The Cost of These Dreams

by Wright Thompson

  Mostly, she wanted to see some sign that her mother’s presence wasn’t gone forever. Two hours after Ginny died last week, Mary Beth sent out a text message to the select people who needed to know: “The bad news is my mom passed away. The good news is there is another angel in the outfield.” When she met me randomly, that was a sign, too, and after we left the chalk wall at Wrigley, she sat in her car and sobbed, then ran into Murphy’s Bleachers to do a shot of Jameson for her mom. She and her friends all carry these desires; the owner of the place, Ellie, had started finding dimes everywhere after her dad died. Each of those dimes is a message. Today, Mary Beth saw a rainbow and said out loud to her mom, “Can’t you leave me alone already?” So the Cubs’ performance had become tightly wound together with all sorts of deeper and more personal questions, which raised the stakes for her.

  The score stood at 6–3 in the eighth inning.

  “Four outs,” she said, holding her mom’s towel to her face, which was too new to be laced with the light orange scent of Ginny’s favorite perfume, Emeraude. She looked down to make eye contact with the bartender, so he could pour victory shots.

  “Get ready,” she said.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “No!” she said. “No bad mojo.”

  The Indians scored, and then hit a two-run homer, tying the game. She pulled the towel up over her eyes and said, over and over, “Oh my fucking God.”

  Her niece texted her.

  “I’m shaking.”

  “Keep the faith, baby,” Mary Beth responded.

  “I wish I was with you,” Elly wrote.

  “You are, sweetie.”

  The game went into the rain delay, then the 10th inning, and she stood up and leaned toward the screen. She wondered if her mom was pulling a prank on her.

  Then it happened.

  The Cubs scored two runs, then got the final three outs, and the bar around Mary Beth got loud. People jumped up, and the young people to her right hugged and danced and high-fived. Others pounded on the bar, and the stereo blared “Go Cubs Go!” Mary Beth remained quiet, holding her victory shot. She raised her glass and tipped it toward the ceiling, toasted her mom, but then the sobs hit so hard, her shoulders shaking violently, that she couldn’t drink. Until faced with it, she’d never known how she’d react to the Cubs winning a World Series. Turns out, she thought about her mom. The glass stayed in her hand for 30 seconds or more, until she finally steadied herself and knocked it back. Then she put her head in her hands and began to cry. That night, she fell asleep wrapped in her mom’s Cubs blanket, the one Ginny wore the night she died.

  * * *

  —

  The town went nuts. Cars sped down the freeway, waving flags out of windows, weaving through traffic. Huge crowds gathered on Michigan Avenue, and every horn seemed to honk at once. Cops blocked the exits near the stadium. Wrigleyville turned into a loony bin, with one person collapsing to their knees to weep, while others set off fireworks. Near downtown, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune rolled off the presses, packed into bundles and fork-lifted into waiting trucks. The truck drivers hung out in their ready room for assignments. Many wore Cubs gear, and they all talked about the game.

  Truck 376 rumbled out of the loading bay, Al Mocchi behind the wheel. A big guy, a union guy, he looked both friendly and like he could handle himself, in that typical Chicago way. He’s driven a newspaper truck for more than 30 years. His father did it for more than 30 too. It was about 2:45 a.m. Tonight at some spots, he said, they’d deliver about 25 times the number of Tribunes and maybe eight times the number of Sun-Timeses, both papers going out together. At the first stop, a fan bought a copy, right off the truck, then held it up in the air like the Gospel, carrying it to his friends.

  “It’s gonna be one of those extraordinary evenings,” Mocchi said.

  He and his two-person team stocked convenience stores and honor boxes. Along the river, a couple walked home, the man carrying a box.

  “This guy’s got a pizza and a girlfriend!” Mocchi said. “What else do you need?”

