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He was rejecting the idea but giving her an A for effort. She hated being patronized but was too downcast to take issue with it tonight. She’d poured all her energy into the presentation. Now that it was over, and hadn’t yielded the result she’d wished for, she felt hollow and depleted.
“Now,” he said, as though a minor matter had been dealt with and dismissed, “tell me what else happened today.”
CHAPTER
17
BOLLY RICH CLIMBED THE BLEACHERS AND SAT DOWN BESIDE Griff. For a full sixty seconds they sat there in identical poses—forearms braced on their thighs, hands clasped between their knees—staring at the players on the field.
Bolly was the first to break the silence. “What the hell are you doing, Griff?”
“I’m watching practice.”
“This is the third day in a row you’ve been here.”
“You’re counting?”
“Yeah, I’m counting. What’s the deal?”
“Well, in my learned opinion, Jason is as good as any other player on this team. They don’t have a strong running back. Their safety’s for shit. Jason’s scrambling, but he’s—”
“Cut the crap, Griff,” Bolly said, even angrier than before. “What are you doing watching a middle school’s football practice?”
Griff turned his head then and looked at him. “Killing time, Bolly. ’Cause I’ve got nothing else to do. Last time I checked, this was public property, giving me as much right to be here as you. You don’t like it, you don’t have to speak to me. I didn’t invite you up here. So why don’t you go back down there and rejoin the decent folk before I rub off on you and you get ousted from the Booster Club?”
Down on the field, the coaches had the boys huddled, letting them drink from their water bottles while talking them through plays. The boys looked too small for their wide shoulder pads. From this distance they looked like bobble-head dolls, all out of proportion. Griff had started playing football at about Jason’s age. He supposed he had looked small then, too.
Bolly stayed where he was. He said, “My kid idolizes you.”
“I make a sorry hero.”
“I told him as much.”
They watched as the coaches divided the offensive players from the defensive and herded the two groups to opposite ends of the field to run practice drills. Five minutes passed. Ten.
Then Bolly cleared his throat. “That night in Buffalo?”
Griff didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard him, although he knew immediately the particular night he was referring to.
“Never been so cold in my life.”
“Ten below at game time,” Griff said. “Or so they told me later. They didn’t have the heart to tell us in the locker room before the game. Sixty minutes of football played in blowing snow, and at the final whistle, all we had to show for it was a freaking field goal. The kicker, wrapped in Mylar and sipping hot drinks on the bench the whole game, trots his skinny ass out there and makes the only three points of the game. My fingers are bleeding from some Bills lineman digging his cleats in. They’re so cold I can’t even bend them. That runty kicker gets all the glory.”
Bolly snuffled a laugh. “He was a cocky bastard to start with.”
“Tell me. Where was he from anyway? There were no vowels in his last name.”
“One of those eastern European countries. Switched from soccer to football so he could come to the States and make more money. Cowboys are well rid of him.”
It had been an inglorious win to a game that came late in the season, its outcome irrelevant to the play-offs. The airport was closed because of the blizzard, so the team couldn’t fly home. No one was in a party mood as they returned to the hotel for another night. Most went straight to their rooms.
“You and I wound up the last ones in the bar,” Bolly said, as though following Griff’s thoughts. “I got wasted.”
“Bolly—”
“No, no, this needs to be said, Griff. I got drunk on my ass and blubbered like a baby about my marital problems.”
Best Griff could recall, Bolly’s wife had packed up and moved out on him, saying she was sick of staying at home with their young son while he was away having fun with the guys, covering one sporting event or another.
