Double Reverse

by Tim Green

  Flustered, but knowing what his position on the field required of him, Clark got in his stance and planned his pass route. The ball was snapped. Clark raced toward the line between the guard and the center. As he burst through the raging wall of linemen and into the open space of the end zone, Clark saw from the corner of his eye that Trane had done the same thing. That meant the blitzing linebacker was unblocked. Clark spun, but too late. To get the pass off, Faulkner had to launch it early and high. Clark leapt and got his fingers on it, but the ball richocheted off and bounced uselessly in the wet grass. The whistle screamed in Clark's ears, ending the game.

  On the sideline Gridley was in a fit. Clark tried to push the loss from his mind. He made his way to the middle of the field. Players from both sides were gathered in a loose circle. Clark knelt in a patch of gritty mud and held someone's hand and listened to the opposing quarterback pray out loud on behalf of them all. Even though everyone was equal in the eyes of the Lord, the star players typically led the prayers. Clark closed his eyes tight and tried to listen with his mind and spirit, tried to think of not being crippled and of other blessings. It was like trying to drive a big Lincoln up an icy driveway. Every rime he thought he was there, he'd slip right back and start thinking about the game and what had happened.

  He was going to be blamed. There was even an argument in his own mind for why he should be. But in his heart he knew it was Trane's fault. Trane was the one who lined up on the strong side of the formation. He should have stayed in to block. That was the play that was called. But the argument rang hollow. By now he was used to being the scapegoat.

  "Amen," everyone around him said.

  Clark felt pressure on his taped hand. "Amen," he said. "Good game."

  Clark took out his mouthpiece and jammed it in between the bars of his steel mask. He turned his head up to the gray sky and blinked into the tiny drops that fell on his face. He opened his mouth and walked and tried to ignore the heckling of the few fans crazy enough to stay out in the rain just to shout obscenities at a team they called their own. One man with a thick black beard and mustache wearing gym shorts and a yellow Mickey Mouse poncho yelled so hard his voice split.

  "Cromwell, you fuckin' bum! My goddamn grandmother coulda caught that pass! You suck!"

  As Clark passed into the tunnel and underneath the worst of them he looked straight ahead. In the gloom of the tunnel the groundskeepers huddled together out of the rain like farm animals. Clark unbuckled his helmet but left it on in case anyone up top decided to throw something substantial.

  Despite the fact that they'd won the first two games of the season, this loss filled the locker room with a sickening hush. Men stripped down in a silence broken only by the clatter of cleated shoes as the equipment men banged them steadily over garbage cans to knock off clods of grass. The pungent aroma of the rich green turf mixed with the damp smell of sweat. Clark's neck throbbed steadily. Other aches began to reveal themselves in his calf, his hand, his foot, knee, and biceps. He sat down stiffly and managed to shed his own gear before Gridley took center stage among his half-naked team. The coach looked like he'd been thrown off the bow of a ship and keelhauled. Not only was he drenched, he was battered. Yet his eyes were incandescent with intensity.

  "The difference between winning and losing," the coach said in a voice ravaged from three hours of screaming, "is this small." He extended his pinched thumb and forefinger for everyone to see.

  "And when it's this small," he continued hoarsely, "everyone has to be thinking the same way. Now, there were a lot of mistakes out there today that could have made the difference, but Clark . . . Goddamn, son . . ."

  Everyone's eyes were on Clark. It was that same burning, sick feeling he'd come to know all too well lately.

  "How in hell could you not pick up that blitzing linebacker? Hell, Mitch called the play because he saw that guy coming! It was a goddamn touchdown!"

  "I was weak side," Clark said without shame.

  "Clark, I don't give a shit if you're weak or strong or split wide like a fucking flanker," Gridley said wearily. "Do you think, with the game on the line, with your hands compared to Trane's hands, that I want you going out into the end zone and Trane staying in to block?"

  Clark said nothing.

  "Do you?"

  "I ran the play the way it was called," Clark said, glaring right back at the coach.

  "Goddamn it! Answer my fucking question, Cromwell! Do you?"

