by Nancy Martin
As she listened Grace gradually figured out who among Luke’s friends had retired from football and who was still playing. Leon Murzinski, also known as the Reverend, had played for the New York Jets before retiring and going into the insurance business. Blood had gone to high school in Georgia, played football at some southern college Grace didn’t catch, and then had been a tackle for the Eagles. Grace gathered he was in danger of being let go from his team, and his friends seemed sympathetic. He was working on a second career as a motivational speaker, though. He’s Dead Jim McCoy had gone to that same Georgia high school and played safety in Philadelphia before getting fired for domestic abuse. Carrying a drink, he strolled around the edges of conversations, but only interacted to be unpleasant.
“I didn’t think there was so much fraternization among teams,” Grace observed when someone asked her what she thought of them so far. “I’m surprised that you’re all friends.”
“Friends?” He’s Dead objected. “Not with the Laser. I hate his guts.”
“But you admire my mind,” Luke taunted more gently.
To Grace, Leon said, “We all played together or against each other in college. We get traded around, too. Then there’s the Pro Bowl. Just about all of us have been there at least once. Luke went twice, right, man?”
He’s Dead snorted. “To sit on the bench, maybe.”
Grace sensed Luke could handle McCoy’s teasing. She turned to Leon. “Do you miss playing?”
“Just every day. When I first quit I punched a lot of walls.”
“With his head,” Blood added languidly, lighting a cigarette.
The other players coughed and waved away the offending smoke.
A pretty young woman with a pregnant belly came along and took the cigarette from Blood’s lips. Without saying a word, she crushed it out in a nearby ashtray, then gave him a departing frown over her shoulder.
Blood sighed like a lovesick teenager. “There’s my girl. Taking care of me, like always.”
Darrell circulated into the room, quietly calm. He had two more glasses of lemon water, and he gave one to Grace. “You want something stronger this time? No? Just say the word. We’ve got margaritas in the kitchen. Luke, when are you gonna come down to Florida, see the place we’re building on the water?”
“Anytime,” Luke said easily.
“Jaydonna’s planning some kind of house-warming party, and we want you there.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“There’s a lot of guys living down there now, all of ‘em getting into some kind of business or other. Maybe you ought to look around.”
Luke shrugged. “I’m not in any rush.”
Darrell smiled. “You blow all your money already? Or your ex take it all?”
“I’ve got enough to last a while.”
“Smart. But you need something to do with yourself, dude. And you can’t stay in the car wash business. That’s not going to float your boat for long.”
“The right thing will come along.”
Grace listened and watched, aware that an important discussion was underway, but both friends were being very polite with each other. A lesson in football player etiquette, she thought.
“You need some business advice,” Darrell said, “I got a guy who’s on the ball.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch, maybe.”
Darrell let the subject drop and turned to her. “Gracie, you ready to see some entertainment?”
“What kind of entertainment?”
Darrell took her hand and disengaged her from Luke. “I got films to show. Films of your man, here.”
Luke groaned.
Darrell had a grin on his face. “This afternoon after you left, I put together a montage of his greatest moments.”
“Montage,” He’s Dead repeated, scoffing at the fancy word as he passed by.
To Darrell, Grace said, “I’d love to see some football film. I’ve never seen Luke play.”
Luke said, “He’s not talking about my greatest moments, Princess. Game film is Darrell’s hobby, but he’s always putting together clips of the worst possible—”
“Worst?” He’s Dead hooted. “Laser, when I hit you on the field of battle, it was heaven, man, heaven! I want to see you eat the dirt!”
Luke appealed to Darrell. “Can I skip this?”
“Let’s go to the screening room.” Darrell slid his arm around Grace. “Just you and me, Gracie.”
But everyone followed. Grace couldn’t have hung back if she’d wanted to. The men all moved as one, and the bulldozing effect of professional football players all traveling in the same direction was an awesome force.