  A man in a white van cut them off to buy two copies of each paper right from the truck. Other people pointed when they drove by, some people understanding that the passing newspaper delivery meant that the next day had in fact arrived, and the sun would be coming up in a few hours, and that the headlines proved none of it had been a dream. The no-curse world had begun. Mocchi made a loop through the quiet city, except for the random stray stumbling Cubs fan. At one stop, Mocchi checked Facebook. All the posts were about the Cubs or Harry Caray, whose grave still had a radio playing at it 20 miles to the northwest.

  “If he could be here to see this,” said Shawn Brown, riding shotgun.

  “You never know,” Mocchi said. “He might be.”

  He left the truck idling outside a 7-Eleven, while he and his team lugged in bundles. A couple at the counter was paying for Gatorade and Bagel Bites when the woman saw the papers.

  “Wait!” Grace Kingston said. “I WANT ALL OF THOSE!”

  She settled on five copies of the Tribune—the A1 headline read “AT LAST”—and carried her proof home with the electrolytes and carbs, the three most essential food groups of a post-curse hangover. An hour later, a little after 4 a.m., the drivers dropped me off at my hotel, 20 hours after the previous morning’s Mass. After saying goodbye, I sat down to read the paper, first the celebratory front-page story about the Cubs, then working my way through the rest. At the back of the business section, I found 39 death notices, people who almost made it. One was for Mary Beth’s mom, Virginia Iversen, page six, column two. At the bottom it read: Memorial contributions may be made to Chicago Cubs Charities.

  The address listed is for Wrigley Field.

  NOVEMBER 2016

  Pat Riley’s Final Test

  This was the NBA legend’s most difficult season in 50 years. So why, after nine championships, doesn’t he just walk away? If only it were that easy.

  The digital clock above the door in Pat Riley’s presidential suite counts down the minutes to tip-off. The room is in a back hallway underneath the arena, a few feet from the secret path beneath the bleachers that he takes to his seat. I sit on the couch and read a laminated prayer card the team made for the game. Nobody else is here; his wife, Chris, is out blessing different parts of the arena. Tip-off is 29 minutes away, the last game of the season. The Heat need to win and see one of two other teams lose in order to make the playoffs. Still no sign of Riley. For the past two months, he and I have spoken nearly every day, which continues to shock his wife, who knows how private he can be. But earlier today, someone with the Heat suggested I tread lightly. The boss is in a mood. A peak state of Rileyness.

  Then my phone buzzes.

  “R u here?” Riley texts.

  He sends his assistant, Karen, down to get me.

  “It’s tense,” she says as we climb the stairs and approach the glass walls of his office, where he sits in an easy chair near the sofa, alone. It’s quiet and dark, the blinds half-drawn, blocking out the view of the water. A three- or four-day growth on his face makes him look gaunt and tired. Around him, he’s got the talismans that might bring him luck: a strange statue of Buddha reimagined as a Heat fan, and a Bob Dylan lyric taped to his bookshelf: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

  Karen hands him a coffee, in one of those thin green Gatorade cups.

  He sighs, and shifts his weight, and sips.

  These past months have been an emotional time to be around him; the public highs and lows have been mirrored by the most difficult private challenge he’s ever faced. Not long ago he said the scariest thing in the world was “extinction,” or the emptiness that might swallow him if he ever managed to leave basketball behind, which he’s considering. Waiting out the start of the game, we circle a familiar subject: There are changes he’d like to make in his life, i
f he could ever escape the seductive rhythms of the NBA calendar. The prayer cards being passed out downstairs have a quote on the back, part of which asks: Will I lie down or will I fight? For the past 50 years, and especially this season, that question has been central to Riley’s daily life, a man perpetually seeking out opportunities to prove himself worthy of his reputation. The problem is that every time he proves himself, he puts off his future by another day.

  A horn sounds somewhere below, breaking the stillness of his office.

  “Watch the time,” Karen says.

  “What time is it?” he asks.

  “Three minutes to 8,” she says.

