Fantasy League

by Mike Lupica

  Thirty-Seven

  THREE HOURS LATER, AFTER DINNER, Charlie got out of his mom’s car, and promised her he wouldn’t be long. He ran up the walkway, pretending he was a star running back, rang the doorbell.

  When Anna Bretton opened her front door, Charlie handed her the game ball.

  He had rehearsed what he was going to say on the way over, knowing he better keep it short, hoping he wouldn’t choke it down when he started talking.

  Choke it down being one of her expressions.

  “None of this would have happened without you,” Charlie said. “Without you believing in me.”

  Anna just stared at him with big eyes. The biggest.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I might have been Brain to everybody else. But I knew I was always more than that to you.”

  Then he said, “I know sorry doesn’t always fix the lamp. But I hope this ball does.”

  “Now,” Anna said, “I’m the one who doesn’t know what to say.”

  Charlie smiled then. “Finally.”

  • • •

  It was when he got home that she called and told him her grandfather had been rushed to the hospital.

  Thirty-Eight

  ANNA’S MOM SPOKE WITH CHARLIE’S mom from the hospital, explaining what had happened.

  Charlie listening on the extension.

  Hearing Mrs. Bretton talk about the chest pains Mr. Warren got when he came home from the game, the shortness of breath, Carlos seeing the blood he’d coughed up in the sink when he found Joe Warren on the bathroom floor and called 911.

  Mrs. Bretton saying how fast the emergency people from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center had gotten to the house, as if they somehow knew how much money her father had given to the hospital in his life.

  “They’re doing more tests,” she said, “but they’re fairly certain it was a clot in his lung that caused everything. The official language is pulmonary embolism, which is fairly common in people in his age with non-Hodgkin’s.”

  Neither one of them said anything until Mrs. Bretton said in a soft voice, “It’s not good.”

  “He’s a fighter,” Charlie’s mom said.

  “Say a prayer,” Anna’s mom said. “Tell Charlie to say one, too. They gave him a shot of heavy-hitter blood thinners, which act as clot busters. Getting him to the hospital as fast as they did helped a lot. Carlos was right there with him the whole way.”

  Finally: “I’ll be here through the night, if anything changes is it all right to call?”

  “Of course.”

  “The next few hours . . .” Mrs. Bretton said, and that’s as far as she got before she ended the call.

  Charlie came into the kitchen.

  “He can’t die, Mom,” he said. “He can’t.”

  She walked over and put her arms around him. “You heard her. They’re doing everything they can.”

  “This was the best day he ever had in football,” Charlie said. “Now it’s turned into the worst.”

  “She said she’d call with any news.”

  “Bad news, you mean,” Charlie said.

  “We don’t know that. And can’t assume the worst.”

  “He can’t die,” Charlie said.

  They stood there, neither one of them moving, until she said, “I know nothing can take your mind off this. But isn’t there a game on you were going to watch, so you don’t sit here the rest of the night waiting for the phone to ring?”

  “I don’t care about football tonight,” he said.

  “Didn’t say you had to care, honey. Just use it for company.” She kissed the top of his head.

  He went into the den and tried to watch the rest of the Ravens-Colts game, trying to get involved. Another one of Anna’s favorite expressions. Get involved, Gaines, she’d say when she was excited about something and wanted him to be excited, about a TV show or movie or song or even a new flavor at Cold Stone.

  All these images from the game on TV and the only image he had was Mr. Warren in some hospital bed, a bunch of tubes attached to him. Waiting for a call from Anna. A text. Something.

  Then thinking that maybe he didn’t want any of those things, because the next news would be bad.

  Or even the worst.

  Sitting there with this game on in front of him and thinking of the game at Bulldogs Stadium this afternoon, Mr. Warren hugging him and telling him, one more time, that great things could still happen.

  Now all Charlie wanted to happen was for his friend to make it through the night.

  He wasn’t sure if he’d fallen asleep or was about to fall asleep, as if everything that had happened today and tonight had finally caught up with him, when he felt his phone buzzing next to his pillow.

  Anna.

  He’s doing a little better.

  Charlie texted her right back.

  For real?

  Anna, right back at him.

  For real. Woke up. Talking.

  Charlie again.

  Awesome!

  Anna, one last time.

  Said for me to give you a message:

  Said for you to trust him this time.

  Thirty-Nine

  CHARLIE WASN’T ALLOWED TO SEE him until Thursday afternoon.

  Joe Warren had done well the first two days in the hospital but then there had been more clotting on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, Charlie not finding out until Anna called him before school.

  So he had spent another day and night in the intensive care unit before they moved him into a private room on Thursday morning, telling him he would be staying in the hospital at least through the weekend, which meant through the Seattle game on Sunday.

  Anna and Charlie waited outside school for Carlos to pick them up and take them to Cedars-Sinai, Carlos a little late because he’d caught some traffic.

  “Any other week I wouldn’t be thinking about anything but the big game on Sunday,” Anna said. “Now Gramps isn’t just the big game, he’s the only game.”

