"Says that Texas universities spent over a billion dollars the last five years to build football stadiums."
She pointed at the UT stadium looming large in the window. The new north end zone was under construction; the workers looked like ants scurrying about the two-hundred-foot-tall structure.
"That's another hundred and eighty million dollars for football. They sell corporate skyboxes, tickets and TV rights, merchandise-that's a nonprofit educational activity? They gross a hundred million a year from football and don't pay a dime in taxes! That's obscene."
"That's Texas, Mom."
"And the governor wonders why Texas' brightest math and science students go to the Ivy League or California for college. It's simple: Texans invest in football, not math and science."
"Mom, you ever meet a math major who could play strong safety?"
"What's a strong safety?"
"A football player." His mother had a confused expression. "I'm just pulling your chain, Mom."
He had pulled her chain, but he hadn't slowed her down.
"A fifteen-billion-dollar endowment and we make middle-class kids pay twenty thousand dollars to attend a public university. But the athletic department has a hundred-and-twenty-five-million-dollar budget for five hundred athletes and the football coach makes five million a year, with bonuses." She shook her head. "The University of Texas isn't a university-it's a football team."
His mother had protested war and fought football-she said the government was controlled by the military-industrial complex and the university by the athletic-alumni complex-since she had first arrived on campus as a freshman in 1966. She had never left the campus or quit the fight.
Andy had seen photos of her from 1970 when professors and students had chained themselves to thirty oak trees along Waller Creek to block their being bulldozed for the football stadium expansion. Frank Erwin, Jr., an LBJ crony and chairman of the Board of Regents at the time who had loved Longhorn football, driven a school colors orange-and-white Cadillac, and been dubbed the "Emperor of UT" by Time magazine, called in the cops and had everyone arrested, including Jean Prescott. Then he bulldozed the trees and expanded the stadium. His mother had lost that fight and every fight since. But she had never tired of the fight, and she wasn't tiring now. So Andy changed the subject.
"How's Dad?"
She took a deep breath.
"He won't leave home. Won't even sing in church. At least he still tends his garden. You need to come out, Andy, he'd like the company. How about this weekend? I'll pick you up on the way home Friday, bring you back in Monday."
Her face showed her hope that he'd say yes.
"I'll ride out Saturday morning."
The bike would be faster than the twenty-year-old Volvo his mother drove.
"It's forty miles."
"Piece of cake."
"And ice cream."
"I mean, the ride out and back."
"I mean cake and ice cream. It's my birthday."
" Your birthday? Mom, I'm sorry. I forgot."
"But no presents, okay?"
She said the same thing every year.
"Saturday, then?"
"I'll be there."
"Promise?"
He went over and kissed her on the cheek.
"Cross my heart."
"Bring Max. Your father misses that dog." She hugged him then said, "Oh, tickets."
She handed him two tickets; a $100 bill was clipped to each. The left-wing UT professors drove hybrids, but they drove them fast. They knew that Professor Prescott's kid could take care of their tickets; and Professor Prescott acted as if she were not the least bit ashamed that her only son was a traffic ticket lawyer. What kind of woman was she?
"Do you need more money?"
"I'm good."
He was very good. Four hundred bucks in one day-his all-time career record. He considered how he would spend that $200. He could (a) pay next month's office rent, (b) ask Suzie out, although a date with Suzie would run $500 minimum, or (c) upgrade the replacement bike with a RockShox suspension and a gel saddle, which sounded particularly good. But Andy was just kidding himself. He knew all along that he would spend the $200 on (d) a birthday present for his mother.
SIX
Andy Prescott always had a thing for redheads.
He was staring at one now. She had long legs and a sensuous smile. Her lips were red and her skirt was short. Her red hair was a wig, but she was still incredibly sexy. For a mannequin.
"Need a date for the prom, Andy?"
Andy hadn't noticed Reggie standing there. They were at the display window out front of Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds. Reggie chuckled and entered the store. He was a real funny guy for a white dude wearing black eyeliner and dreadlocks.
Andy had arrived back in SoCo on the little Huffy, checked for Max at Guero's only to learn that Oscar had sent him down to Ramon's, and found Floyd T. pushing his grocery cart from dumpster to dumpster searching for treasures in other people's trash. His responsibilities satisfied, he had then begun his quest for the perfect birthday present for his mother.
He had first tried Tesoro's Trading Company and then Maya Star and was walking the bike past Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds when the mannequin had caught his eye. He took one last look at her then continued down the sidewalk to Yard Dog. And there in the front window he spotted the perfect present for Jean Prescott: a white owl hand-carved from a small log. Yard art for her native Texas garden. She'd love it. He checked the price tag: $1,000.
He sighed and shook his head. He couldn't even afford a nice birthday present for his mother. Natalie was right: he needed ambition.
Andy walked down the street to Uncommon Objects. He searched the booths for a secondhand gift he could afford but found nothing special except an armadillo purse for $125-a real armadillo made into a purse. It was cool but creepy. Jean Prescott was a different sort of woman all right, but maybe not that different.
He gave up and went into the tattoo parlor to collect Max and his mail. His email. He couldn't afford a computer or Internet service either, so Ramon let Andy use his computer and maintain an email address on his Yahoo account.
The parlor reeked of antiseptic. Fortunately for his clients-hepatitis C was a constant concern in a tattoo shop-Ramon Cabrera was a clean freak; he wiped the entire place down a dozen times a day. It was as clean as a hospital and had the same look: bottles of alcohol and green germicidal soap, sterile gloves and gauze, the autoclave, a hazardous waste disposal box for used needles, vials of colored ink… well, maybe not the ink.
Andy walked around the front counter and found Max snoozing in the corner so he headed over to Ramon's computer on the back desk-but he stopped dead in his tracks. Lying face down on Ramon's padded table was a blonde girl clothed only in a black T-shirt and thong; her shorts lay on a chair. Her bare bottom was smooth, round, and glowing in the light of the bright fluorescent bulbs overhead. No doubt she was a UT coed getting a tattoo to assert her independence from her parents-at least until she needed more money.
"Tickets on the counter," Ramon said without looking up.
Ramon was sitting next to the girl and leaning over and peering through his little reading glasses only a few inches away from her smooth skin. Jesus. First Britney at traffic court, then Suzie at Whole Foods, and now a bare butt at Ramon's. The pressure of daily life in Austin was almost unbearable.
Andy grabbed the two tickets, each with a $100 bill attached-the day just kept getting better-then stepped over for a closer look, careful not to breach Ramon's sterile field. Ramon wore a white muscle T-shirt and white latex gloves; he was inking in a "Yellow Rose of Texas" tattoo on her left buttock, one of a matched set. The buttock, not the tattoo.