Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (11 page)

The chicken sandwich is safe and bland. I get back to the office and sit down for an afternoon of watching film, in between which I check Dev’s e-mail box. Lots of supportive mail, a discouraging amount of hate mail. A letter from a closeted otter who’s a college swimmer. I kind of snort at that—everyone assumes swimmers are at least bi—but he’s pretty stressed about it. Dev’s coming out has inspired him to do the same to his teammates. He promises to let me—Dev—know how it goes.

It makes me wonder if someone interested in digging further into Dev’s story and the biases and hurdles he faces could really do good for some of the other kids out there, kids afraid of coming out because of the people they live with, or play with. I wonder if Kinnel is up to that.

Probably not. He’s a nice guy, but he wants stories that will earn money. Dev’s a headline right now. Once that cools off, he won’t be as interested in me. Unless I tease him a bit more.

The thought makes me smile. I’d need to stay close to him if I want to find out what Corcoran’s thinking, right? Despite Kinnel’s denial, he’s got some line in to the owner. I wonder briefly if that was the secret he and Cimarine fought about. Maybe he was Corcoran’s gay lover. Or maybe she was cheating on him with Corcoran.

Plenty of time to ponder all those juicy scenarios. Right now I’ve got Dev’s game to worry about, and then the visit to his parents. I get my phone out on the walk back to the office and pull up my folks’ number. I stare at it for a little while and then put the phone away again. They won’t be able to give me any useful advice, nothing worth the stress I’d get from talking to them. I can handle Dev’s parents.

Thursday morning, and my paw is stuck to my sheath. I vaguely remember deciding to rest just a few more minutes before washing up. I stumble to the shower and get ready for another day of football. A billboard on the way in reminds me that Ogleby said the commercial people were coming today, so I call him. He insists that they’re going to be there at noon, and I tell him that they need to reschedule. “It’s too late,” he squeaks, but I hang up on him. I don’t want to think what would happen if a filming crew showed up in the middle of practice. I’d be lucky to get only a fine and not a suspension.

I push that worry aside during morning practice. I’ve gotten pretty good at blocking out other thoughts, apart from thinking about Lee watching me, telling me what I should be doing better. We work on footwork for an hour and then go back into plays. I’ve got my role down, and Gerrard and Carson have theirs. Steez is happy, though he somehow wants more from us. I’m not sure what more I can do; I’m running my route perfectly.

“
You didn’t stick around to practice with us last night,” Gerrard says as we head into the locker room for lunch.

“
Yeah, sorry, I had a bunch of calls.”

“
We’re practicing again tonight.”

I don’t want to annoy Gerrard, and I know how much he just wants me to care about football. “Okay. I’ll stick around.”

“
Good.” He claps me on the shoulder, and we sit down together for lunch. I barely even notice the hostile stares of Colin and Zillo, a muscular coyote who backs up my position. Pike and Kodi sit near us, but they’re watching Fisher, who’s sitting across from us.

We talk shop, discussing Millenport’s star boar, the offensive linemen. Gerrard starts out matter-of-fact, dissecting his moves from the film we watched. Fisher tosses in some jokes, and I follow suit. Then Fisher says, “You guys heard what he said about Dev, right?”

I haven’t, but Gerrard just shrugs. “We need more motivation to play well?”

Colin’s ears are perked. Pike looks interested. “What’d he say?”

“
You mind?” Fisher looks at me.

“
Why should I?” But I find I don’t really want to hear it. “I mean, I assume it’s just a bunch of incoherent grunting.”

We’re still laughing when Coach comes in, glaring at me. Our laughter dies. The intense glare of those yellow eyes drops like ice into the pit of my stomach. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Outside,” he growls.

I get up silently, knowing already what the problem is. Sure enough, waiting in the lobby of the team facility are a pair of deer with film cameras and a gum-chewing lemur. “There he is!” the lemur cries at me, arms outstretched.

“
Ten thousand,” Coach tells me. “Make it go away.” He stalks back into the facility, leaving me with an afterimage of yellow eyes burned into my sight.

“
We don’t want to interrupt your practice,” the lemur says. “Just want to film it, thirty seconds footage of you working out, some closeups.”

“
Then you take off the uniform to show this.” One of the deer holds out a white shirt with some kind of hideous green logo on it.

“
You can’t film our practice.” I sigh and take the shirt. It’s made of some slick material and doesn’t feel half-bad, really. “Look, I can run around out here for like a minute. That okay?”

They all stare at me like I said I was going to practice naked. “Uh, we need
thirty seconds
of footage,” the lemur says.

“
Okay,” I say, slowly, “so I don’t have to run around for the full minute.”

The lemur exchanges eyerolls with the deer. “Thirty seconds of footage will take us about an hour to get.”

“
What?”

“
We need to get a bunch of different angles, lighting, different takes, I mean, we’re not making ‘The Godfather’ here, but we need some good stock to work with.”

“
Also,” one of the deer says, “if you could, like, check out some of your teammates...”

My claws are out. I resist the urge to shred the shirt before tossing it back to the deer. “I gotta go practice.” I turn and follow after Coach.

“
Wait, wait!” The lemur runs after me. “Okay, we won’t film practice. Can we just get you doing some drills this afternoon?”

“
I don’t think—”

“
It’s just an hour of your time. And your agent already signed the contract.”

Fuck Ogleby all to hell. My tail lashes. “Fine. I get off practice at five. I’ll be out here then.”

“
Awesome.” The lemur tries to shake my paw and grabs my wrist instead as I don’t quite manage to avoid him. “You’re gonna love this, Devlin. We’re gonna be great for each other.”

The only things that are great for me are Lee and football, and I can’t call Lee right now. I shake off the lemur and stomp in to practice some football.

