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Kovak's chair squeaked as he turned toward Dan, effectively shutting her out of the discussion. "Do you know that the Colts only paid Johnny Unitas ten thousand dollars a year? And that was after he'd led them to two championships."
These men were definitely crazy, and she decided she would be the voice of sanity. "Then why don't you get rid of Bobby Tom Denton and hire this Unitas person? You could triple the Colts' offer and still be a few million ahead."
Dan Calebow laughed. Dipping his head, he kept his arms crossed as his chest began to shake. Steve Kovak stared at her with an expression that fell someplace between shock and abject horror.
Her eyes darted to Ron, who had a gentle smile on his face. "What did I say wrong?" she asked.
Leaning forward, he patted her hand and whispered, "Johnny Unitas is retired now. He's—uh—about sixty. And he was a quarterback."
"Oh."
"But if he were still playing and—uh—younger, that might have been an excellent suggestion."
"Thank you," she replied with dignity.
Head still dipped, Dan wiped his eyes with his thumbs. "Johnny Unitas. Jay-zus…"
Completely irritated now, she swung her legs toward him while she whipped off her glasses and jabbed them at the unsigned contracts. "Did you make money like this when you were playing?"
He looked over at her, his eyes still moist. "Starting quarterbacks do a little better than that after they've been around for awhile."
"Better than $8 million?"
"Yep."
She slapped the contracts down on the desk. "Fine. Then why don't you sign this!" Rising to her feet, she stalked out.
She was halfway down the hall before she realized she had no place to go. An empty office lay off to her left. She stepped inside and shut the door, wishing she'd held her temper. Once again, she'd let her tongue take control of her brain.
Tucking her glasses into the pocket of her jacket, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling bank of windows that ran behind the desk and looked out over two empty practice fields. What did she know about wide-outs and $8 million contracts? She could converse with art lovers in four different languages, but that wasn't any use to her now.
The door opened behind her.
"Are you all right?" Ron inquired softly.
"I'm fine." As she turned, she saw the concern in his eyes.
"You have to understand about them. About football."
"I hate the game. I don't want to understand."
"I'm afraid you'll have to if you're going to be part of this." He gave her a sad smile. "They take no prisoners. Pro football is the most exclusive boys' club in the world."
"What do you mean?"
"It's closed to outsiders. There are secret passwords and elaborate rituals that only they can understand. None of the rules are written down, and if you have to ask what they are, you can't belong. It's a closed society. No women allowed. And no men who don't measure up."
She walked away from the window to one of the file cabinets and regarded him curiously. "Are you talking about yourself?"
He gave an embarrassed laugh. "It's painfully obvious, isn't it? I'm thirty-four years old. I tell everyone I'm five feet ten, but I'm barely five-eight. And I'm still trying to make the team. It's been that way all my life."
"How could it still be important to you?"
"It just is. When I was a kid, I couldn't think about anything else. I read about football, dreamed about it, went to every game I could—playground, high school, the pros, it didn't matter. I loved the patterns of the game—its rhythms and lack of
moral ambiguity. I even loved its violence because somehow it seemed safe—no mushroom clouds, no litter of dead bodies when it was over. I did everything but play. I was too small, too clumsy. Maybe I just wanted it too bad, but I could never hold on to the ball."
He slipped a hand into the pocket of his trousers. "My senior year of high school, I was a National Merit Scholar and I'd been accepted at Yale. But I would have given it all up in a second if I could have been on the team. If, just once, I could have carried the ball into the end zone."