  The silence was overwhelming. The media bumped against the big metal doors from the other side like cattle pressed into a gate. Other than that there was nothing.

  "No," Clark said finally.

  "Well fucking thank you," Gridley said indignantly, then knelt to the floor. "Let's pray."

  Mitch Faulkner led the team in another postgame prayer thanking God for preserving the men He'd saved from injury and asking a speedy recovery for those He hadn't.

  "... and give us strength, Father, so that next week we may again know the taste of victory. Amen."

  "Amen."

  Clark got up and tore at his tape, brimming with disgust. Then the media came through the door and his locker was surrounded. Wrapping his waist in a towel, he turned to face them. Most times they didn't want to hear from him because they all knew he was going to use the opportunity to witness his faith just as he'd been taught. But today was too much for them to resist. How would the Christian lamb feel in the skin of a goat?

  "What happened when you dropped the game-winner?" came the first question from a bold little woman wearing a yellow rain slicker. She stuck a Channel 7 microphone in his face.

  "I dropped it. That's it. I lost the game." Clark spoke in a subdued but even tone and looked around defiantly at the rest of them.

  "Do you think it was a good call?" said a crusty old newspaper reporter with pale, piercing eyes. "I mean, you're not known for your hands. Do you think it was an unusual play to call with the game on the line?"

  Clark took a breath, pressed his lips together, and exhaled through his nose. Mini spotlights from the cameras glared at him and the microphones bobbed ever so slightly, as if they were floating on the surface of a small pond.

  "I ran the wrong play," he said. "That's it. There's nothing more I can really say to you."

  "Will this cost you your job?" someone yelled from the back, arching onto his toes with his radio mike held up over the first line of reporters.

  "If that's God's will, then I'll lose my job," Clark said with a bland face.

  "Haven't you already been having trouble with the new offense?" someone else asked.

  "No. I've been fine. I was fine in the first two games. No one asked me then when we ran for almost two hundred yards."

  "Isn't that more because of Trane?" Another smart-ass in the back.

  "I don't know, you tell me. That's all I've got to say."

  Clark turned his back to them. That was it. No more. He refused to bite and they soon dispersed. Mark Mulligan, the slick- looking sports anchor from Channel 2, tapped him on the back.

  "What?" Clark said over his shoulder.

  Mulligan cleared his throat, "Uh, Clark, look, I'm sorry about everything, but my camera guy lost his battery. I'm really sorry, babe, but do you think you could give it to me again?"

  "What?"

  "Just the part about losing the game. Everyone's got it. I gotta have it, babe, or the station manager's gonna have my cajones in a jambalaya. I know it sucks, dude, but I know I can ask you. You're not one of these assholes. . ."

  Clark turned to reenact his hara-kiri. He didn't even like this guy-

  "So . . ." Mulligan said with a goofy smile, his pomaded hair shedding little drops from the rain like the back of a duck, "what happened?"

  "I dropped the ball. I lost the game. I ran the wrong play. How's that?"

  "Uh, yeah, okay, babe. Thanks."

  Clark headed for the showers. There was an even bigger crowd surrounding Trane's locker. Trane was sprawled back on the stool
in front of his locker, unit askew, wearing nothing but his sunglasses. By now, the LA. reporters barely noticed. The cameramen just kept their shots high until the interview was over, then they'd sneak a wide shot to have something to show their friends and neighbors.

  Clark couldn't help but hear Trane's subdued voice talking about the need for the team to have more mental focus.

  "Ain't physical," he was saying. "It's a mind thing. We kicked their ass on the field. Beat their goddamn ass. We just gotta focus our minds."

  Clark's urge to bust through the media and smack Trane's big mouth was so strong his arms trembled. Instead, he shook his head like a wet dog and went to the showers.

  When he was clean and dressed, Clark picked up a bag of ice from the trainers and had them strap it to his neck. On the way out he held his breath past Trane's locker where the runner was contaminating the air with a heavy cologne. Outside the locker room the tunnel opened up into a waiting area where family and friends of the team were gathered, dripping and forlorn. Some of the wives and girlfriends were dry, however, meaning they'd found refuge in one or another of the luxury boxes that had been added on to the Coliseum during its renovation.

