Game Day

by Miriam Sved

  The face is young, and prettyish, and the woman watches as Azza looks up mid-sentence and clocks the arrival. He trails off absently and moves in the direction of the new girl without a by-your-leave (bad form, although in truth poor Laurie probably hasn’t even noticed).

  The woman watches it happen, and barely has time to feel smug about her own prescience before she sees that this girl (who really is quite attractive, with long dark hair and one of those little button noses), is not going to save them all from Azza’s rant. Because with Azza making a beeline for the girl, the girl makes a beeline for the bar, where Mick Reece is sitting beside poor Ranga. Someone should have a word with her, if this new girl gets involved in prepping the finals banners. Someone should tell her that of course they all want to get to know the players – even those of the cheer squad who aren’t young and attractive with perky noses – but that this laser approach is not really how it’s done. But, then, the girl probably won’t be invited to participate in finals banner prep anyway.

  Azza, whether or not he understands the girl’s intentions, does not slow his pursuit, and he reaches her just as she reaches the bar, and manages to insert his head between her and the players, extending a beefy hand.

  ‘Hello there,’ he says, ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

  ‘Hello there yourself.’ There is a slight lilting strangeness to her ‘o’ sounds – to add to her sins, she has clearly arrived here at some earlier stage from somewhere else.

  ‘I haven’t seen you around the squad,’ Azza says. ‘You must’ve just joined, yeah? Usually I eyeball all the new applications, but I’ve been a bit preoccupied the last few days.’

  ‘I’m new,’ she says, smiling pleasantly up at Azza for a fraction less than the polite time before she turns and raises a hand for the bartender.

  ‘Let me get you a drink,’ Azza says. The gesture is somewhat ruined by the fact that there is an open bar, but maybe the girl doesn’t know about that.

  She says, ‘I’ll have a white wine, please. Whatever they have.’

  Azza gets the bartender’s attention with an overtly rude ‘Oi!’ and orders, ‘White for the lady,’ and another beer for himself.

  ‘Would you like anything?’ the girl says, and there is a moment of palpable confusion – might she be a bit simple, or maybe deaf? And then everybody, including Mick Reece, realises that she is talking to him.

  Pushy, very pushy; the woman mentally strikes the new girl off the banner-prep list once and for all. Poor Ranga slumps off towards the toilets.

  It might not come as such a surprise to Mick Reece, being asked by a pretty girl at an open bar whether he’d like a drink. Mick has garnered a lot of female attention since his debut at the beginning of the season. A robustly brilliant debut in which he took two flying marks in front of goal and executed a truly excellent banana kick from the boundary. His season hasn’t exactly gone smoothly since then, diving in and out of form like a seabird (typical of first-year players; you can never trust their consistency). But that first game – combined with an endearingly shy kind of confidence in media appearances, and with his hair, which is bright red and emerges at unexpected angles from his head and flies around him with animalistic brilliance when he’s taking a mark – has got him a lot of attention, including a dedicated cadre of female fans: tweens mostly, but enough in his own age group (the press has labelled them Reece’s pieces) that the lad has surely experienced a romantic watershed.

  Mick Reece looks up at the new girl, pauses a beat and says, ‘I’ll have a scotch, please.’

  The little thrill this causes – the slight dilation of pupils among the small group of participants and observers – is neatly dealt with by the girl, who turns towards the bar with a swing of her long dark hair, which falls like a curtain between her and Mick Reece. The event of a player – a high-profile player, even a suspended one – ordering a scotch at a club event on the eve of finals is unexpected. It could be news. It’s not exactly against the rules for players to have one or two drinks, if they’re not in the direct lead-up to a game. But none of them do – not in this kind of setting. None except the troublemakers, and they never last long. And Mick Reece is not a troublemaker.

  The new girl, behind her shiny veil of hair, sounds entirely casual when she says, ‘Any particular kind? I like Glenfiddich, but they might not have it here.’ Maybe she does not realise what a statement Mick is making. Maybe she is not even a proper footy fan. Just a groupie.

  Azza, on the other hand, has made a series of snorts and murmurs in Mick’s direction, and is clearly attuned to the potential drama. Standing at the end of the bar, he is at a slight angle from the new girl and the player, and he leans forward to bring his face into closer proximity with both, and says, ‘Nah, mate, go Johnnie Walker, Black Label. Only thing for a self-respecting scotch drinker. No offence,’ he adds to the girl.

  ‘None taken.’

  Both of them look at Mick.

  ‘I’ll have a Glenmorangie, if they’ve got it,’ he says shyly.

  The girl gets the bartender’s attention and orders Mick’s scotch, and then sits facing him. ‘I’m Patricia – Pat,’ she says, clearly speaking to the player, but it is Azza who answers.

  ‘Hi, Pat. Pretty Pat. I’m Aaron Peters. Azza. But you might already know that.’

  Patricia swivels slightly on her stool and considers him. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know that.’ And swivels back around to Mick Reece. ‘So you’re on the hard stuff tonight? Bit of a run of bad luck recently?’

  Just like a young person. When anyone else would have shown a bit of sensitivity to the lad’s situation. Just barrelling in like a bull in a china shop.

