The Penalty for Holding

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“The trick, kiddo,” Aunt Lena used to say, “is to be happy in the moment.”

But Quinn knew that for some—himself included—it was easier to appreciate “the moment” once it had already passed. He missed Aunt Lena, missed everything about Jakarta—well, almost everything—but never more so than on those raw November days when the prospect of winter stretched out before him like a vast, frozen wasteland and he paced the sidelines of Templars Stadium with a clipboard and a ski cap.

They were the kind of days that offered no comfort. The wind would blow off the marshes—land that some clever reporter discovered had, ironically enough, once belonged to Quinn’s French ancestors—bringing with it a dampness that seeped into the bones and made it impossible to sit, stand, pace or play too long before every joint and muscle throbbed. Still, Quinn was convinced that it would matter not a whit if he were doing what he was born to do—play. Instead, it was all Lance all the time, even though the Temps rarely won. And on those plays when Lance came out of the game, Smalley called on third-string quarterback Dave Donaldson.

So Quinn compensated for the humiliation by over-preparing—memorizing the playbook (he had an eidetic memory); watching game film until he was bleary-eyed; absorbing everything the coaches said; throwing until his arm felt like it would fall off; and working out until his feet were calloused and his hands, raw and bleeding.

It was one thing to prepare for a game, another to play it. The annals of QB history were filled with the urban legends of men who were all parade, no battle. And Quinn feared not only that his lack of field time would stunt his development as a QB but that it was also what he secretly desired—to stay safe on the sidelines. But that was not what quarterbacks were born for. So he kept himself primed to such an extent that he didn’t need the cuff other QBs wore with a cheat sheet of the various plays. He knew them by heart.

That comforted him a bit, as did the fans’ encouragement.

“No-vak, No-vak, No-vak,” they chanted, while girls in fetching outfits that revealed plenty of cleavage and thighs reddened by the autumn chill held up signs saying, “Quinn for the win.”

The man with the aptly rhyming moniker, however, had no illusions about the fans. They were the mob, the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman rabble. They liked him, because they didn’t know him and could write whatever narrative they wanted on what they thought was a tabula rasa. The minute they discovered who he was, they might turn on him, especially if he didn’t deliver.

But he knew he would never disappoint—if given the chance. He also knew that nothing short of a miracle would give him that chance, certainly not a mere dismal trouncing by newbie franchise the Orlando Copperheads.

“Smalley, Smalley, burn in Hell,” the fans shouted along the railing as the team skulked toward the locker room at halftime, trailing 35-7. “Muldavey, Moll, you’re worthless. You’re all maggot bastards. Not you, Novak. We want you in there for the second half.”

When the press criticized his teammates and gleefully reported their transgressions—an easy pursuit, for they were many—Quinn tried to remember the vomit of vulgarity that fans spewed in their faces week after week. Not since his days at Stanford, when rival fans would text him death threats before a game, had he encountered such viciousness.

The Templar fans’ rage was equaled only by Smalley’s halftime rants, which rhymed four-letter words in surprisingly inventive ways: p*********y, meet poetry, Quinn thought. Or at least anatomically impossible rap. (He himself tried to refrain from cursing until Thursdays, figuring if the week hadn’t improved by then it was unlikely to do so, and even then he reserved it for moments of high emotion.)

During these tirades, he had learned to stay transfixed on the litany of verbal abuse else Smalley might think you weren’t paying sufficient attention.

“Having a low-blood sugar moment, are we?” Smalley said the day Greg Moll had the temerity to unwrap a Mini Snickers during one of these “Poetry Slams.” Smalley took the candy then and shoved it down Greg’s throat so forcefully that he began to gag and Quinn and the others had to intervene.