The screening room was a home theater complete with large reclining chairs arranged in tiers, a fully-stocked bar in one corner and a popcorn machine in another. It was a man cave like Grace had never seen. Not one television, but many, commanded the front of the room—an enormous screen surrounded by four smaller ones. The walls were decorated with blown-up photographs of football players in various moments of glory—touchdowns, spectacular catches, lifting triumphant coaches onto shoulders. The rug was Astroturf. A fifty yard line had been painted in a white stripe right down the middle of the room.
Darrell tucked Grace into a seat of honor beside his own, next to a computer keyboard that presumably controlled the film.
Jaydonna arrived and slid into Darrell’s lap. She had changed her party clothes for a modest bathrobe open to show her long legs, her stylish platform shoes for a pair of comfortable bedroom slippers. She wrapped one arm around Darrell’s neck and gave her husband a lingering kiss on the mouth.
“Kids in bed?” Darrell asked softly.
“Of course,” she said. Jaydonna rolled her eyes at Grace. “What kind of mama does he think I am? Letting our kids stay up half the night?”
“How many children do you have?” Grace asked, hardly able to keep her gaze from straying to Jaydonna’s sleek body.
“Four,” Jaydonna said, stretching languidly. “We want more, though. We’re just getting started. Right, baby?”
Darrell gave her a tight abdomen a fond rub, as if she were a favorite puppy. Except the two of them were taut with muscle and lithe as panthers.
Then and there, Grace vowed to start going to the gym.
More revelers crowded into the room, bringing along the noise from the rest of the party. A woman squealed as one of the football players dragged her down with him into one of the reclining chairs in a tangle of arms and legs. Luke sprawled into the seat next to Grace. She was thankful for his presence. The rest of the nearby seats filled up quickly with raucous football players.
“Lights!” Darrell hit a button that plunged the room into darkness. A picture blazed on the main television screen. It showed sunshine glaring down on a football field. Darrell had spliced the film with music and crowd noise, which blared from multiple speakers.
As the action first got started, Grace didn’t understand exactly what she was looking at. All football teams and games looked alike to her. Some players wore white shirts and some wore dark ones, and they took turns trying to run the ball toward the goalposts. From the angles of the cameras, she had trouble following who had the ball during the film clips that raced by on the screen. That didn’t seem to matter. The players around her howled when a lineman made a mistake, or cheered when the quarterback was knocked head over heels. They didn’t necessarily care who had the ball, but watched and reacted to the other action on the field, thumping each other’s heads in delight when a tackle was made.
Over the hubbub, Darrell shouted, “Now, take a look at this! Why, I’ll be horsewhipped, it’s those pansy Pittsburgh Steelers!”
Booing erupted in the room, and somebody whacked Luke across the shoulder. He ducked, shielding Grace from further blows, but he was laughing good-naturedly.
The football jerseys were black and gold on one team and blue on the other.
“That’s him, folks,” Darrell shouted over the crowd. “Numb
er eighty one, Luke the Laser! Let’s see the man run!”
Grace found a shirt with the number eighty one. Yes, she recognized Luke even with those outsize shoulder pads that made his hips look trim and cute and his legs long, graceful, and impossibly delicate. The first few clips showed him running like a gazelle all over the football field, making impossible catches and leaping over heaps of men on the field. Then he was at the top of the screen while the rest of the team collected down below. He didn’t crouch down into the three point stance the way the other players did, but waited until the ball was snapped and then bolted out into enemy territory. The quarterback took six steps back, looked for Luke, and fired the ball straight at him. Luke caught the ball, tucked it into his side, and turned for the goal line. He ran beautifully—but only about ten steps. Then somebody in a blue shirt came out of nowhere and slammed into him with the force of a speeding freight train. They crashed to the ground together with a tremendous concussion. The crowd cheered.
Another clip appeared on the screen, showing pretty much the same action. Luke caught the football, ran, then got hurled painfully into the turf. Grace winced with every fall, and she heard herself gasp. How he could have survived some of the hits without breaking any bones, she couldn’t imagine.