  With his neck bound in ice his head hung forward so that his gaze could only come from the tops of his eyes. When he rounded the corner, his attention was drawn instantly to a radiant blonde. In a crowd of stunning women, she jumped out. She was a billboard. Her strong stomach was bare below her top and golden brown. Her face, though heavy with makeup, was exquisite. Her clothes, dark and stylish, were at the same time revealing. She looked like an expensive whore. If Annie had a sister, this would be her. Drawn by an unnameable force, he stepped toward her and stood face to face, lifting his head against the weight of the ice bag.

  "Annie," he said dumbly.

  "That's not even my name," she hissed at him with a wicked grin.

  For the second time in thirty minutes Clark began to tremble with rage.

  "Hey girl."

  Clark spun. It was Trane. He clamped a thick hand on her upper arm and pulled her to him, sticking his tongue deep into her mouth until its fat trunk pressed against her lips. She went with it and the two of them moved through the crowd as if Clark weren't even there. In that small moment he thought he saw her hand move down to the outside of his pants. He watched with his mouth agog as they left the building. He realized that other people around were staring at him and his face felt hot. He didn't know if it was because of what had just happened or because he'd dropped the ball and lost the game. He didn't want to know. He tucked his head back down and pushed his way through the gaping crowd.

  Chapter 24

  A hot wind lashed Angel Cassidy's golden mane. The car top was down. Her white dress rode low enough across her bronzed chest so that some middle-aged geek in a Porsche Carrera was trying desperately to keep up. The bald dome of his head bobbed up and down in her rearview mirror like an arcade target. Her fingers flexed against the leather of the wheel. With the hint of a smile she downshifted and shot forward at an angle between two slower cars, losing him. Angel didn't take to being pursued. She was the hunter.

  She got off the freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard and bolted from light to light before turning onto Coldwater Canyon and weaving her way up into the hills toward the Bel Air Country Club. The sky was burning low in the west, barely red now and casting the deep purple shadows of night beneath the towering trees that lined the streets. At the club gate Angel slowed to a stop and presented her invitation with indifference. She was unaccustomed to asking permission for anything.

  L. A. was her town. She'd grown up here, the daughter of a man many people considered to be one of the five most powerful people in Hollywood. He was dead now, but he had indoctrinated her at an early age into the society of entertainment tycoons and movie stars. She knew the most important things in life from the very beginning: power, money, and looks, in that order. The first two she enjoyed because of her father. The third she got from her mother, with a little fine-tuning from time to time from Dr. William Klimitz, the man everyone who was anyone used. In any other place, it would be considered unusual for a woman of twenty-six to have had half a dozen cosmetic surgical procedures, but this wasn't any other place.

  Most people spent their lives pursuing those three essential elements of life. But since Angel already had them, she needed diversions. Her father always said there were two types of people in the world: those who created and those who destroyed. She was certain he'd never intended her to be a destroyer when he'd spoken those words of wisdom, but that's what she was. In fact, she delighted in destruction. It was her nature.

  Even before she'd cared about makeup or clothes or boys, she had roamed the beach in back of their Malibu mansion just before sunset, searching for castles and sculptures other children had wrought from the sand. With her feet she would smash them, relishing the cool grainy texture of the walls, turrets, and towers between her toes. She could still see the pursed lips of her nanny looking on, prohibited by Angel's mother from reproaching her. And now Angel did the same kind of thing she had done to sandcastles, only with people. It was delightfully decadent, to smash a perfect marriage, or poison a once-loyal friendship.

  A kid in a valet uniform gawked at her as she emerged from her Ferrari. That he was stricken meant nothing to her. She expected that, and it reminded her of the man who hadn't been stricken--not at first, anyway. It had taken a month just to get him into bed. Capturing his soul had taken even longer. She had had quite a time with him, even feigning a religious epiphany in order to have her way. The piquancy of that game made her smirk. Too bad it had turned so ugly at the end.