  Riley slips on his jacket, and we walk past the empty offices. His feet don’t make any sound on the soft red-and-black carpet in the back stairway down to the court. The noise of the arena gets louder the closer he gets, thumping bass at first, then the high-pitched whine of a packed house. He loves these gladiatorial walks, a feeling few people ever know, the pounding adrenaline and the roaring, unseen crowd. Minutes from tip-off, he passes the empty locker room. His team is on the floor. There’s a mural there in the hall, a blown-up photograph of Ray Allen’s famous 2013 3-pointer in the Finals, and he stops to stare for a moment. He looks at the fans in the background of the photo, studying the desperation in their faces, he says, like he’s looking in a mirror at himself.

  * * *

  —

  This season has challenged Riley as much as any in the past 50 years. The troubles began swirling three years ago, in the summer of 2014. Behind the Big Three—LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh—the Heat had been to four straight Finals, winning two titles, and Riley felt as if he had built something greater than his Showtime Lakers, something to rival even the Bill Russell–led Celtics. But James was a free agent that summer, and Riley and his guys flew out to Las Vegas to make their case for him to stay in Miami.

  Riley told his lieutenant, Andy Elisburg, to get the two championship trophies LeBron had won and pack them in their hard-shell carrying cases. Elisburg also brought charts and an easel for a presentation about the free agents the Heat would pursue. The day of the meeting, a hotel bellhop followed them with a luggage cart carrying the presentation and the two trophies. Riley brought wine from a Napa vineyard named Promise. It was the same label Maverick Carter had presented Riley with when they did the deal four years earlier. Riley respects Carter, and when he walked into the suite and saw James with agent Rich Paul and friend Randy Mims but no Maverick, part of him knew the meeting wasn’t sincere. He told Elisburg to keep the trophies and easel in the hall. James and his associates were watching a World Cup game, which they kept glancing at during the presentation. At one point, Riley asked if they’d mute the TV.

  Riley flew home worried and got a text telling him to be ready for a call. About 15 minutes later, his phone rang and Paul was on the other end. The agent handed the phone to LeBron, who started by saying, “I want to thank you for four years . . .”

  “I was silent,” Riley says. “I didn’t say anything. My mind began to just go. And it was over. I was very angry when LeBron left. It was personal for me. It just was. I had a very good friend who talked me off the ledge and kept me from going out there and saying something like Dan Gilbert. I’m glad I didn’t do it.”

  The next year, the Heat missed the playoffs, and Riley was consumed with self-doubt, his own mind whispering that he’d stayed too long. Then last season Miami lost Bosh to blood clots, but the team still fought to the playoffs, falling to the Raptors in seven in the Eastern Conference semifinals. On the flight back from Toronto, Riley and his staff drank wine and debated the free agents they’d get to join Wade for another deep playoff run.

  The beginning of July, all that fell apart.

  Wade decided to leave Miami, his bond with Riley fractured. They’d been like family once, with Wade visiting Riley at home and Riley a guest at Wade’s wedding. But with Bosh’s return in grave doubt, Wade saw an uncertain future in Miami—and just like that, the Big Three had disintegrated. Hurt and wounded, Riley and his wife booked a last-minute trip to Paris, leaving three days later for a reprieve and a few Bruce Springsteen shows. During the first one, Springsteen played Riley’s favorite song: “Land of Hope and Dreams.” It’s an anthem for Riley, because he spends a lot of time imagining the future he might have, when all his battles have been fought and won. He dreams of a different life, and not in an abstract way. He sees it, down to the taste of the dinner he’ll eat and the music he’ll play.

  That night, standing close to the stage, he sang along. The people who recognized him in the general-admission pit saw the exterior: good-looking, tanned, and well-dressed. Most can’t see past that image, which is perhaps its point. His inside is as messy and complex as his outside is manicured and defined. Chris Riley has always viewed any issue, including the pain over losing Wade, through her intimate knowledge of her husband’s hidden motivations and scars: It’d been 60 years since he scored 19 points as a sixth-grader, and the same nun who locked him in the church basement, forgetting him there with the rats and cobwebs, gave him a standing ovation after the buzzer, setting into motion all the urges that sent him running to Paris.