  “He’s become what he always says the Bulldogs are in L.A.,” Charlie said. “Only game in town. Just not the way he ever wanted to be.”

  When they got to Cedars-Sinai they signed in at the front desk along with Carlos and then checked in at the nurses’ station when they got up to Joe Warren’s floor.

  For what felt like the twentieth time since they’d left school Anna told Charlie to be prepared, he didn’t just look weak, it was like his skin had turned this weird shade of gray.

  “I got this,” Charlie said.

  He didn’t. Joe Warren looked even weaker than Anna said he did. Smaller somehow. But Charlie bluffed his way through, smiled at the old man, who smiled back. “Hey there, Charlie boy,” he said, nodding at Anna. “Who’s your friend?”

  “You must be feeling better,” Anna said, “now it’s only your sense of humor that is weak.”

  She did most of the talking, something Charlie knew she always did when she was nervous. Or scared. Going on and on about the Seattle game, how she and Charlie were going to bring it home, how she knew her old gramps was going to be out of here and back in his lucky chair when the Bulldogs played in their very first playoff game.

  When she finally ran down the way a windup toy does, Joe Warren managed another weak smile.

  “And how did your day go, Charlie?” he said.

  “Oh, I get it,” Anna said. “Bust on the girl. You guys stay here and have your little fun while Carlos and I go get a snack, it’s been ages since I had anything to eat.”

  “Probably an hour, tops,” Charlie said.

  At the door she turned and said, “Try not to miss me too much.”

  When she was gone her grandfather said, “I believe that girl could power my stadium if the lights ever went out the way they did that time at the Super Bowl.”

 
Charlie said, “If she didn’t blow all the fuses herself.”

  Mr. Warren patted the side of his bed and said, “Pull up a little closer so I don’t feel like I’m shouting.”

  Even though his voice hadn’t been much more than a raspy whisper.

  When Charlie had his chair as close as he could get it to the bed, the old man said, “You doing okay?”

  It got a laugh out of Charlie, even here, even in a hospital room. He hated hospitals, hated everything about them, starting with the smell.

  “How am I doing?” he said.

  “Minute you walked in, it was like you’d seen a ghost,” the old man said. “Me.”

  Charlie thinking there were probably ghosts who looked better than Joe Warren did right now, with all of those tubes hooked up to the monitor next to him.

  “You have to get better!” Charlie said now, feeling as if he was the one shouting, the words just coming out.

  “I am getting better,” Joe Warren said, “though probably not as fast as you or I would want. Told you old people go slow.”

  “Don’t do what you always tell me not to do and just tell me what you think I want to hear.”

  Joe Warren slowly raised his arm, like it had a weight attached to it, formed a fist, reached over so Charlie could bump it with his own.

  “I’m not afraid to die, Charlie. I’ve never been afraid to die.” Now he winked. “I’ve just informed my doctors that I’d prefer not to do it now.”

  He reached over and covered Charlie’s hand with his own, the way he’d done with Anna when she was sitting next to the bed, his hand feeling as if it had been packed in ice.

  “From the time I came down with this disease of mine,” the old man said, “I’ve had to take stock of my life, Charlie. Add it up, like putting points on the board. It’s what everybody does when they get as old as I am. Did I do everything I wanted, make a difference in the world, do right by my family? And no matter what regrets I came up with, the bottom line was always the same, that I’m the luckiest sonofagun I know.”

  “I’m the lucky one,” Charlie said. “Having you as my friend.”

  Joe Warren had a brief coughing fit then, Charlie not liking the rough sound of it. When it ended, Mr. Warren pointed to the water glass on the table next to him. Charlie handed him the glass, and Joe Warren leaned forward and drank from it.

  “What were we saying?”

  “How lucky we both are.”

  “Oh, yes. You want to know what the worst part of the losing was, in all the other years? How bad my family felt for me. They’d feel bad for me and I’d feel even worse for them, and then I’d remind them that there are only thirty-three of these teams on the planet, and if you can’t have fun owning one, even in the bad times, then maybe you just don’t know how to have fun.”

  “Everybody was having fun until you landed here,” Charlie said.

  “And we’re going to keep having fun,” the old man said. “All of us. Starting with the two of us.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to live as long as your friend Anna says I’m going to.”

  Charlie was sure Carlos and Anna were back by now, probably waiting outside. It was their way of letting him have some extra time with Joe Warren.

  “You know what I’d like to do before you leave?” he said to Charlie. “I’d like to talk a little football.”

  And so they talked football the way they did when their friendship really began. Like they were over at Bulldogs Stadium, up in his office, looking down at practice.

  When they were finally talked out, Charlie just stayed where he was next to the bed, still holding Mr. Warren’s hand, the room quiet now except for the beeps of the monitor. The old man was breathing easily now, eyes closed, asleep.

  Now Charlie was the one talking in a whisper. “Please don’t die.”

  And just like that, Joe Warren opened his eyes.

  “No more talk about dying,” he said, giving Charlie’s hand one more squeeze. “Just remember one more promise I made you about the day we make the playoffs.”