  But Mick doesn’t seem offended. He looks up at Patricia and there is an opening up of his features, as if she has made some kind of revelation. ‘It has been bad luck,’ he says. ‘A run of bad luck. Exactly.’

  ‘You wanna talk about bad luck,’ Azza says, ‘were you at the game on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Patricia, turning her body around again, ‘I was at the game.’

  ‘So you know what that umpire did to me.’

  There is a slight thickening of air at this flagrantly self-obsessed interpretation of what happened at the game – both Mick Reece and Patricia looking at Azza with eyebrows identically raised.

  Azza coughs. ‘I mean, what he did to the boys.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw,’ Patricia says. ‘It was bloody outrageous.’

  ‘I wasn’t playing,’ Mick says glumly.

  ‘When do you get back in now?’ Patricia asks in a light, conversational tone, as if this is a throwaway question.

  ‘One more week. Semi-final.’ And then, ‘If we make it that far.’

  ‘Fucken umpire,’ Azza says, and Mick hunches lower on his bar stool.

  ‘You’ll get back in,’ Patricia says. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this team.’

  Mick stares into his scotch. ‘No thanks to me.’

  Patricia blows air out her nose. ‘It’s just a few weeks’ suspension. The tribunal was a bit harsh but it’s nothing to beat yourself up over.’

  Azza is looking from Mick Reece to the girl with a kind of confusion written on his beefy features. The woman watching on, who has spent many hours with him at games and pubs, can see the internal conflict. He would usually be drawing Mick out, asking questions, giving the kid his own advice. Sucking up. This is how he has got close to many of the players. But he would also usually be showing off to the girl. On the pull is what the boys used to call it. Azza is almost compulsively on the pull, and he seems to have set his heart, or some other organ, on this Patricia. (When there are so many nice girls in the cheer squad. Nice, un-pushy girls with un-snubby noses.)

  Patricia, meanwhile, has leaned forward and is considering Mick Reece with a steadfast intensity – as though she is deciding whether to eat him. Eventua
lly she says, ‘You’re not just talking about the suspension, are you?’

  He looks up at her almost pleadingly, like he’s willing her to go on but also scared. The woman thinks, Don’t fall for it, lad.

  There is a long pause, and then Mick Reece says in a small voice, ‘Do you believe in curses?’

  Patricia cocks her head as if she’s considering this question, as if it’s not a completely kooky question. ‘No,’ she says eventually. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’ He stares down into his glass.

  Patricia is looking at him with an expression like some kindly aunt or older sister. Prepared to stop at nothing. ‘I reckon you’ve had a tough year of it,’ she says, and the woman watching on thinks suddenly of the horrible spray the coach, Cob, gave the kid early on in the season. It was accidentally televised. Everyone has forgotten about it since Mick managed to turn his form around, and she is obscurely resentful of this Patricia for making her remember it now – making her remember the anger and humiliation she’d felt: at the coach, the television station that picked up the audio. At Mick Reece himself, who had played like a fearful teenager and sent such a clumsy handball across the face of goal. So it is almost a relief for the woman – whose position by the bathrooms has brought her into the wafting path of some unpleasant smells, and who might actually have grown sick of Patricia and the two-man play going on around her – when Azza asserts himself. He leans so far over the bar that he could be trying to get his face beneath the beer taps, and says, ‘It’s tough when your position attracts a lot of media attention. I know ’cos of all the shit I get as the club’s number-one fan.’

  Patricia swivels to face Azza, and looks at him as if she’s looking for the first time. Azza lowers his head and raises one side of his mouth into a smirk that the woman has seen before – she thinks he may have tried to copy it from Sean Connery. She thinks it looks faintly ridiculous, but Patricia is smiling warmly.

  ‘I have seen you on telly,’ Patricia says. ‘Being interviewed after games.’

  Azza gives a modest shrug and Patricia nods contemplatively. Perhaps she is giving up on Mick Reece and setting her sights on the next-best option. God knows this kind of thing has worked for Azza in the past. He says, ‘Yeah, like I said, lots of media attention. Comes with the position.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Patricia says.

  Azza looks at her blankly.

  She goes on. ‘I mean, what actually is your position? Are you employed by the club in any capacity, or is there some kind of official organisation to the cheer squad?’

  The woman is glad now that she didn’t relinquish her vantage point by the bathrooms. Azza is looking gobsmacked – his silly smirk slipping away like a shadow and his mouth dropping slightly open. She reconsiders Patricia: is she one of those bitchy man-eaters? The modern breed of girl (her son brought home one or two), so set on appearing cleverer than the men that they’ll say anything to score a point. But Patricia doesn’t look like she’s trying to score points. She looks interested, watching Azza expectantly with a slight perky tilt to her slight perky face.

  Azza says, ‘You could say . . . It’s not officially official or anything, but I’ve been around the club for fifteen years and that counts for something. Just ask Cob, yeah? Or the media. I’m the one they come to when they want the word from the fans.’

  ‘Really?’ Patricia takes a little sip of her wine. ‘I thought they usually went to Shuggie Williams.’

