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I shake hands with the blue-collar father of the recruit who is now in the car, ready to go to an overnight clinic in Vegas. He’s a good kid, talented and hard-working. He’s entering his junior year in the fall and I have a gut feeling he’d be a good fit.
Which is why I’m ready to kick the tires on my car until they’re nothing more than strands of rubber attached to a hunk of metal on the side of this fucking desert highway.
“How’d it go?” Freddy answers on the first ring. His voice is tight and I don’t think I’m imagining some agitation.
“How do you think it went?” I blast the A/C and make a note to myself to never again let someone talk me into a rental car with black leather seats in the desert.
“Wanna know who I just heard from?” Freddy says.
“Who?”
“Tellman.”
“Fuck.”
We’d been working on Jake Tellman from Quad Cities since he was in eighth grade. Even when I was still a lowly assistant, he was my prospect.
“Let me guess: he wants to stay close to home.”
“And Minnesota is close to home.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuck.” I pull onto the highway and drive back into Pahrump.
“Did you fuck his dog or something?”
“Flux, what the hell? Don’t say shit like that.”
“Well, whatever you did, he’s onto you.”
We have always gone after the same type of kid. But this is different. This isn’t down to a few kids who fit that profile that we’re both interested in. This is a coach from a competing program targeting athletes we’ve been in communication with for years.
“He called,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose. “A couple weeks ago.”
“What the hell? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Nothing to say.” Nothing I would want to worry Flux or the other coaches with, anyway.
“So, what? He just called to gloat?”
“Not gloat, no. He wanted to strike a deal.”
“Oh, fuck that. We should be calling HQ.”
“It was all casual talk, nothing specific.”
“But you said no.” Flux says it like he’s not sure, like he needs clarification.
“Of course I said no,” I snap. “We run a clean program and I’m not doing anything to put these kids’ futures in danger just because I want a disgruntled former coworker to ease off.”
“Was he disgruntled?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know. I got the job, he didn’t. He left for Minnesota. Then he called when I was at Megan’s doctor's appointment.”
“Shit. Bad timing.”
“Don’t I know it.”
The desert landscape whizzes by me, and I realize I’m driving eighty-five miles an hour. The last thing I need out here is a speeding ticket. Especially when I didn’t need to drive this far out to butt-fucking Egypt to see a kid who was on his way to Vegas to see another coach.
