Chapter 2
“I knew it.”
I looked up. “What are you doing here?”
Callum sat down next to me on the park bench. “I had a feeling that you didn’t have anywhere to go. I figured I’d come by after work to see if you were out on the street.” He turned to me, nodding. “And you are.”
“I did have somewhere to go,” I said. “I found the hotel.” It had taken me a long time, though, with a lot of slow walking.
I had tried four different places before I found one that had triggered a little recognition in my brain, and my brain had been right.
That had been the place where we had eaten room service…
was that yesterday? Or was it the day before? I yawned and rubbed my eyes.
“If you found it, why aren’t you there?” he asked.
“They checked out. They all left,” I explained.
“I think they forgot about me again, like they did at the club.” It didn’t make a lot of sense, since Millie was usually very well-organized.
She had tickets, reservations, and itineraries for this entire trip, from start to finish.
I wondered why she hadn’t made everyone wait at the hotel until I got back, but at least she had left me something.
“Where were they heading?” he wanted to know.
“I wasn’t in charge of that.” I’d followed her directions—as Damian’s personal assistant, she was my boss or the next best thing. I had listened then obeyed: get dressed, put on your shoes, hurry down to the car, dance, go to his room. “I was part of the entourage.”
“Right. What are you doing now?”
I looked around the circular plaza. There was a big, tall monument in the middle and fountains with pools.
I hadn’t seen anything similar in Los Angeles and there definitely wasn’t anything like it in the town where I was from.
When we’d been to Chicago and the other cities, we hadn’t stopped to see the sights and now all the hotels and clubs had run together in my mind.
Where would I go next?
“I don’t mind being here,” I said. “It’s warmer now and it’s pretty.”
“I mean for a long-term thing,” Callum said. “I don’t think you should sleep outside.” He gestured to my feet. “Where’d you get those?”
“The hotel,” I answered, holding up my leg.
The slippers they’d given me had their fancy logo on them.
“The people at the desk said that Damian and Millie hustled everyone out early this morning, an hour or two before I showed up. Millie is his assistant,” I explained.
“She had ordered just one car and they all squeezed in, with the luggage, too.”
“Including your luggage? You don’t have anything?”
Had it really been mine? Not the clothes or the shoes, not the makeup either. Damian had paid for all that. “I have my dress,” I answered, plucking the metallic fabric. “I have these slippers, now. And Millie left me an envelope with a little money and my driver’s license. So I have all that.”
“And you have a bottle.” He pointed to my hand. “You’re still carrying around the empty orange juice.”
Well, I was. It had been nice of him to get it for me.
“I asked the people at the hotel’s front desk for the phone number on the reservation.
I think that you have to give them one and a credit card and all that.
But they said they couldn’t share any information, and they gave me the slippers as a kind of consolation thing.
” I had also asked for a robe but they’d said no and that I needed to leave.
“So you still haven’t gotten ahold of anyone? What about your family or friends back in Los Angeles?”
I nodded. “Yes, I’ll call them. I’ll get a bus ticket.” I didn’t have enough money to get very far, and what would I do when I arrived? I had no ideas at the moment.
“You want to borrow my phone?” He took his old machine out of his pocket and offered it to me.
I accepted it, flipped it open, and traced my finger over the numbers before giving it back. “I don’t have anyone to call at the moment,” I said.
He rubbed his hand over his face. “It will be dark soon. What about going to a shelter?” He looked me over, not just my feet but checking out the gold dress, too.
I must have brushed against one of the ATVs in his garage, because there was a big grease stain on the skirt part. “I don’t know how you’d do there.”
“I’ll be leaving here soon, right away. Thanks again for coming by.”
“Yeah, sure. I better head home,” he told me. I nodded and he did, too.
Neither of us got up. I looked around and Callum leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced together. Then he straightened and turned his head in my direction.
“You want to come back to my house?”
“Really? Yes,” I said quickly. “Yes, I do.”
“The thing is, you’re not going to be able to stay there long. Just for the night,” he told me. “I’m leaving soon, too. I’m moving to Michigan.”
