4:30: Michael
Fat Michael entered the room as Dennis left. He saw Carl sitting on the bed, shoulder against the headboard, eyes closed, mouth open, scissors dangling from his finger. He was either asleep or pretending to be asleep, and there was no real difference that Fat Michael could determine. The amount of cut hair on the floor was disconcerting, unseemly. The room was a scene of unpleasant fecundity, as one might discover beneath a rock or a rotting log. Fat Michael thought it distasteful that the men should have left so much of themselves here, as if they had molted. Slowly, Carl’s shoulder slid down the headboard. He lay on the bed on his back with his feet still on the floor. The scissors dropped to the carpet. Fat Michael’s hair really wasn’t that long, anyway. He didn’t need a cut, and he didn’t think much of Carl’s skills as a barber. He had just signed up to fill out the schedule, so that Carl wouldn’t feel bad. He picked up Carl’s scissors from the floor. They did not seem like good scissors. The blades rattled loosely, and small spots of rust dotted the handles. Fat Michael considered that the men should pitch in to buy Carl a new pair, or perhaps a whole new barber’s kit. When was Carl’s birthday? He glanced around for Carl’s wallet, but did not see it. Fat Michael’s birthday was today, but nobody knew it. He had never mentioned it, and he couldn’t very well mention it now, after so many years. He put the scissors on the chair, and left the room quietly. He knew the men would never buy Carl a new barber’s kit. It was enough to imagine the generosity.
THE YEAR Jeff brought his girlfriend; the year nobody brought a football; the year Trent slept in the lobby; the flu year; the food poisoning year; the year the conference room had just been painted; the year that George was Theismann; the year that George was commissioner; the year that George was Taylor; 2001; the year Myron forgot to make room reservations; the year Vince shocked himself with the toaster; the year the linebackers got stuck on the roof; the very first year; the year the smokers found that big box of fireworks by the dumpster; the year Wesley dropped his watch in the fountain; the year Steven got so drunk and stole a ladder; the year that Tommy disappeared for a good long while; the year of the flight attendants; the year that Adam called Gil in the middle of the night, pretending to be the real Theismann; the snow year; the lightning year; the year Charles lost his shit; the year Fat Michael lost his wedding ring; the year Randy broke his wrist; the year Nate dislocated his elbow; the year of Bald Michael’s toupee; the year Fancy Drum was vandalized; the year Derek’s car was vandalized; the years that guy Danny had to fill in as a substitute, and kept trying to sell the rest of the men those specialty candles; the year the newspaper reporter was supposed to come; the year the cops came and arrested the night desk clerk; the year of the hot wings contest; the year that Robert was not the first to arrive; the year Carl fumbled the snap; the year the hotel ran out of breakfast; the year the hotel ran out of hot water; the year Nate’s wife went into labor; the year of babies; the year Gary made his big announcement; the year of the carbon dioxide dragsters.
Myron, Gil, and Tommy sat on a couch in the lobby, waiting for others to come down for dinner. All three had heard birds flying smack into their glass patio doors. All three were just praying their kids would get scholarships. The fountain was half full, and gurgling unhealthily.
Jerry, the transportation director for Prestige Vista Solutions, walked past the men on the couch and wished them good luck this evening. The men nodded, thanked Jerry.
“Big night,” Jerry said.
The men concurred. Myron had a startled expression on his face.
“Last year, right?” Jerry said.
Gil took off his reading glasses, and cleaned them with his shirt. The elevator bell rang twice. Tommy stared down at his hands, folded in his lap. Myron said, “What?”
“This is the last year, right?” Jerry said.
“Who told you that?” Gil said.
“A guy yesterday,” Jerry said. “I don’t know his name. Guy with a chinstrap. Was it some kind of secret?”
The men shook their heads. “No,” Myron said. “Of course not.”
“Take it easy,” Jerry said, walking toward the automatic doors of the lobby. “Have fun.”
The fountain gurgled. The desk clerk read Dune. The bright, enormous clock bathed the entire lobby in time. Each of the three men on the couch assumed that the other two men had known, that he was the only one who had not. Each felt the sting of exclusion, the ancient wound, before anger rushed in like an antibody. Why had he not been told? Why had he been treated like a child? They sat in silence, staring up at the television, the muted anchors. Each man was indignant. Beneath the indignation there was an exotic and diverse world of feeling, as dark as an ocean trench.
BY CUSTOM the men ate dinner with positional mates. By custom they made their way in clusters down the dirt path along the service road, ducking under the heavy wet branches of evergreens. By custom they ate inexpensive food with sauce packets. By custom they ate in silence. There was, after all, no reason to say that Theismann’s right leg remains to this day shorter than his left, or that the sound by his own account was like two muzzled gunshots or that the surgeons at Arlington Hospital had to wash the wound dozens of times with saline solution in an attempt to prevent infection. (“You start with a gallon,” one of the surgeons said, and the men did not.) There was no need to say that Theismann described the injury as a kind of death, followed by rebirth. Straws squeaked inside the lids of fountain drinks. Boys within the plastic tunnels of the restaurant’s Play Zone taunted other boys, and then injured themselves attempting to flee. By tradition the man playing Theismann and the man playing Taylor stayed away from each other, like a bride and groom before a wedding. Nobody ate all that much.
Back in their rooms, the men helped each other pull jerseys over shoulder pads. They helped each other tape fingers and wrists, tie shoelaces. By tradition, each man would drive to Warren G. Harding Middle School alone. Nobody would carpool. They left the hotel in full uniform, carrying their wallets and keys inside their helmets. That sound, vaguely martial, was their cleats across the parking lot.
6. THE PLAY
“WAIT, DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHERE IT IS?”
“It’s supposed to be over here.”
“Is it a stadium?”
“No, it’s a field at a middle school. We’re close.”
“A football field?”
“Yes.”
“Middle schools have football fields?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why would a middle school need a football field?”
“Where are you from?”
“New Hampshire.”
“There are lights over there.”
“Where?”
“See the lights?”
Brandon turned left at a stoplight, and drove his Toyota through the wet streets toward the distant yellow glow of a light tower. Sarah sat in the passenger seat beside Brandon, smoothing the suitcase folds out of her jeans. Paul and Deirdre sat in the back with not enough leg room. They were all young sale associates for Prestige Vista Solutions, two or three years out of college. After a day in the conference room, they felt like falsely convicted inmates exonerated by DNA evidence. The interior of the sedan was humid with fertility and body spray. The seat belts seemed like a form of sexual restraint, a precaution. Deirdre put her cheek against the cold glass of the window. At a stoplight a man in an expensive car smiled at her, and waved. She did not smile back or wave, but she received his attention, and kept it.