It was a moment before she asked, “Are you kidding me?”
“No. This is a genuine offer, okayed by my boss. We can’t offer a hell of a lot of money, but I’m sure it’s more than you’re making now.”
“I can be there in ten days.” She laughed. “I’ll live in the YWCA if I have to. Thanks, Jack. You don’t know what this means to me.”
“You deserve it, Sally.”
“Thank you.”
After Jack hung up, he sat there a minute. He was just about to leave for home when the phone rang again.
It was Warren. “Hey, Jacko, Beth has her yoga class tonight. How about dinner at Sparks?”
“Count me in.”
“Seven-thirty okay?”
“Meet you there.”
It took Jack longer than he’d expected to get home, change into Levi’s and a black T-shirt, and catch a cab. He pulled up to the restaurant at seven-forty-five.
Outside, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the darkened window. He paused just long enough to run a hand through his now quite blond hair.
The hostess, a pretty young woman in a skintight black dress, smiled up at him. Her cheeks were as pink as cotton candy. “Welcome back to Sparks, Mr. Shore.”
He gave her his showbiz smile. “Well, thanks. It’s nice to be here. I’m meeting Warren Mitchell.”
“He’s already here. Follow me.” She turned and walked away from him. Her small, beautiful ass swung gently this way and that. He followed her to a table in the back corner of the restaurant.
There, she touched his arm, smiled sweetly up at him. “I’m here until closing. If there’s anything”—her voice italicized the word—“you need, just let me know.”
God it felt good, being wanted again.
“I’ll think about that, darlin’,” he said, sliding into the seat. He watched her walk away.
Warren laughed. “I ordered you a Dewar’s on the rocks.” He raised his own glass in a salute. “It’s awesome what a little TV exposure does for a guy’s sex appeal, isn’t it? Even old guys like us.”
Jack reached for his drink. “It feels good to be somebody again, I can tell you that.”
Warren took a sip of his drink. “It couldn’t have been easy, going from the NFL to local sportscaster in Sioux Falls.”
“I was never in Sioux Falls, but the point remains. It was hell.”
“I wasn’t there for you back then. When your knee gave out.”
“There wasn’t anything you could have done.”
“Bullshit.” Warren took another drink. “It scared the shit out of me, you know? One minute you were on top of the world; the next minute you were down for the count.”
“I always knew I had glass knees. It was only a matter of time.”
“How’d you get through it?”
Jack leaned back against the tufted seat. That was something he hadn’t thought about in years, the how of losing everything. After the surgeries, he’d slept a lot; he remembered that. He’d stayed for days, maybe weeks, in his bedroom, holed up in the dark, pretending the pain was worse than it was, popping pills as if they were Sweetarts.
One day, Elizabeth had whipped open the curtains. That’s all the time you get, Jackson Shore. Now, get up, get dressed, and meet me in the living room. We have the rest of your life to plan. In ten minutes, I’m going to dump ice water on you, so don’t lollygag.
True to her word, she’d dumped water on his head. Then a few minutes—hours—later, she’d dared to use the prohibited words: drug addiction.
“Elizabeth got me through it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. You got lucky with Birdie. If I’d married a girl like her instead of—”
“We broke up.” It was the first time he’d said the words aloud. He was surprised by how it felt, both depressing and uplifting at the same time. He’d seen Warren looking at him last night while they were out drinking; more than once his friend had asked when Birdie was getting back to town. “It took me a while to say it out loud, that’s all.”
“Jesus, you two have been married forever. You’re the only hope the rest of us have.”
He’d heard that for years, from all of his friends who’d married and divorced and then married again. “Then there’s no hope.”
“Are you okay?”
The answer to that question had layers and layers. The truth was, he didn’t want to look too deep. When he did—mostly late at night when he was lonely—he remembered the good times instead of the bad, and he ached for what they’d lost. It was better to swim on the surface of that pool, to feel good about his new life. “Yeah. It had gotten pretty stale around our house.”
“I know how that is. The silence’ll kill you. How is she taking it?”
Warlord assumed it had been Jack’s decision to separate. Of course. No one would credit Birdie with the guts to end their marriage.
“She’s okay. Now can we please talk about something else?”
“Sure, Jack,” Warren said slowly. “Anything you want.”
EIGHTEEN