Dan refused to get into a debate with Valerie about Bert, especially when he knew he was on shaky ground. Men liked Bert, but women didn't. He had been too free with his hands, too quick with the raunchy joke and patronizing comment. That didn't go over well with women like Valerie. It didn't go over all that well with Dan, either, but Bert had been the boss so he'd kept his mouth shut.
"It wasn't funny, Val. A man died, and his daughter managed to turn his funeral into a circus."
"I've heard stories about her. What's she like?"
"A high-class hooker, except not that smart. To tell you the truth, I can't remember the last time I met a person who struck me as being so completely worthless."
"She was Arturo Flores's mistress for years. She must have some redeeming qualities."
"Other than the obvious ones on her chest, I can't imagine what. Bert talked to me about her a couple of times. It embarrassed the hell out of him knowing his daughter's naked body was showing up on the walls of every big museum in the country."
"Flores was a great artist. Don't you think Bert's attitude might have been a bit provincial? Remember that we're talking about a man who wanted to hang gold tassels from the crotches of the Star Girl cheerleaders."
"None of those girls was his daughter. And ticket sales have been real slow."
She bristled. "That kind of blatant sexism isn't funny."
He sighed. "It was a joke, Val. Loosen up."
"You're disgusting. Everything about sex is one big joke to you, isn't it?"
"I'm disgusting! Now you correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't you the one who's been dreaming up all these kinky little sexual scenarios, including tonight's semi-repulsive dip into kiddie porn? And haven't I been warming that butt of yours whenever you decide you want it warmed, even though beating up women has never been high on my list of aphrodisiacs?"
She stiffened. "That's not what I'm talking about, but as usual, you've chosen to misinterpret. I'm talking about your attitude toward women. You've gotten so much free sex over the years that you've forgotten women are anything more than tits and ass."
"Now that's real nice talk coming from a representative of the United States government."
"You won't discuss your feelings. You refuse to share your emotions."
It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her that whenever he'd tried to share his emotions with her, she'd turned it into an all-night discussion of everything that was wrong with him.
"And women let you get away with it," she went on. "That's what's really galling. They let you get away with it because-Never mind. I can't talk to you."
"No, Valerie. Go on. Finish what you were saying. If I'm so terrible, why do women let me get away with it?"
"Because you're rich and good-looking," she replied too quickly.
"That's not what you were going to say. You're the one who keeps telling me I need to be more open in my communication. Maybe you should practice what you preach."
"They let you get away with it because you're so confident," she said stiffly. "You don't seem to have the same self-doubts as everybody else in the world. Even successful women like the security of knowing they have a man like that standing behind them."
Although to another man her words might have been flattering, they had the opposite effect on him. He could feel a red-hot coil of rage burning deep inside him, a rage that went all the way back to boyhood when too much emotion had meant a trip to the woodshed and a walloping from his father's belt.
"You women are really something," he sneered. "When are you going to figure out that God might have made two sexes for a reason? You can't have it both ways. Either a man's a man, or he's not. You can't take somebody whose nature is to be a warrior and then expect him-at your command-to curl up on the couch, spill his guts, and, in general, start acting like a pussy."
"Get out!"
"Gladly." He snatched up his keys and headed toward the door. But before he got there, he threw his final punch. "You know what your problem is, Valerie. Your underwear doesn't fit right, and it's made you mean. So the next time you go to the store, why don't you see if you can buy yourself a bigger-sized jockstrap."
He stormed out of the house and climbed into his car. As soon as he got settled, he jammed Hank Jr. into the tape deck and turned up the volume. When he was feeling this low, the only person he wanted to be around was another hell-raiser.
The Sunday afternoon preseason game against the Jets was a disaster. If the Stars had been playing a respectable team, the loss wouldn't have been so humiliating, but getting beaten 25-10 by the candy-ass Jets, even in preseason, was more than Dan could stomach, especially when he imagined his three unsigned players lounging in their hot tubs back in Chicago watching the game on their big screen TVs.
Jim Biederot, the Stars' starting quarterback, had been injured in their last practice and his backup had pulled a groin muscle the week before, so Dan was forced to go with C.J. Brown, a fifteen-year veteran whose knees were held together by airplane glue. If Bobby Tom had been playing, he'd have managed to get free so C.J. could hit him, but Bobby Tom wasn't playing.
To make matters worse, the Stars' new owner had apparently returned from her vacation, but she wasn't taking any calls. Dan kicked a hole in the visitors' locker room wall when Ronald McDermitt delivered that particular piece of information, but it hadn't helped. He'd never imagined he could hate anything more than he hated losing football games, but that was before Phoebe Somerville had come into his life.
All in all, it had been a dismal week. Ray Hardesty, the Stars' former defensive end, whom Dan had cut in early August, had driven drunk one too many times and gone through a guardrail on the Calumet Expressway. He'd been killed instantly, along with his eighteen-year-old female passenger. All through the funeral, as Dan had watched the faces of Ray's grieving parents, he'd kept asking himself if there had been something more he could have done. Rationally, he knew there wasn't, but it was a tragedy all the same.
The only bright spot in his week had occurred at a DuPage County nursery school where he'd gone to film a public service announcement for United Way. When he'd walked in the door, the first thing he'd noticed was a pixie-faced, redheaded teacher sitting on the floor reading a story to a group of four-year-olds. Something had gone ' all soft and warm inside him as he'd studied her freckled nose and the spot of green finger paint on her slacks.
When the filming was done, he'd asked her out for a cup of coffee. Her name was Sharon Anderson, and she'd been tongue-tied and shy, a welcome contrast to all the bold-eyed women he was accustomed to. Although it was too early to speculate, he couldn't help but wonder if he might not have found the simple, home-lovin' woman he was searching for.
But the residual glow from his meeting with Sharon had faded by the day of the Jets game, and he continued to seethe over the loss as he endured the postgame activities. It wasn't until he stood on the tarmac waiting to board the charter that would take them back to O'Hare that he snapped.
"Son of a bitch!"
He pivoted so abruptly he bumped into Ronald McDermitt, knocking the acting general manager off-balance so that he dropped the book he was carrying. It was what the kid deserved, Dan thought callously, for being born a wimp. Although Ronald was no more than five-foot-eight, he wasn't bad-looking, but he was too neat, too polite, and too young to run the Chicago Stars.
In pro teams the GM directed the entire operation, including hiring and firing of coaches, so that, theoretically, Dan worked for Ronald. But Ronald was so intimidated by him that his authority was purely academic.
The GM picked up his book and looked at him with a wary expression that made Dan crazy. "Sorry, Coach."
"I bumped into you, for chrissake."