Such volatility was the tip of the globally warmed iceberg. That most of the team wasn’t serving time in Sing Sing was its real accomplishment, Quinn thought. There was safety Cesare Dalton, who had beaten an involuntary manslaughter rap after he choked his girlfriend to death during rough s*x; punter Indigo West, who had been arrested trying to buy weed and coke from an undercover cop in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge; and ever-prolific tackle Jeremiah Dupré, who had fifteen kids by twelve women in eleven states. Such was the achievement that Greg and Derrick Muldavey, who would’ve fancied themselves team ironists had they understood the concept of postmodern irony, once presented Jeremiah with a framed map of the United States containing diamond push pins where he had “multiplied, filled the earth and subdued it,” in the words of the Good Book. Jeremiah was so touched he broke down and cried, hugging his generous teammates.

Sometimes, some of the Jeremiah juniors visited the locker room, where they clung to various players like barnacles to a boat, for Jeremiah was an affectionate if understandably distracted daddy. Quinn felt sorry for the Jere juniors and tried to be patient with them and their endless questions, their touching of things that didn’t belong to them and general interference. Perhaps they reminded him of himself. They certainly reminded him of his long-cherished dream and the reason he tolerated everything the NFL had thrown at him—to build a new, state-of-the-art orphanage and school in Jakarta.

“Get these bastards out of here,” Smalley would yell at the risk of offending Jeremiah, who was one of his best players.

No worries: The actual Jeremiah Junior, the oldest of the litter at age ten, gave as good as he got.

“You’re kind of fat,” he said to Smalley, who turned beet-red.

“Kind of?” Greg whispered to Derrick, who caught Quinn’s eye, and the three dissolved into giggles, which was why they were running an extra ten miles in the rain the next day.

“That’s right,” Smalley screamed. “When I’m finished with you guys, you’ll be too tired to laugh, let alone suck dick.”

Such punishments were worth it, though, Quinn thought, for the opportunity to savor the way Jere Junior had stood up to Smalley—Quinn never called him “Coach” except to his face, preferring to refer to him instead as “Small E”—and for the look on his face.

At least no one questioned Jeremiah’s s****l prowess. Whereas, if you weren’t doing it with a woman or talking about doing it with a woman every five minutes you were suspect. Quinn hadn’t been with the team long before the, “So, dating anyone special? If not, I know this chick,” conversation began.

It’s not that he didn’t find women objectively attractive. It’s just that he was sexually excited by men, two in particular—Tamarind Tarquin, the quarterback of the San Francisco Miners, and Mallory Ryan, the Philadelphia Quakers’ QB.

Often late at night, when he couldn’t sleep, Quinn would imagine the three of them in bed, engaged in a water-dance with himself in the middle, melting into their arms as he surrendered to and received their strength. While he stroked his erect c**k in a soft cloth slathered with lube, he thought of Tam pinning his arms behind his back as he entered him and Mal sucked him off, then came, smearing the come on his belly.

The fantasy would leave the shivering Quinn sticky and sated but also ashamed as he was one of those men for whom s*x was not enough. He wanted to love and be loved.

Of course, it was a dream too far, Quinn knew. That’s what made it so delicious. In reality, Mal was rumored to have a girlfriend or two, while Tam was said to be a player, with a different date for every red-carpet event. Even if they were free and gay, they hated each other, perhaps owing to their having been rivals since their high school days in Philly—an antagonism that reached its pinnacle when the Quakers drafted Mal instead of Tam, which sportscasters couldn’t stop mentioning.

But it would be exquisite, wouldn’t it, Quinn thought, to test his mettle against them on the field and then off it in an arena of another kind, one buffeted by cool, silky 600 thread-count sheets, soft pillows and whispers of things you did only in the dark.

“So, got a girl?” Jeremiah asked Quinn after the Temps’ 48-7 loss to the Copperheads.

With that, Brenna James of The New York Record came rushing into the locker room and proceeded to spill the contents of her huge, green suede hobo bag.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said as Quinn helped her collect her compact and cell and their eyes locked. “I’m so clumsy.”

“Not at all,” Quinn said, smiling at her.

He watched as she tramped to Smalley’s office.

“Sometimes,” he said to Jeremiah, “you want what you can’t have.”

Jeremiah nodded as if he knew what he didn’t.