Season 1, Episode 3 “They Shoot Toucans, Don’t They?”
“They Shoot Toucans, Don’t They?”
Not long after Greta’s exodus, I was exercising in the makeshift gym that production had assembled in the pool cabana.
Everyone had passed out early, so I was surprised when a lone figure approached with a pitcher of margaritas and Solo cups.
“Ditch your mic,” Arjun whispered conspiratorially.
“The crew’s testing some dumb Tribulation with wooden toucans. ”
“Mary Peach said I could only take my mic off in the bathroom or the pool.”
“No one will notice. Come on, all gym and no play makes Luke a dull jock.”
Arjun guided me down the dark path to the beach, where he arranged pilfered towels, the sand still warm. For once he wasn’t regaling me with stories of Los Angeles or London; he was asking about my family, Dartmouth, everything. Still, it all felt painfully platonic.
“So why football?” His head lolled to the side, puka-shell choker taut across his throat, wisps of chest hair flirting with the edge of his collar. I felt the urge to pull him closer, how elegantly his body would fit against me, but I wasn’t drunk enough to attempt it.
“Well, my dad coached it.”
“But you kept going.”
I examined my cup. “Mitch sat me down in high school and asked what I wanted my life to be. I knew I wanted a family, kids, more than anything, and he said, ‘What if you could get what you want because of who you are, not in spite of it?’ He was convinced a team would see they could make money drafting the first openly gay player in the league.”
“That’s a lot of concussions for some theoretical toddlers,” Arjun replied. “Sounds like he put a lot of pressure on you.”
“He’s just protective. A football scholarship got him out of the boondocks, so I get why he pushed it.”
“What did your mom say?”
“She died a while ago.”
Even in the dark I could see he was mortified. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“No, it’s nice to talk about her.” My hand briefly touched his knee in further affirmation.
“Her name was Vivienne. I was six when she died, so I’ve got maybe a dozen actual memories of her, but she was a total superhero.
Like, in every photo, there’s always wind blowing through her hair.
She was really athletic, loved the water.
Captain of the swim team at Duke when my dad was varsity quarterback.
He still calls her his ‘Division 1 Debutante.’”
Arjun nodded tentatively, sensing no happy ending.
“Anyway, she was on a work trip in Myrtle Beach, down in South Carolina. She went swimming one morning before a meeting, and… there was a rip tide.”
“Jesus,” Arjun murmured, looking guiltily down the beach.
“Please, I’m long numb to the ocean. My dad always said nothing would break her heart more than me being scared of the water.”
“We don’t have to keep talking about this.”
“No, I want you to know.” And I did. I felt a rush of relief speaking so openly with him, but I shrugged it off, convinced the liquor was finally hitting. “Still, that was a lifetime ago. I mean, it’s only been a week, and I already feel like I’ve been here for months.”
“Time moves differently when you’re filming,” he said softly, glancing away as he rummaged through his pocket. “I got you something, by the way.”
“What? When?”
He offered his fist, a ring of metal flashing before he released his fingers, and a little plastic sea turtle plummeted down a thin strand of silver, threaded through a flipper. “Just a key chain I saw at the airport outside customs. I snagged it for my brother, but—”
“No, keep it for Emaan.”
“You rock the turtle vibe more: soft inside, tough exterior. Emaan’s soft inside and out.”
I bashfully adjusted my sweat-stained baseball hat. “Naw, I don’t have a tough exterior.”
“He says naw.”
I did in those days, my accent still breaking through. Arjun dangled the turtle over my hand until the ring slipped off his finger, tumbling into my open palm.
We sat in silence, the waves breaking, until he asked, “So, do you miss football?”
“I miss knowing what the future would be.”
“Yeah, I can imagine my whole world blown to bits, but putting it back together? That scares me shitless,” he said, expression unreadable in the dark. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Actually I saw this quote recently that I found strangely comforting. ‘The world had been destroyed many times before the creation of Man,’” I recited. “Lord Byron.”
“Ever the man of letters.”
“I guess. I was always a big reader. My mom stacked the house with books for me and Jenny. Like, our bedrooms were practically libraries. And it’s not like there were a bunch of kids battering down the door to hang out, so… God, I’m really rambling…”
The breeze waltzed through the palm trees above, rustling his bangs. Would the night conceal my blushing, the burning constellation of scars crossing from my temple to my jaw?