“This is my favorite, Gracie,” Darrell said, and he narrated the action. “Fourth down and forty yards to go. Pressure situation. Look at the clock. Ten seconds to the half. They’ve got to score this time. Ball is snapped. Roethlisburger fades back, looks for his receiver. Where the hell is Lazurnovich?”
Grace watched. The camera shifted, and Luke came tearing out of a scramble of blue shirts. The ball soared right for him, but too high. The action switched to slow motion as Luke went leaping up to make the catch. It was beautiful to watch, for he just went higher and higher in an astonishing display of athletic ability until the ball came smoothly into his hands. Only he never made it back to earth.
“Now watch the free safety coming for the Laser,” Darrell said.
Another player—Grace guessed immediately it was He’s Dead Jim McCoy—came up from underneath and caught Luke just above his knees. In midair, Luke did a slow motion somersault, going helplessly end over end. Another blue shirted player slammed him in the ribs as he started downward, and the force propelled Luke up and backward all over again.
“He’s goin’ into orbit!” He’s Dead shouted. “The man’s feet never touch the ground!”
Yet another player, his arm outstretched, hit Luke across the head. For an awful moment, Grace thought his head had been ripped off by the blow. But it was only his helmet— sent sailing off screen. Luke arched into another impossible somersault. The slow motion made the action agonizing. Grace covered her mouth with both her hands to keep from crying out. The human body wasn’t capable of withstanding the kind of impact he was about to endure.
Luke’s last somersault went only halfway. He hit the ground with one shoulder first, bounced, and then crashed to the earth with such force that the whole room shouted “Oh!” in unison. Grace could feel Luke go tight behind her as he watched and remembered the crash.
“But he never drops the ball,” Darrell said. “Watch this, Gracie. It just kills me. Laser gets up! He actually gets up on his feet. He doesn’t know where he is, but he’s standing.”
On screen, Luke rolled and somehow managed to get upright. He was indeed standing, ball in hand. He didn’t budge, though. He stood very still while the rest of the players milled around. Without his helmet, it was easy to see that Luke couldn’t focus his eyes. His dark, curling hair ruffled in the breeze. The other players walked away. The referee came and pried the ball out of his hands, but still Luke didn’t move.
“He’s out!” said He’s Dead over the erupting howls of laughter. “Ever see a man with the Tweety birds inside his head? The man was unconscious!”
The camera stayed with Luke until another player came up and waved his hand in front of Luke’s face. No response. The rest of the people in the room were dying with laughter, and Grace was stunned. How could they be so amused by such violence?
“C’mon,” He’s Dead shouted. “Show us the big one, Washington.”
Grace guessed “the big one” was the game in which Luke’s leg was broken.
Jaydonna must have seen her expression change, because she leaned close. “Don’t worry, Gracie. Darrell’s not gonna show anything too bad. It’s all for fun, not the serious stuff.”
“I don’t think I could watch anything worse than what we just saw.”
Jaydonna made a sympathetic face. “When Luke’s leg broke, it was awful.”
Despite goading shouts from He’s Dead, Darrell’s film showed only three more shots of Luke getting rammed into semi-consciousness by other players. Each was so horrible that Grace couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. But at least she didn’t have to see his career-ending injury. She felt isolated in the crowd, even though Luke’s arm remained snug around her and Jaydonna leaned over to make encouraging comments. Grace felt as though she were the only one who didn’t understand why these men played such a violent game.
But Darrell’s fabulous house and lavish lifestyle gave her an idea of how much money was involved.
The action screen finally stopped tormenting Luke and moved on to another player, Blood Mitchell. But since Blood wasn’t a man who caught the ball and didn’t attract the tackles of other players, those film clips mostly illustrated his funny mistakes. The party crowd roared with laughter, while Grace was fascinated by the monstrous physical punishment that was displayed on the screen.
When the lights came on, the party seemed to have lost its momentum. Jaydonna was yawning and said her good-nights.
