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We emerged from a tunnel into a private parking lot next to the stadium. A black limo was parked by the door with two men standing outside it like sentinels. One of them saw me and opened the door.
“Right this way, sir,” he said.
I nodded and ducked down into the car. The door closed softly behind me.
Kenneth MacMillan was in his seventies, but he looked damn good for his age. Money couldn’t buy happiness, or so they said, but it could certainly buy hair plugs, a good tan, and a state-of-the-art working regimen. He was seated across from me, facing backwards toward me. Next to him was the team coach.
“Hell of a game,” the coach said.
“A win is a win,” MacMillan said sagely. “As we say in golf, there are no photos on the scorecard. We have lived to fight another day.”
“We don’t need to beat around the bush,” I said. “You probably don’t have time for it, and I sure as hell don’t have the patience. So why don’t we get to the reason I’m here?”
MacMillan reached behind him and tapped the glass partition between us and the driver. Moments later, the car began to move. None of us spoke for several seconds, and it was the coach who finally broke the silence.
“The last play we ran. I had Stark penciled in.”
“Yep.”
“But you ran onto the field and took his place.”
“Yep.”
“Stark said you told him to sit out. That you were going in.”
“I’m startin’ to feel like a broken record,” I said. “But yep. I did. It ain’t the kid’s fault. He couldn’t have stopped me if he tried.”
“It almost worked,” MacMillan said diplomatically. “You made a marvelous catch.”
“But…” I said.
MacMillan smiled sadly. “But indeed.” He nodded to the man next to him. “Coach wants to bench you. Permanently.”
“Don’t blame him,” I said.
“You dropped two other passes this game,” the coach said, even though he needed no explanation. “It didn’t hurt us because we still scored on those drives, but it ain’t like you, Brody. None of this is. Not the way you’ve played all season, except for the few games where you’ve put it together. Hell, the old Brody never would have let himself fumble the ball the way you did today.”
“I know.”
“I’m a good judge of character. I got to this position by learning how to read people. And right now?” Coach leaned forward toward me. “You’re reading like a Stephen King novel. Full of confusion and terror.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Maybe it was because I was resigned to my fate. “You ain’t wrong, boss.”
“What is wrong, Brody?” he asked.
“Might be easier to talk about what ain’t wrong.”
“Does it have to do with this woman?” MacMillan asked. “The one in the tabloids. The professor.”
I sighed. “Yeah, that’s part of it. She and I’ve been datin’ for a while. Started this summer, sort of. I won’t bore you with the details. But the thing is, I was dating the head cheerleader, too. Isabella. It ended badly.”
“I remember,” MacMillan said. “That was a very public break-up as well.”
“Your performance was struggling before that,” coach pointed out.
“Yeah, I know. It’s complicated. But when I’m with this girl? Everything just sort of works. I’m me again.”
“Then what changed?”