“I’ll just stay for the night,” I agreed. “Then I’ll get on the bus and go.”
He nodded but he seemed unsure. Even so, he let me come with him and I shuffled along in the slippers, only putting a little weight on my foot since the cut still hurt. I was very happy to see his green car again and to sit in the same seat. It felt familiar, which was nice.
He didn’t say much else as we drove away from the downtown and back toward the place where he lived. I had learned when to talk and when to stay silent with Damian, but of course I didn’t have that knowledge yet with this new guy. I tested the waters.
“Did you have a good day in the lumber department?” I asked him.
“It was my last day. I gave them notice a week ago and this was my final shift.”
“Why did you quit?”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m going to Michigan.”
“To work in another home improvement store?”
“No, to play football.”
I digested all that. I had thought that the story about moving was just an excuse to kick me out, and I hadn’t believed him about playing football, either. “Why Michigan? What’s there?”
When I’d asked him about sports before, he hadn’t shared a lot.
He explained more now, mostly about one of the teams in the northern part of the state.
He had an opportunity to go to their summer training and try out, and if he made it, then he would get to play for them.
It was one of the oldest organizations in the football league and they had a fierce fanbase.
And the best part was that if he made that team, then he would get paid. A ton.
“Even if I sat my ass on the bench for the entire season, I’d earn more than I would in the lumber department in about a hundred years.” He paused. “I should figure that out. How many times would my old salary go into the league minimum?” He specified two numbers.
“You’d be making twenty-three times more. Twenty-three point four,” I said. “Football players get paid pretty well.”
“You did that math in your head? Yeah, professional football players do great. But first, I have to make the roster. I’m paying my way up there and I’ll pay to stay someplace and to eat. Then, if it doesn’t work and they don’t sign me, I’m stuck with no job and probably some debt.”
“How much is it going to cost?”
He had vague ideas about motel rates in northern Michigan and what he might spend on food, so I put them together in my mind. It was going to be around three thousand dollars.
“That much?” He looked bleak when I told him. “I hadn’t wanted to think about it.”
“Do you have a good chance of making their team?”
He seemed to consider it briefly. “I’m not sure.
Shane, the guy who was scouting me, thought so.
He never gave me a guarantee or anything, but he told me that I had a chance.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have let me go up to the tryout.
You can’t just walk in,” he explained. “You get invited. But there’s a lot going against me. ”
Callum told me some of those things, like that he had injured his ankle years before and it could act up. He had also never played against top-tier guys like he would see in Michigan. Who knew how he would stack up against that level of competition?
“The road that most players take to the Football Confederation starts in high school, when they go to special camps and get attention from college coaches,” he told me.
“Next, they go to a university with a good program and spend a few years honing their game. After that, they get drafted or play in a league in another country. Or they can stay here, but play for a lower-level team and hope to move up. I didn’t do any of that. ”
“What did you do instead?” I wondered.
“I screwed around in high school and blew my chances,” he stated. “I played well enough to get attention and scholarship offers from college coaches, but then I didn’t graduate. Not that I could have made it at college, for a bunch of reasons.”
“Like what?”
“Academics, for one. I probably wouldn’t have been able to deal with even their remedial classes and back then, I wasn’t interested in trying. I also had a temper and if anyone looked at me wrong, I would have fought him.”
That was good information for me, as someone who would be alone with him in a house. I nodded.
“My high school coach tried to work with me but I wouldn’t toe the line.
I didn’t toe any lines,” he said. “More like, I would see a line and purposely step over it, just to cause a problem. He cut me from the team and I dropped out. I messed around for a few years until I finally decided that I didn’t want to live like that for the rest of my life, and I didn’t imagine that I’d make it much past age thirty.
So, I got a job and my GED. I started training again and I made it onto a junior college roster.
We call it JUCO,” Callum explained. “Some guys will do a season or two at a JUCO for more experience, or to be noticed by a four-year school. Then they’ll transfer and try to get drafted. ”
“You don’t want to do that?”