“
So nice you can join us, Miski,” Steez barks. I mumble an apology under my breath and line up with Gerrard to my right as Zillo trots back to the bench with a sneer on his muzzle. I’m only five minutes late, so I’m sure that putting him out there was another message from Steez. Or from Coach. I growl at myself and clear it out of my head, focusing on where to plant my feet and what’s going on on the other side of the ball.

It’s not a great practice. I try to focus, but the guys seem pretty cold. Even Gerrard, who’s usually businesslike and efficient, talks to me less than usual. I would be more bothered by it if I could think about anything but the commercial.

I’d started out the practice composing an angry rant to Ogleby in my head. I moderate it as the practice goes on, as I perform well enough to stop Steez’s grumbling. After all, it’s an opportunity. It is what I make of it.

The reality of it hadn’t registered with me until the cameras showed up in front of me. I’d seen the huge cameras that the networks use to film games, but I’d never had one just for me. I start thinking about my brother and his commercial, too. This would be one I got paid to do, not the other way around. I think about Lee watching it, about the fact that this happened because I came out, that Lee will be proud of me for being an icon. My parents will see it, and maybe seeing me on TV will...I don’t know, do something.

It takes an hour and a half to get their thirty seconds of footage, and it’s not quite what I envisioned. They have me run around on the parking lot, and pose, and pose, and pose. And the one camera circles me, getting some shots that, frankly, I don’t think are appropriate for a commercial airing during the day. I don’t say anything, because maybe he was just getting into position for the main shots.

I don’t have a chance to ask them after. By the time they wrap (that’s what they call it), my toe is aching and I’m worried I might’ve fucked it up, so I just wave off their assurances and head back into the complex.

I shower, grab an ice pack from the training room, and am just wrapping it against my foot when Gerrard and Carson come in from the field. “Thought you were going to join us,” Gerrard says, while Carson strips off his uniform.

“
Oh. Shit.” I stop wrapping my foot for a minute to pay attention to him. “I’m sorry, they got me worked up...Ogleby signed a contract...”

He stares, expressionless. “You signed a contract with the team, too.”

“
I know, I...” I flatten my ears. “It won’t happen again.”

His gaze flicks down to the ice pack. “Hurt yourself?”

Carson, naked and holding a towel, pauses on his way to the shower to look. I point out to the lot. “They had me running on asphalt.”

His eyes narrow. In that moment, I realize I could’ve said I’d hurt myself during practice. I could’ve made up some other excuse that would have neatly explained why I’d skipped extra practices with him, instead of sitting here now, waiting for Gerrard to tell me what a risk I took to my career to star in a commercial. But he just shakes his head once and goes back to his locker, pulling his jersey off.

“
It’s not bad,” I say. “I’ll be fine for practice tomorrow.”

He doesn’t look at me. “See you then.”

I feel like crap all the way home, but at least that doesn’t make me speed. I decide to call Ogleby and take it out on him.

“
Hey,” I say when he picks up, “what the shit is it with this film crew showing up during practice? I told you—”

“
Did you do the commercial? Tell me you did the commercial.”

“
I did it, it’s over, but I screwed up my foot.”

He’s gratifyingly alert. “What do you mean, screwed up? Did those guys screw up your foot? I knew I should’ve put damages in that contract. I’ll get on the phone to them right now.”

“
You’re the one—” I say, but Ogleby has his own idea in his head.

“
I’m writing the note down right now, I’ll call them the minute we get off here. How’s the reporters? I like the stuff that’s coming out, people are calling with questions, once the Today Show hits you’re gonna be huge.”

“
They’re fine.” I turn the corner onto my street. “I don’t know how they all got my number, though.”

“
I gave it to them. You let me know if anything’s bothering you and I’ll fix it, okay? We’re a team, we’re working together.”

“
Wait,
you
—?”

“
That’s it, kid, now I’m gonna go take care of that shirt company, they should take better care of their talent. We’re gonna get a commercial on during the Today Show.”

“
That soon?”

“
They’ll have it up this week during your game. They already bought the spot. That’s why they had to shoot today.”

“
Lion Christ.”

“
I gotta go, Dev, you take care and tell me if anything’s bothering you, anything at all.”

“
I don’t want you giving my number out!” I yell, but I get only silence back. I feel myself close to throwing the phone out the window, so I put it down and concentrate on navigating my parking garage. At least Ogleby isn’t giving out my home address, I reflect in the elevator on the way up.

I turn on my GameBox and throw in UFL Football 2009 while I call Lee. I tell him all about the commercial and them showing up in the middle of the day.

“
You can’t let them distract you from football.”

“
I’m not.” Even though they took me away from extra practice, even though my foot is still sore.

“
The commercial is cool, don’t get me wrong. But if you don’t keep up your football—”

“
Christ, doc, it was one day.” I shift on the couch, leaning back against the armrest.

He whuffs into the phone. “How’d Fisher react?”

“
He said ‘good for you.’”

“
That all?”

I shift on the couch. “The guys are fine. They’re just focused.”

“
Uh-huh.” He sounds amused. “Got any more commercials on the horizon?”

“
I don’t know, I’ll ask Ogleby.” I settle back into the couch and growl. “He gave my number to all those reporters.”

“
Of course he did,” Lee says. “He wants you to be famous. The more famous you are, the more endorsements you get and the more money he gets. At this point, I doubt he even cares about your football career. When’s the commercial going to air?”

“
He cares.” But I realize that Ogleby’s swift anger could just as easily have been purely for my benefit. “It’ll air during the Today Show and during the game Sunday.”

“
I’ll have to record it.”

I grin. “Where you flying in from?”

“
Freestone. I’ll be at the Gresham – Holtower game until eight or so. Eleven o’clock flight down to Chevali, at the stadium bright an early Sunday morning.”