  It wasn't that she hadn't been hated before. She had. But no one, she was convinced, could hate as vehemently as a zealot, and that's what he was. She wondered how he would react to her presence here tonight. After all, he was the guest of honor, and she was now playing the part of a rogue's bitch. He'd seen her before in her new role, outside the gates of the stadium waiting for her new man. She could never forget that visage of hatred when he'd approached her, called her Annie, and she'd told him that wasn't even her real name. Tonight might really set him off, though. After all, it was his night.

  Inside the club, thousands of candles illuminated the ornate carvings of wood and stone that gilded every crease and border in the intricate architecture. The grandeur was impressive, even to Angel, and there was little she hadn't seen. Angel enjoyed black-tie affairs. The men were distinguishable only by their faces and frames. Dressed all the same, they were like drones, and it was the women who shone in brilliant colors with dazzling jewels, exactly the opposite of nature, where the males of most species were typically adorned with the brilliant colors and the females were muted and uninspiring.

  From the top of the steps she searched the ballroom for her newest man. He was easy to find. He always drew a crowd. Even in this room, filled with Los Angeles's elite, he was the center of attention. Movie stars, entertainment executives, politicians, people accustomed to flocks of admirers--all craned their necks for a glimpse of Trane Jones. To Angel it was not surprising, but it was intriguing the way people fawned all over a man who was renowned for his despicable behavior.

  She spotted him kicked back on a chair with his large sneak- ered feet splayed out on the dinner table amid the fine china and crystal glassware. A pair of silver-blue sunglasses hid his eyes, but his two large rows of teeth were bared in a fit of laughter. High on his left cheek, a round button of a scar rested like a smooth purple blight. Around him, dignified middle-aged people laughed in unison. They stood. He sat. It was his way of subordinating them.

  Angel moved toward Trane and bumped squarely into the man who hated her.

  "Hello, Clark," she said with a defiant little smile.

  Clark Cromwell said nothing, but the left corner of his mouth twisted into a sneer, briefly giving him the appearance of a mild stroke victim.

  Without another word, Angel moved off through the crow
d until she was able to assume a perch beside Trane.

  "My baby girl," Trane grunted, allowing his head to fall even farther back in order to meet her lips with his own. His tongue snaked lazily out of his mouth and into hers for anyone who cared to see it. Most of them did. Even a matronly old philanthropist with a chunky string of diamonds around her flabby neck couldn't help but stare at- the silver ball bolted squarely into Jones's, tongue about half an inch back from its pink tip. Meeting Trane Jones without seeing his pierced tongue would be like visiting Florence without seeing the statue of David.

  "Hello, Trane," Angel said quietly after he'd retracted his tongue from her mouth.

  Running her fingers through the slick cornrows of his hair, she took the opportunity to see if her most recent victim was still watching her. He was, staring malevolently from amid a cluster of pig-eyed politicians eager to make his acquaintance. Angel felt a wonderful chill scamper down her spine. Two dangerous men, and her pulling their cords.

  It was almost eleven when a waiter slipped a note into Angel's hand without even a hint of who had sent it. Nor could she place the handwriting with any degree of certainty. Nevertheless, she was intrigued. It told her to be at the eighteenth tee at midnight. Angel looked around her to see if she was being watched. Trane had gone off with his agent, the python. She knew from an earlier conversation that tonight the two of them were to have a private audience with Dommer Graves, a big movie producer who was talking about casting Trane in his upcoming action flick.

  Maybe Trane had sent the note, wanting to make up with her. At the end of dinner he had begun to talk dirty to her at the table, and she had thrown a drink in his face. It wasn't an unusual interaction between them. She'd thrown drinks before; likewise he'd cuffed her with his open hand. It was an exhilarating little game, and she knew that Trane liked to make some kind of a scene wherever he went anyway. The Los Angeles Charity Ball for Children was no exception, and she had been happy to oblige. It was part of her attraction to him.