Page 135 of The New Guy
“Isn’t it? Happy to avoid the nightmare of finding something of my own. I’ll just stay on the month to month lease until they get sick of me.”
She takes the soda from my hand. “Keep playing like that, and they’ll never get sick of you.”
“Here’s hoping.” We raise our glasses in a mock toast, and Bess smiles.
I’m phoning it in pretty well right now, I guess. Even though my phone is burning a hole in my pocket. I wonder if Gavin read what I wrote.
I wonder if he’ll ever forgive me.
“Can we talk?” She sits on an armchair, so I take the sofa.
“Sure.”
“I don’t know you very well. I only met you that one night at the bar in Brooklyn.”
“Yeah, in March, I think?” It was one of the rare nights that I’d gone out with my teammates, and Bess had been there with her husband, Mark Tankiewicz, who’s still happily employed as a defenseman in Brooklyn. It’s hard not to be jealous.
A lot of the Brooklyn players work with Bess, and when I’d called to ask Castro for a recommendation, he’d sung her praises to the sky. “She’s super smart and a straight shooter. A little scary when she’s angry, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Now she’s fixed me with a penetrating gaze, and I think I understand what he meant. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure. You probably want to know why I haven’t signed my contract yet, right?” The contract in question is sitting, unsigned, in a bathroom drawer upstairs. Bess already got me an extension on the decision. I have until Christmas to decide whether to sign.
Whenever I think about it, I feel a strange detachment. Like it’s someone else’s decision.
“I would never rush you,” she says. “But like I said before—I don’t know you very well. My job is to get you whatever you want. That’s hard to do when I can’t figure out what that is. In the first place, you haven’t told me why you fired your dad. If it’s personal, maybe you don’t need to share. But if you two had a difference of opinion about how business gets done, it might help me to know what happened.”
I take a deep drink of soda and try to figure out how to respond. “He lied to me,” is what I decide to go with. “It happened years ago, but I just found out, and it was a pretty big betrayal. We’re not, uh, speaking at the moment.” The one time I answered his call, and tried to explain why I was so mad, he started yelling at me.
So now I’ve blocked him.
“Hell, I’m sorry.” Her gaze turns sympathetic. “That’s a big rupture in your life.”
“I guess.” The more I think about our relationship, the less healthy it seems. “To be honest, I’m enjoying the silence. He was really, um, hands-on.”
She nods thoughtfully. “I can only imagine how complicated it would be to have a parent as an agent. You and I don’t have that kind of messy history, but I hope you know you can always tell me if you need more or less support. I have a different relationship with each of my clients. But it takes a while to get that right.”
“I’m sure,” I agree. “But I’m not worried. You’re nothing like him, anyway. I don’t need you to follow me around and question my nutritional choices.”
She cringes. “Yeah, you don’t need to comment on mine either, okay? Pact?”
“Pact,” I agree, and she smiles.
“Now can we talk about your contract extension? You still have a couple months to make up your mind. But I want you to know that I think it’s a good deal. And signing now would protect your finances in the event—”
“—Of an injury,” I finish. “Yeah, I know. It’s a factor.”
“But more to the point—if there’s something else you want from your next contract, you’d have to actually tell me what that is, or I can’t find it for you. And if it’s more money, I’ll need you to be specific,” she says carefully. “If you have a number in your head, let’s talk about that. But you might have to settle for two years instead of three if you want a higher salary.”
“It’s not the money,” I say gruffly. “That’s not the issue.”
She regards me with a tilted head, like she can’t quite do the math. “All right. Then what is it? You’re not sure you like Colorado?”
“Yeah, but it’s not, uh, Colorado’s fault.” I set my glass on the coffee table and stare at it. “I left someone behind in Brooklyn. I didn’t want to leave, and I hesitate to lock myself in here for four seasons.”
“I see,” she says gently. “So you might want to be a free agent next summer? That’s a little risky.”
“I know,” I say quickly. “Brooklyn let me go. I’m sure they had their reasons.”