“You come back soon, Gracie,” she said, giving Grace a hug. “Come meet the kids sometime.”
“Thank you, Jaydonna.”
Darrell shook Luke’s hand and gave Grace a kiss on the cheek. “Good to meet you, Gracie. You stay in touch with us, you hear? Don’t let the country boy keep you down on the farm, okay?”
“It was a wonderful party, Darrell. Thank you for having us.”
“Our pleasure.”
Darrell was the consummate host. He had cabs waiting for departing guests who might have had too much to drink.
In the back seat, heading back into the city, Grace said, “That terrible film clip, the one of you somersaulting over and over?”
“Don’t remind me,” Luke said.
“Were you badly hurt?”
“A concussion, two broken ribs, sprained shoulder—the usual.”
“A concussion?”
“Okay, that wasn’t usual,” he admitted. “It kept me out of the playoffs that year. It was my only head injury, and not as bad as most. Now and then, though, I still see double.”
“That’s terrible,” Grace murmured. She took his hand.
“Depends on what I’m looking at,” he said, pulling her close. “Sometimes I like seeing double.”
He moved in close and kissed her.
Graced wanted to ask more questions, to understand his violent side. But he had already told her how much he loved sports, and she knew his love for his father was mixed up in it somehow, too. And the money—that also had to figure in why he played football. But there was camaraderie, too. He was tightly bonded with many friends—both seriously and playfully--and Grace found that quality appealing in the man.
Soon they were necking like teenagers in the back seat. Grace could taste the liquor on Luke’s mouth, but he wasn’t drunk, just feeling amorous. At the party, she had learned a lot about him, and alone with him in the taxi she felt as if she was with a person she wanted to know even more intimately. He loved his sister, his family, his friends. Maybe there was even more to know about him. She found herself unfastening a button on his shirt, touching his chest, and she let him explore, too. If the driver watched, he might have seen two new lovers tentatively starting to learn how to please each other.
The cab pulled to the curb
about half a block from the hotel, and when Grace felt it stop, she looked out the windshield and saw a small traffic jam in front of the hotel.
The driver said, “Must be a big night tonight—a party letting out. Okay to drop you here?”
“Sure,” Luke said, and he dropped some cash over the seat. “Thanks, pal.”
He got out of the cab first, but Grace lost her shoe trying to scooch across the seat. She paused to retrieve it, and in the moment it took to put the shoe back on her foot, she heard a scuffle on the sidewalk.
“Hey,” the driver said. “Hey!”
For an instant Grace thought Luke had slipped and fallen on an icy patch of the sidewalk, but as she scrambled out of the car, she saw two burly men had attacked him. One man had a weapon raised—a baseball bat or a pipe, she couldn’t see which—and he brought it down across Luke’s upraised forearm. Luke had ducked to escape the blow, but he took the hit on his arm and suddenly came back up—faster than seemed possible. With one elbow he knocked the first attacker up off his feet and down onto the sidewalk. His cohort threw himself at Luke, only to meet with another powerful shove that sent him spinning into a fireplug. He stumbled over it and sprawled onto the curb.
The first man—heavier, more thug-like--scrambled to his feet and raised his weapon again.
Without thinking, Grace threw her shoe at him.
The shoe glanced off him, but he must have thought it was something more lethal because he ducked, giving Luke just the right opening to land a punch on his face. He crashed down again.
Luke turned to Grace, and he pushed her back against the cab. “Stay there,” he snapped.
The cab driver had climbed out of the car, and he came running around the hood. “Sir—sir, are you hurt?”
That split second was enough time for the two attackers to scrabble away from the cab, and in another moment they were on their feet and running away.
“What the hell,” Luke said.
“Are you okay?” Grace reached for his arm. She’d seen how hard he’d been hit. Surely he had a broken bone.
He shook off her touch and started after the two men. Both of them were running and stumbling, not very fast. No doubt Luke could have caught up with them in seconds.