  Back home, his friends wondered how he might be handling such a public failure. Two pals from various yacht trips over the years, Dick Butera and Peter Guber, ran into each other during the off-season, their conversation recounted by Butera.

  “Have you seen Pat?” Dick asked. “Is he gonna stay?”

  “Pat will always be Pat,” Peter said.

  “You mean the contest is still on?” Dick asked.

  “The game is never gonna be over,” Peter said.

  His friends know him well. Eight days after returning from Paris, Riley went to Erik Spoelstra’s wedding, at an old mansion and gardens on the water in Miami. Randy Pfund, who left his job as Heat GM after Riley stopped coaching in 2008, walked over to his table to say hello. Riley didn’t open with tales of Paris or gushing praise for the flowers or the bride. Almost immediately, he started giving his side of the Wade departure.

  “Within 15 seconds,” Pfund says.

  * * *

  —

  Even as he obsesses over the Heat, in this or any other year, part of Riley’s mind is never far from his estate on the Pacific in Malibu. Sometimes he checks the live security cameras just to feel close to the place. He and Chris spend about a month there at the end of every off-season, surrounded by their oldest friends. She calls it their “heart home.”

  Last year he took the most concrete action he’s ever taken to make that dreamed future a reality. He signed a new five-year contract, with the understanding that he can work anywhere, including his perch overlooking the Pacific. His friends have been wondering for years when he’d head west, all of them following the internal conflict they’ve come to know as Miami vs. Malibu. “I love the schism because that’s all he talks about,” says his friend, the actor Michael Douglas. “That’s all he talks about, getting back to Malibu to that house.”

  When Douglas discusses Riley’s life in Florida, and the one he might live in California, he’s not talking about geography. Each place serves as an easy code to describe the competing sides of Riley’s personality. Miami represents the man living 6 inches in front of his face, Douglas says. One of many examples: Near the end of his last season with the Lakers, in 1990, he screamed at the players in a hotel ballroom and punched a mirror, shattering it and cutting his hand so deeply that bright red blood covered the sleeve of his crisp white shirt. He has punched mirrors and walls, wept and raged and trashed locker rooms. He has carried and nursed grudges. “Is Pat a dick?” Pfund says, repeating a question. “I know hundreds and hundreds of people who would say worse than that.”

  The other Riley loves emojis—texting hearts, smiley faces and sunsets, praying hands, cute baby heads, and palm trees. He has written six unproduced screenplays
. Enamored of his 5-year-old grandson, he’s teaching him about old cars and buying him toys that play the Motown classic “My Girl.” There’s a contagious joy in his eyes. At bar mitzvahs, he’s been the only adult on the dance floor of kids, leaving when the music stops and he’s covered in sweat. He shows up for people who matter to him; when his college teammate Tommy Kron died, the family walked into the church that morning to find two people: the priest and a grieving Riley. He’s been all over the world with friends on boats; he’s often the one with binoculars scanning coasts for little bars where they can surrender for an afternoon and night. “They drink and they sing and they play music,” says actress Lynda Carter, a longtime friend best known for playing Wonder Woman. “And he loves Springsteen and Motown and doo-wop. He and my daughter, Jess, were singing these duets, ‘Red Dirt Road,’ by Brooks & Dunn. They are crooning together and playing air guitar.”

  The flexibility in his contract about Malibu, then, isn’t about distance. It’s a vow he’s making—about the kind of person he can still be, even as a 72-year-old man. The entire estate, from the porches with the million-dollar views to the bocce ball court near the beach, is full of little promises.

  He’s got a guitar collection out there, because one day he swears he will learn to play “My Girl” for Chris. He dreams of strumming her that song, and she dreams of planting a garden, and they both dream of hammocks on the beach. He’s planning to move half his antique cars—he’s got nearly a dozen—out to Malibu. Five minutes from the estate, he found a storage facility to keep them all. He rented every available bay, so they’re all sitting there empty, waiting. The owner called him not long ago, worried that one person had all his space and wasn’t using it, wanting a long-term tenant and not some fickle rich guy who might up and leave.

  “What is your plan?” the man asked.