Sarah stood up, nearly spilling her wine from the plastic cup. “What is he doing?” she said. “What was that? What happened? Is someone hurt?” The other associates shrugged and shook their heads. The hooded man in the first row of the bleachers was standing, applauding. The sound of his solitary appreciation was small in the night. Paul checked once more to see if the bottle was empty. Perhaps, he thought, it would be best to just go to bed early. Tomorrow was another long day of meetings. “Was that real?” Sarah said. “Is it over? Are they leaving?”
ROOM 324 WAS WARM and pungent, suffused with the smell of leaf rot and liniment. The muddy cleats teemed in a pile by the door. The men embraced, they tousled hair, they pounded one another on the shoulder pads. They drank inexpensive sparkling wine from the bottle, chewed unlit cigars, passed ice packs and Carl’s dull scissors. Their cheeks and knuckles were red from the cold, and their fingers were stiff. As was increasingly the case in recent years, several men were injured. They had pulled something, tweaked something, strained something. They grimaced, gripped the tender regions. They cut tape from their ankles and wrists, and it lay on the carpet in withered, valedictory strips. It was clear to everyone that this had been their best Throwback Special. Steven was challenged to deny it, and he would not. He said he just wanted to check his notes, but he could not check them because Bald Michael had hidden his notes in the second-floor vending alcove.
Tommy’s eyes shone wild with frantic relief. Because he had been so nervous, because he had been so concerned about handling the football, because he was not particularly dexterous or graceful, he had been the perfect Riggins, the standard. He had turned his shoulders too quickly, pitched it back too quickly. He had been utterly unconvincing in performing the flea flicker, which is to say he had been utterly convincing in performing Riggins. The best Riggins — Tommy had made this evident to all — was a bad Riggins. And Tommy, like other men, had somehow actualized himself while pretending to be someone else. He snuck up behind Myron with a finger to his lips. He clasped his arms around Myron’s stomach, and lifted him off the floor. Myron kicked Gil’s drink out of his hand, and he spilled his own drink on the comforter. Someone blotted halfheartedly with a sock. Tommy’s mustache, other men began to realize, was gone. He had, at some unknown point, removed it.
Randy held his hand in a bucket of ice. His Donnie Warren had been all truth. He had been elegantly wrecked by Taylor, and he wore the dark mud stain across his chest. He had even gotten his hand stepped on while lying on the ground, a nice touch. The hand, now submerged in a bucket of ice, looked both swollen and bony. Vince took a picture of Randy’s hand in the bucket, pink and blurry beneath the cubes like a creature whose existence has been rumored but not verified. Vince put his hand on Randy’s shoulder, and Randy allowed it, leaned into it. He got glimpses now and then. He sensed that the loss of his eyewear business might be a blessing. That was what people tended to say about the very worst things. That was the outrageous claim they made. In his garage where he did not kill himself he had constructed a prototype of a self-washing house window. He had used a voltaic cell to power the wiper, but his design called for solar. His hand might have been broken. It throbbed beneath the ice in a nearly pleasurable way.
Gil sat on a queen bed with the other offensive linemen. He had removed his shoulder pads, but he still wore with pride the jersey of Mark May. Despite the rain and the mud, his jersey was immaculate, shimmering. The offensive line had worked perfectly as a unit. Each man had done his job. Others paid passing tribute with oinks and snorts, cans of beer. Gil leaned back on the bed, striking something hard beneath the comforter, a large cylindrical lump. He flung back the blanket and sheets, and there was Fancy Drum. The linemen cheered. Across the room, Steven tried to pretend that it did not matter much to him one way or the other. Men who had detested Fancy Drum now looked upon it with affection, tenderness. The drum seemed to have proven itself, completed a rite of passage. It was now, at last, at the end, accepted into the group. Men posed for photos, not one of them lewd, an arm around Fancy Drum, as around a teenage nephew.
George put in a terrible CD of his brother’s jam band, and Wesley replaced it immediately. Without removing his helmet, Fat Michael poured corn chips from a bag into his mouth. He swigged sparkling wine through the single crossbar of the face mask, and he danced to the music, without inhibition or rhythm. He seemed reluctant to put any weight on his right leg. His jersey was a mess. Jeff stayed close by, keeping an eye on Fat Michael. It was almost always the case that the man who played Theismann had to be monitored for a few hours after the play.
David, the young Web specialist at Prestige Vista Solutions, parted the curtains to watch the rain. He had the odd sensation that he might see the players, himself included, beneath the foggy dim lights of the distant field. He closed the curtains, and attempted to cross the room, his backpack slung over one shoulder pad. Along the way, he was heartily thanked and congratulated. His hair was tousled, his back was slapped, his hand was shaken. He was given a red plastic cup, and another. Waiting outside the bathroom, David asked Vince what he should do with his uniform, his gear. Vince shrugged. “Souvenir,” he said. “A small token. Or give it to Trent.” He shrugged again, and gestured to David that the bathroom was now unoccupied.
In the bathroom, trying with cold fingers to untie the drawstring of his pants, David decided that he would not, after all, blog about the night, or post any pictures. He didn’t have any pictures. He resisted looking at himself in the mirror, perhaps out of a concern that his bright reflection would almost certainly tell the wrong story. He liked wearing the uniform, though it was faded and frayed. He had liked the snug fit of the helmet, the reassuring pressure of the chinstrap. He had liked the stillness before the snap, his breath in the air. He had liked the sense that anything at all might happen, even though only one thing could happen. And he had liked watching the old grainy replay on his tablet. The antique font, the primitive production values. It was like watching newsreel footage of some distant war or assassination attempt. With his back to the mirror David took off his uniform and pads, while the men outside the bathroom sang the hit song from a recent animated movie about Pegasus. He folded the jersey and pants, and placed them on the edge of the bathtub. He put the helmet and shoulder pads in the tub, and did not take a picture of them. His regular clothes, drab and wrinkled, were stuffed in his backpack. He began slowly to dress.
Back by the window, next to the heating and cooling unit, Charles told Robert that it did not sound serious. He wore his brown canvas bag over his uniform, the strap running diagonally across his Terry Kinard jersey. He put his hand on Robert’s arm. “It sounds to me,” he said, “like she’s just a picky eater. I wouldn’t worry too much. But get in touch with me if you have any more concerns or questions.” He reached into his bag for a business card. Robert tucked the card into his maroon waistband, next to his ping-pong ball, and walked directly into the throng, forlorn and euphoric. The men did not think of Adam, whose departure had been so mysterious, so generic.