“Hey, stop hiding your face,” Arjun said, smacking my hand as it made its clumsy mask. “Your scars are badass. Like Clint Eastwood in a Western.”
“Or Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera.”
“Don’t say that stuff. Christ, it makes me despise the guy who hit you.” He paused, clearly sensing my discomfort at this subject (a feeling that never left me, even after the whole saga finally leaked years later during Barnes’ first campaign). “Luke, what’s wrong?”
We’d drained that margarita pitcher, but even if I’d been sober, I couldn’t lie to Arjun. So I told the boy I’d known a week the story I’d kept hidden the past six months.
Jenny hadn’t been any more popular in high school than me, but after Liberty Today she’d been inundated with calls from her old Morrocroft classmates.
Her high school reunion was a few weeks away, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
“These girls never once acknowledged me and now they suddenly want to know if I’ll be at the Fifth,” Jenny groaned over the phone. “They all want me to bring you.”
“I mean, I’ll be home for the break. I can be your security blanket.”
“You seriously want to make small talk with seven different Carolines?”
“Come on, it might be fun being queen for a day.”
“Which of us is the queen in this scenario?” she countered dryly.
Once we were both in Charlotte and the big night rolled around, my sister uncharacteristically panicked, refusing to attend.
“You’re going,” Mitch insisted. “I already told my old players I’d drop in, and I won’t lie when people ask where you are, Jenny. If you’re miserable after an hour, we’ll leave.”
The reunion was at a pub on Selwyn, and we were stunned by the chorus welcoming our entrance.
Mitch had always been beloved by his players, but Jenny was greeted as if she were Julia Roberts.
And everyone rushed me, a hurricane of embraces from upperclassmen I’d barely known, all inquiring breathlessly about the NFL combine and the media attention.
When my speechless sister eventually left for an after-party hand in hand with the former captain of the baseball team, I promised her we were good.
That I was. Mitch was completely sloshed, the football alums having drowned him in celebratory whiskey shots, the older boys who’d loomed over me now toasting my father for getting his son within spitting distance of the NFL.
I got in the driver’s seat despite Mitch’s protests.
I was at least more sober than him. We turned onto Queens Road, and Mitch was slurring about the bar’s soggy fries when suddenly came the bright headlights of an unlucky janitor, driving home from the nearby movie theater.
He collided with a drunk kid who ran a stop sign.
“A drunk kid who was me,” I concluded, words I’d never said aloud.
“My dad called in every favor to keep it quiet, told me to never say anything, to protect my reputation. If the NFL found out, it could have ruined my draft prospects, but with my leg, I couldn’t even play, so…
moot point. The janitor was fine, thank God.
He didn’t press charges. The only person seriously injured was… ” I didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“I’m sorry, Luke. I’m so sorry…” Arjun rubbed his eyes, uncharacteristically somber.
He inched closer and brought a hand to the back of my neck, fingers subtly massaging my tense muscles until our foreheads met.
Neither of us moved until his lips gently landed on mine, the specter of cheap tequila lingering on his breath.
He froze, pressed against my mouth as if testing whether I’d recoil, but the whole time I was waiting for him to snap out of it, this magnetic demi-god who’d somehow bathed me in his light.
He adjusted his head, and I relaxed my jaw, surrendering to his mouth and wandering hands, taking every cue from him.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the airport,” he eventually whispered, searching for my eyes. “You okay?”
“Never better.”
His smile faltered. “You know we can’t tell anyone. Not even Imogen.”
I didn’t reveal Imogen was way ahead of us both (she even caught me sneaking in later that night, silently winking at me from her bunk).
My mind instead whipped back to reality, remembering an entire camera crew was literally minutes away.
It never occurred to me to protest or that I was trading one secret for another.
Any price was worth what I felt that night.
I guess I assumed he’d eventually change his mind.
I took for granted my supportive family, how free I was in that moment—no fame, no fortune, no future in which I was anything other than who and what I was. Arjun had everything to lose.
The average episode of Endeavor back then ran 42 minutes, not including commercials.
That first season had twelve episodes (including the Reunion special), totaling roughly 504 minutes, a whopping 8.
4 hours. We filmed for almost two months.
The viewers saw half a percent of the time we all spent together that first summer—.
565 percent, to be exact. I did the math not long after I got the worst news of my life.
That Arjun was dead. And I was the reason why.