  “I forget,” Charlie said to him.

  “You still haven’t seen me dance,” the old man said.

  Forty

  MORNING OF THE BIG GAME, Charlie awake at seven o’clock, watching the pregame shows on ESPN and the NFL network, switching from channel to channel until he found somebody talking about Bulldogs vs. Seahawks, trying to learn something about the game he didn’t already know himself.

  At nine o’clock, the Fox pregame show came on, Terry Bradshaw doing an interview with Matt Warren, Matt telling him that he couldn’t believe that after all the years when the Bulldogs were just playing out the string and already thinking about next year’s draft on the last Sunday of the regular season, here they were in the big game and his dad would be watching from a hospital.

  “At least we’ve arranged to have his lucky chair from his suite set up in his hospital room,” Matt said.

  Anna called when the interview was over, saying even she didn’t know about the lucky chair, then saying, “I can’t wait all day for this game!”

  “Usually I care about all the games,” Charlie said. “But today I only care about one.”

  “Pretend you’re just following all your fantasy teams,” she said. “That will keep your mind occupied.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “If I get enough catches out of Mo Bettencourt, I can even win that head-to-head league from that Dream Team guy. I’ve pretty much already won all the other leagues.”

  “Good, focus on that. I’ll see you later in our lucky seats. It’s going to be fun.”

  Charlie was in front of the big screen in his den watching the early game, Redskins-Cowboys, when his phone buzzed, a phone number Charlie didn’t recognize, and then Charlie heard Joe Warren’s voice saying, “Happy Sunday, Charlie boy.”

  “How you feeling, Mr. Warren?”

  “Feeling like I should be at my own stadium watching my own team—that’s how I’m feeling.”

  Charlie wanted to tell him that the way the week began, he was just happy the old man was watching at all, but just said, “Totally not fair.”

  “But that’s not why I’m calling,” the old man said. “I’m just calling to tell you to make sure you remember every part of this day when you get to the stadium, from the time Carlos walks you in. You got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “You be my eyes and ears one more time, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re gonna make a memory today, Charlie,” he said. “Even though you’ll be there, and I’ll be here, we’re still a team.”

  “No team I’d rather be on,” Charlie said, smiling as he put down the phone. Brain, feeling like one again on the last Sunday of the regular season.

  Feeling brilliant all of a sudden, like he could see the whole day unfolding exactly the way it was supposed to.

  • • •

  Anna and her mom and her uncle Matt had to be at the stadium early to do an interview with Bob Costas about Joe Warren that was going to air at halftime.

  Mr. Warren had arranged for Carlos to pick up Charlie and take him to the game at three o’clock. If the Bulldogs won and made the playoffs, Anna and her mom and Charlie would all go celebrate with Mr. Warren in the hospital.

  “The after-party,” Anna said to Charlie in their third or fourth phone conversation of the day.

  “I’ll think about after-parties after we’ve won the game,” Charlie said.

  “I can’t wait to be in my seat,” Anna said.

  “Me neither.”

  Carlos was out in front of Charlie’s house at five minutes to three, and as soon as Charlie had his seat belt buckled, they were talking about the game, what they thought the keys would be, like they were their own pregame show. And Carlos talke
d about how he had only ever dreamed about what Bulldogs Stadium would feel like and sound like for a game like this.

  “Me too,” Charlie said. Then he asked if they could change the subject for a minute.

  Carlos smiled. “Is there anything else in the world to talk about today?”

  Charlie told him.

  “Really?” Carlos said.

  “Really.”

  Fifteen minutes later Carlos dropped him off at the hospital.

  “You’re sure this is where you want to watch the game?” Carlos said.

  “Exactly where I want to watch.”

  Next to Joe Warren’s lucky chair, just like always.

  Forty-One

  “CARLOS HAD ASKED IF HE could keep me company,” Joe Warren said to Charlie. “And I told him no, he should be at the stadium, where you should be, young man.”

  “I’d rather be with you.”

  “You should be at the stadium, today of all days.”

  “I should be with you,” Charlie said. “Today of all days.”

  Then the old man smiled.

  “And I with you, Charlie boy. And I with you.” He sighed and said, “We’ll deal with the fallout from my granddaughter later.”

  “I already texted her,” Charlie said. “And you know what she said back?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “She said I was right.”

  “How can we lose today,” Joe Warren said, “if a miracle like that can happen?”

  • • •

  It was 10–10 midway through the second quarter, Tom Pinkett and Colt Marley, the Seahawks’ QB, each having thrown for a touchdown pass, each having been picked off once, the game more of a defensive battle so far than anything else. Jack Sutton already had two sacks, was playing the best game he’d played so far, making things pretty miserable for Colt Marley every time he got near the Seahawks’ backfield.

  “You know we would’ve had no shot at first place without him?” Joe Warren said. “Not to inflate that ego of yours Miss Anna is always worrying about.”

  “You don’t know that for sure, Mr. Warren. Fallacy of the predetermined outcome.”