test on Thursday, but he could have done a total grind after school and got his studying in then.

  “No problem,” Mr. Warren said. “Glad to see my friend Charlie studying something besides Xs and Os. But I’ll see you Thursday night for the game, right?”

  Charlie covered the receiver, took a deep breath, let it out, thinking, Okay, here goes.

  “Actually I can’t do that, either, Mr. Warren. My other team, the Cardinals, has a practice that doesn’t end until six at the earliest, and the Bulldogs game starts at five-thirty. I’ll just have to record it and watch it from the start without knowing the score when I get home.”

  “I could send Carlos and you could catch the second half if you want. He won’t mind missing a little of the game.”

  “I wouldn’t want him to do that,” Charlie said. “You know how much I love sitting next to you at games. I’ll catch the next one, okay?”

  Charlie had forgotten he had Cardinals practice when his mom had told him he should go to the game, the schedule changing from week to week depending on Coach Dayley’s schedule at work. But he knew that if everything hadn’t turned into this kind of crapfest—with the team, with Anna, even with the media—he might have taken Mr. Warren up on his offer.

  But practice gave him an out, so he didn’t have to lie to Mr. Warren and his mom. And he was going to grab it, just tell himself that this was the way things used to be before he was going to every single Bulldogs home game and sitting with the owner of the team, tell himself that when things were a lot more normal in his life, he would have been focusing as much on the Cardinals game against Palos Verdes on Saturday as he was on Bulldogs vs. Browns on Thursday night.

  Only there was a new normal now for Charlie Gaines, which meant hardly anything was the way it used to be.

  Oh, he’d watch the Thursday night game all right, root as hard as he ever did for the Bulldogs; as badly as things were going for them right now, they were still his team. He’d rooted for them in all the other bad times, in all the other seasons.

  When he really thought about it, maybe one thing was back to the way it used to be:

  He was fine with watching a Bulldogs game alone.

  • • •

  The Bulldogs lost again, lost even though the Browns turned the ball over four times. Tom Pinkett threw two bad picks in the fourth quarter, one on the eleven-yard line when a field goal would have tied the game and a touchdown would have put the Bulldogs ahead.

  Jack Sutton played maybe half the snaps on defense, sharing time with Bart Tubbs. Each made a play that hurt the Bulldogs in the second half, Jack running right past the Browns’ fullback on a screen when it looked as if he had the guy lined up for an eight-yard loss. The fullback ended up running thirty yards, down to the two-yard line.

  On the NFL Network’s broadcast, Mike Mayock, the analyst, said, “Maybe the next time the Bulldogs sign a free agent out of the movies, they should try for one of the Avengers.”

  Charlie, who usually liked Mayock, said, “And maybe your network should go get Phil Simms.”

  But even when Jack Sutton would make a bad play, and he was making his share, he would come back later and make a good one. Remind you of the player he used to be. And give you hope that he could figure things out before the season was over.

  In the Los Angeles Times the next day, Charlie reading it on his phone on the way to school, Bill Spencer wrote this about Jack Sutton:

  One of these days we are going to find out if a B-list actor can still be an A-lister on the football field for an entire game. There’s a reason why he lights up talk shows the way he does, and you saw it again last night against the Texans: The guy continues to carry around a world of hurt with him, he just keeps directing it at the Bulldogs as much as their opponents. Like Sack Sutton is as good right now sacking himself as the other team’s quarterback.

  He and Anna sat together at lunch that day, as awkward as it was for both of them, everything more awkward between them than he could ever remember, and Charlie knew they both knew it. But it was also as if they both knew it would have been even more weird for them to stop having lunch together, or to avoid each other altogether, though they probably both wanted to right now. Anything would be better than ever having the kind of rockfight of an argument they’d had.

  He asked her what it had been like in the suite in the second half.

  “Oh, it was tons of fun,” she said.

  “How was your grandfather?”

  “Quiet,” she said, all the traces of sarcasm gone. “The look on his face, I’ve seen that look before, in all the other seasons when we turned into a bunch of losers.”

  “They’re not losers,” he said. “It’s a weak division. They’re still only two games out of first.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “They can just as easily win some games in a row the way they’ve lost some.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “What else am I gonna believe at this point?” he said. “What choice do I have? It isn’t the way I’d bet, or even make with one of my fantasy picks. But I’m not betting. Or making a fantasy pick. I’m rooting.”

  “At least you’re honest,” she said. “You still crushing it in all your fantasy leagues, by the way?”

  Trying to sound interested. Or just get the subject away from the Bulldogs.

  “All but one.”

  “Still behind in that one? Must kill you, being in second in even one of them. Who’s that guy tormenting you?”

  “He calls himself Dream Team,” Charlie said. “Don’t worry. I’ll pass him before the season is over.”

  She nodded. “There’s the old ego.”

  Sticking the needle in, almost by force of habit.

  “Let’s not go there,” he said. “Please?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The stuff I said.”

  “Good,” she said, and left it there, Charlie hoping that was her way of accepting his apology, but not sure that she had. His mom talked sometimes about how there were bells you couldn’t un-ring. Maybe him calling her a know-it-all was one of them.

  • • •

  It was Saturday morning, Culver City Cardinals against the Palos Verdes Vikings, Charlie thinking that there was at least a chance to salvage something out of his football weekend, one that had started as badly as it did with the Thursday night game. The Cardinals and Vikings were tied for first place, so today’s game felt a little bit like the start of the playoffs.

  Coach Dayley had actually been playing Charlie a little more
the last couple of games, Charlie surprising himself by holding his own with the first stringers on defense, feeling more and more as if he belonged. Sometimes thinking he was doing a lot better defending his turf at linebacker than his man Jack Sutton was with the Bulldogs, Charlie starting to wonder if Sutton would even make it to the end of the season, worried that Matt Warren might cut him any day now.

  Charlie’s teammates were pretty much leaving him alone on what was happening with the Bulldogs—what Charlie had helped make happen—with the exception of Sean Barkley. Of course.

  “Hey, Charlie!” he said when they were stretching. “Hey, Charlie Gaines! Just promise me you aren’t gonna make no suggestions on improving my Lakers this season, okay?”

  Charlie just laughed along with his teammates, knowing that if he came back at Sean, he’d just encourage him to keep going. All he said when the laughter stopped was “I promise, Sean, as long as you promise to kill it today against the Vikings.”

  They were next to each other in the grass. Charlie reached over and gave Sean some fist to pound, the subject back to football, them having a game like this to play in a few minutes, one that meant something. Coach Dayley always told them to appreciate mornings like this, they didn’t know how many of them they were going to get in their lives.

  It really was a perfect day for a game, and Charlie’s mom was in the stands along with most of the other parents. Big-game Saturday in Culver City, for both teams, you could feel it in the air. It was all you needed in sports, whether it was Pop Warner or high school or college or the pros.

  Two teams wanting the same thing.

  You couldn’t ask for more than that. Charlie knew he couldn’t, not with the way things felt like they were spinning out of control lately. At least he’d have some control today, however many plays he got.

  Maybe that was why the game felt even more important to him than it normally would have. There was a moment, right before the kickoff, when he looked into the stands, trying to locate his mom, eyes searching until he found her in the top row of the bleachers next to Jarrod Benedict’s dad. Pretending, just for that moment, that Jarrod Benedict’s smiling dad was his own.