  Here the woman gives herself away – for anyone who might have been paying attention – by choking on a sip of her cider. She looks around but everyone is preoccupied; they’re setting things up for the speakers, most of the guests seated at their tables watching the stage expectantly. Bloody hell, she thinks, with a reluctant mental shrug of respect for snub-nosed Patricia. This one’s a firecracker. She notices that Mick Reece has turned his chair around to follow the exchange, more interested than he has looked all night.

  When Azza recovers his voice it comes out loud, rough. ‘Shuggie might have been around the club longer, ’cos he’s old,’ putting a sneer into the word that the woman doesn’t like, that she feels somewhat personally offended by, ‘but if you look at what I’ve done for this club . . .’ He looks at Mick Reece almost plaintively, as if the young player might back him up. Mick looks back curiously. ‘I’ve got media savvy,’ Azza goes on. ‘I know how to create a profile, get things moving, get things viral. Almost had a sponsorship deal last year – I was in high-level talks with one of the club’s big partners. Official number-one fan, maybe appearing in some ads, talking about even doing some kind of documentary. But then it fell through for some reason.’

  ‘A documentary about the club’s number-one fan?’ Patricia says, sounding thoughtful.

  Azza nods. ‘Just ask that fucken maggot umpire,’ he says. ‘He knew.’

  ‘No, I believe you,’ Patricia says. ‘It’s just, have you ever seen Misery?’

  This time a little bit of cider comes out the woman’s nose, and she has a small coughing fit. She has seen Misery. She has wondered before whether Azza has seen it. It appears not; he’s staring at Patricia.

  ‘Well,’ Patricia says, ‘maybe you should hire it and watch it some time. It’s just, that “number-one fan” thing makes you sound a bit like Kathy Bates from Misery, and she’s a bit of a psycho.’

  Mick Reece lets out a small laugh. Patricia sounds perfectly friendly – slightly apologetic even – but no amount of soft tone can take the edge off her words. Watching her so calmly knock Azza off his perch, the woman wonders how he got up there. He never pitches in at banner prep, and she happens to know that last year he didn’t pay his membership fee. With his face red and eyes bugging out and those two small veins standing up on his forehead he is not even remotely handsome. He looks like he’s about to lose it. She has seen him lose it at games (the game on Saturday when that umpire casually trashed the club’s season). To her knowledge he has never lost it at either a player or a girl he’s trying to impress. Before he has a chance to break that record there is some feedback from the microphone up on stage and the team’s coach, Cob, clears his throat into it, and Patricia turns to Mick Reece. ‘I’m sorry the first year has been so hard on you,’ Patricia says. ‘You’re not cursed. Some things have happened that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. Some things are going to change around here.’

  Creepy – the stalker-fan thing is becoming more disturbing than Azza’s pulsating forehead veins. Mick Reece is staring at Patricia, his raw young face slightly flushed.

  At the microphone, Cob is welcoming them all, thanking them for their efforts this difficult year, for their tireless and so often thankless efforts on behalf of the club. The club is nothing without them, he says, and it sounds like he means it; he sounds emotional, which is unheard-of for Cob (whom the woman has met four times at club functions and of whom she has maintained a respectful terror). ‘You lot have been there through thick and thin,’ he says, ‘and don’t I know there’s been a lot more thin than thick recently, and the club will never forget your loyalty, never.’ His voice getting reedy – he is actually teary. The woman feels uncertainty, almost like fear crawling through her chest. What is he doing up there, so shaky and womanly? It is like seeing her father cry.

  Now he is coughing gruffly into his fist and saying he’d like to introduce everyone to the club’s new media manager, replacing Ian McIntyre, who tendered his resignation yesterday. He’s saying that it isn’t official yet, but the young lady in question has an outstanding record in sports media and they’ll be lucky to have her, and everyone should take the chance tonight to get to know her because she’s going to be around the club a lot. Patricia Hobson. And then Patricia, snub-nosed Patricia, is standing beside him shaking his hand, and the effect of this on the woman is instant and quite strange. The unmanned coach next to the coach-transformed Patricia is like a familiar room in which everything is
suddenly changed, the furniture moved around and the angle skewed so she is watching it all from a great distance, watching the roles fall away. She has seen them all so wrong; they see each other so wrong. How then do they see her?

  Do they see her as Linda O’Donoghue, a dentist’s receptionist three years from retirement who drives to every game from Lilydale, all the way down the freeway with two team scarves snapping in the wind out the back windows? Do they see that these two scarves are subtly different, because she bought one from merchandise and knitted the other herself, and that sometimes she wears them both together because it makes her feel that her support for the team is redoubled in a special, individual way? Do they see that she spends more on her annual squad membership than on her grandson’s birthday and Christmas presents; and that her ex-husband was also a fan but once, when they were close to the divorce, he said he’d be glad to get away from her footy ‘cult’?

  Do they see her at all?

  Her role, when she thinks about it, doesn’t really need to be seen. Bums on seats. She is a bum. Invisible. All her love and energy, all that money that could have bought little Max some really good presents (a trampoline, he would have liked a trampoline) – all it has bought her is a seat.