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“You’ll see.”
“I swear, if you take me to a fancy restaurant…”
Christian chuckled to himself, but said nothing else.
We drove east through downtown St. Louis, past the ballpark where the Cardinals played, with the Gateway Arch looming overhead. We turned north, continuing on until we reached a hulking stadium that blocked out a huge portion of the sky.
“The football stadium?” I asked.
Christian remained silent as he pulled onto a private ramp that tilted down underneath the structure. He scanned a badge to get past a gate, then parked next to an elevator where a man wearing a Colts rain jacket was waiting.
“Got everything set up for you, Mr. Baker,” the man said, holding out a fist.
Christian bumped it with his own fist. “I appreciate you coming down here to help.” He pulled a $100 bill out of his pocket.
The man immediately shook his head. “Your money’s no good here. Not after what you did for Julian.”
“Then consider me in your debt,” Christian said.
The man pressed a button, and the elevator doors opened. “The way I see it, I owe you a lot more favors before we’re even, Mr. Baker.”
Christian clapped him on the arm and said, “We’ll see about that.” We stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“That’s Matty, one of the stadium managers. I did him a favor last month,” Christian replied casually.
“What kind of favor? Who’s Julian?”
“His son. He has a rare immune disease. I called in some favors to a hospital in Indianapolis to get Julian admitted to a special treatment program. He’s responding well to it.”
“That’s amazing!”
Christian shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
If it were anyone else, I would assume this was false modesty. But Christian seemed genuinely uncomfortable talking about the favor, so I dropped it.
The elevator opened up to a long hallway with cement floors. I followed Christian down to the end, and then we turned right and walked out of a tunnel onto the field itself. The massive, cavernous stadium interior seemed to spread out around me as I stepped onto the fake grass field. It seemed dimmer than how it looked on TV, like only half the lights were on. There was an eerie hollow feel to the space, like we were in a cave, miles underground.
“This is really nice,” I said.
“When the Rams were here in St. Louis, they played in an old multi-purpose stadium called The Dome at America’s Center. It was nice when it opened in the nineties, but it was a dump by the time the Rams moved to Los Angeles. When the Colts moved here, part of the deal was that the city would demolish The Dome and build a newer stadium. This is what they built. It’s beautiful. State-of-the-art in a lot of ways, while still maintaining an historic feel.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I get shivers every time I step onto this field.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m in awe just standing here, and it’s empty!”
He led me out toward the middle of the field. “This place is really something when it’s full of fans. When the ball is hiked to me, and I drop back to pass, I feel like a god. Or a gladiator. Their cheers and wails rain down on me, the personified voice of an entire city. Demanding excellence. Demanding victory. And when they don’t get it…” Christian snorted. “I hear their anger. I take it all in, and make it part of me. I use it to do better the next week. It’s whatfuelsme.”
He almost seemed like he was talking to himself. When I was certain he was finished, I asked, “Why did you bring me here? Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to know who I am, Beth. I’m a lot of different things to a lot of people. All of us are, to some extent.” He swept his arm in a wide arc. “But when I’m here, on the football field, with eleven opponents trying their best to kill me on every single play? That’s when I’m trulyme. And it was important to me that you understand that, and reallyfeelit, here on the field. Not just from the perspective the television cameras show.”
Suddenly, I realized this wasn’t just a first date gimmick. He wasn’t trying to impress me by using his influence to sneak me into a stadium when nobody else was here. He was trying to be truly vulnerable with me in a way that men rarely were.
Over to my right, on the sideline, was a cart full of footballs. I ran over there.
“Where are you going?” Christian called.
I retrieved a football and brought it back to the middle of the field. It seemed so much larger than it should have been in my hands. “I want to catch a touchdown.”
