30.
Rich
Three Months Later…
I’m in the kitchen mixing yet another whiskey and soda when the phone starts to ring. Brrrring! Brrrring! Without pausing what I’m doing, I glance at the landline sitting at the other end of the counter, silently counting down to myself the number of rings until I know it will stop. 7, 6, 5…
On the eighth ring, the answering machine picks up.
Hello, my voice comes floating out of the speaker. You’ve reached Rich Anderson. I’m not here at the moment but if you leave your name, number and a brief message, I might or might not get back to you.
The answering machine clicks again.
“Rich?” Jim says on the other end of the line. “I know you’re there, Rich. Come on. Pick up. No more hiding. You shouldn’t be doing this. Don’t throw away your career, at least not without talking to me. Come on, kid. Pick up. Coach is still willing to let you—“
Sliding down to the end of the counter, a bit woozy on my feet, I lift the receiver off its hook and place it to my ear.
“I’m not coming back, Jim,” I say by way of greeting.
“Ah-ha!” Jim exclaims. “So you were there. I knew it. Come on, Rich. Don’t be so silly. Of course you’re coming back.”
“I’m not.” The words are thick coming out of my mouth, like cold honey drizzling out of a mason jar.
“And why not exactly?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Richie. Come on, Richie. Stop talking nonsense. You’re the best quarterback in the entire league. You won two out of the last three championships! Already people are saying you might be the greatest of all time! Are you really going to throw all of that away?”
“You ever think, Jim,” I say, cradling the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I go back to my half-made drink, “that there might be more important things than football?”
“Like what?”
Silence. Though my mouth opens, no answer is forthcoming.
“Look, Jim. I appreciate you calling,” I finally say. “I really do. But I’m not coming back.”
Now it’s Jim’s turn to be silent. I can hear him on the other side of the line chewing his lip as he mulls over what to say next.
“Listen,” he says after a moment, his tone gentle, conspiratorial, brotherly. “I know you’re hurting, Richie. I know it sucks. But you have to get over her. You can’t keep wallowing like this. You only knew her for a week. It’s been three months. Three months! Are you really going to let a botched fling ruin everything you worked so har—“
“Goodbye, Jim.”
I hang up before he has a chance to finish. Though I appreciated him calling, I just didn’t want to hear it right now. I didn’t expect him to get it. I didn’t expect anyone to get it. But no one needed to. All they needed to know was that I wasn’t going back. My mind was made up and that was that.
Topping off my drink with the remaining whiskey in the bottle, I pad out of the kitchen, unplugging the phone jack from the wall as I pass. Back in the living room, I settle into my big recliner. It’s set up so that it’s facing the floor-to-ceiling windows that comprise the southern wall of my apartment, the Seattle cityscape stretching out before it.
Extending the footrest, I lean back with a sigh. The afternoon is waning fast now, the sun no more than fifteen minutes from disappearing behind the line of skyscrapers to the west. Beyond the skyscrapers lies the sound, its blue waters sparkling, white masts of sailboats sprinkled across it like bits of eggshell.
Sighing again, I take a sip of my drink. I’ve been up less than two hours and already am working on my third whiskey and soda. At least my hangover from the day before was gone. Just like yesterday afternoon, a fresh infusion of alcohol had chased it away.
I sit there, slowly nipping at my drink and not thinking about much at all, until the sun has dipped behind the tallest of the skyscrapers. Far below, thirty stories to be exact, the streets are just beginning to clog with commuters heading home after a long day of work. What day was it again? Wednesday? Or was it Thursday? Hard to keep track of such things when you didn’t have anywhere to be.
Seeing all the cars filled with people returning to lives I would never be a part of puts me in a strange mood. What would it be like, I begin to wonder as I lie there, my foot tapping to some unheard beat, to have a so-called normal life? What if I had never been drafted? What if instead I had found a regular office job after college? Simple. It would be me down there. I’d be the one stuck in traffic, inching towards some house in the suburbs, my wife and my child awaiting, dinner already steaming on the table. Could be the alcohol in my system, but that sure sounded nice. Much better than being cooped up in this apartment getting drunk by myself yet again.
Oh, cry me a river, kid. I can’t believe you. Whining in your penthouse apartment about how you don’t like the freedom of being able to get drunk anytime you feel like it. Please! Do you hear yourself? Don’t you know there are children starving to death? You live one hell of a privileged life, no two ways about it.
My drink empty, I push myself up and stumble back into the kitchen, whereupon I make a fresh pot of coffee using beans that cost more per pound than most people’s monthly grocery bill, an irony that doesn’t escape me. When the coffee is ready, I pour myself a large cup, topping off my mug with a generous serving of rum from the freezer.
Taking a sip of the coffee that is now more rum than coffee, I return to the living room. Rather than go to my recliner, I amble over to my desk on the opposite side of the room. It’s next to a pinball machine—a present from Jim after our first championship together. The floor around the desk and pinball machine are littered with papers I have to carefully navigate around to reach my chair. The experience makes me feel just like a soldier maneuvering through a minefield.
A blank sheet of paper awaits in the center of the desk. Grabbing the first pen I see, I pull the sheet towards me. After another big sip of rum coffee that makes me feel like someone has kicked me in the chest, I set to it. It’s not long before my hand is flying across the page, the rest of the world forgotten.