Thom Whalen

22 June 1998

Dan heard the front door rattle open, then whisper closed, followed by his wife’s soft tread on the entryway stairs. When he saw her mournful expression framed in the doorway, he asked with considerable trepidation, "Did you have a good dinner?"

"Just fine," but her funeral intonation gave lie to her words.

He gathered his courage before asking, "How’s things with Ellen?"

She shook her head slowly, "Not good. Not good at all. She’s really afraid of what Bob’s going to do."

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Does she think that Bob’s going to do something?"

"She says that he said that he wants to quit his job. He says he’s bored."

Dan shrugged, uncertain why this should be a cause for grief. "Maybe he is. Fixing airplane engines can’t be all that exciting. He’s been doing it for, what, more than fifteen years? A guy can want a change once in a while."

Her eyes hardened to narrow slits. "He has responsibilities. He has two children still in school. He can’t just give up a steady paycheck on a whim."

Dan shrugged. "Sure he can. He’ll find something else. Dan’s a smart guy."

"You think so? You know what he’s talking about? He’s talking about getting his real estate license."

Dan raised an eyebrow, "Yeah? I wouldn’t have figured that. Dan’s not really the salesman type."

"It’s because of that Doris Elwood. Ever since she moved in, Dan’s been hanging over their back fence, talking to her at every opportunity. And you know how she is. She’s always going on and on about all the big sales she’s going to make. There’s always a million dollar deal just around the corner. He thinks that he’s missing out on a gold mine."

"Maybe he is." A dreamy expression settled across Dan’s face. "The commission on a million dollar deal must add up to a lot of money."

Maggie sniffed, "Well, Doris’s no millionaire. She wastes more breath talking about her deals than actually making them. Sometimes she goes for four or five months without making a single sale. I hear she can’t even make her own mortgage payments half the time. And Bob’s a family man, not divorced like her. He can’t go for half a year without a paycheck."

He replied, dryly, "I expect that that Ellen’s already explained that to Bob in some detail."

She retorted, sharply, "And I’m sure her explanation’s fallen on deaf ears." Then she added, conspiratorially, "This isn’t about money, you know. Or Bob’s job. Not really."

"Then what is it really about?" Dan was puzzled.

"It’s about Doris. Bob and Doris. Anyone can see that Bob has the hots for her. He figures that if he gets his real estate license, he can be her partner. And I don’t mean just a business partner."

"You think they’re having an affair?" Dan disbelieved.

"Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time. You know how she his. She’s a flirty person around everyone."

Dan was taken aback. Doris never flirted with him. If Maggie was right and she flirted with everyone else then maybe something was wrong with him. He wondered if he had to try to get Doris to flirt with him next time he saw her.

Maggie was still talking, "But Bob takes her flirting too seriously. He thinks she is after him in particular. And maybe he’s partly right. Sometimes when see them together, I think that she’s got her big guns out for him." She paused to think about Doris in bed with Bob for a minute, then added, "But it would never last. She’d get bored and move on to someone else in a few weeks without giving Bob another thought. He‘d be crushed."

"Yeah." Dan thought about spending a few weeks with Doris in bed and decided that getting crushed afterward might not be too high a price to pay.

Maggie snorted. "It’s not fair to Ellen. She’s going to end up stuck with the kids and no money. Bob’ll never make enough to pay support to her."

Dan thought about the way Doris’ long legs glowed when she slid into her Miata in the morning and nodded. "Yeah. I can see that."

"So you have to stop it," Maggie said with a note of finality.

Dan was shocked out of his fantasy. "What? Me? What does this have to do with me?"

"You’re Bob’s friend. You have to go over there and talk some sense into him."

Dan blustered, "But I don’t know him that well. Not really."

"Sure you do. You even go to ball games with him sometimes."

"Yeah, well, there’s a big difference between going to a game with someone and telling him that he can’t quit his job and leave his wife for a younger woman and..." He thought, And a better looking one, but, instead added lamely, "And a new job."

"Ellen’s so upset that, as soon as we got back from the restaurant, she’s took the kids and went over to her mother’s. She says that Bob’s been all upset and depressed, too. This is the right time to go over and talk some sense into him."

Dan forced a yawn, "I’m kind of tired right now."

"You’re not that tired. And you won’t get a better chance than this. You can talk to Bob now and rest later."

Dan assessed the degree of intransigence in his wife’s eyes. Nothing motivated her like the chance to rescue someone from a life of debauchery. There was going to be no peace tonight until he went over and talked to Bob. Finally, he nodded and said, "All right."

He figured that this was going to be a two beer conversation. No reason to take the whole six pack. He grabbed a couple of long-necks in each hand and strolled across the street.

When Bob answered the door, Dan waved the two bottles dangling from between the fingers of his right hand and asked, "Beer?"

Bob’s eyes smiled, "I could use a cold one."

Dan set three of the bottles on the coffee table as he eased himself into the overstuffed chair in the Bob’s living room. When he twisted the cap of the fourth, the bottle puffed, then sighed its promise of cold bitter delight.

The two men sipped their beer in silence for a minute, each immersing his senses in the taste of hops and the odor of barley malt.

After Dan had enjoyed a substantial portion of his bottle, he said, "Some game last night, eh?"

Bob wiped a rime of foam off his upper lip and said, "Yup. That was some pass Melnyk made in the second quarter. Must have been seventy yards and he hit Sedchuk right in the breadbasket."

Dan chugged a slug of beer before replying, "Yeah. Ya don’t see many passes like that. At least not many that get completed."

"Yeah. Wish I could have been there. That would’a’ been something to see live."

"Yeah. TV’s good, though. The replay of Sedchuk clutching that ball to his gut was great. You could tell he didn’t have to move hardly an inch. All that distance and Melnyk was bang on target."

"Yeah. Amazing."

Dan drank a little more beer, then said. "Too bad about the intercept in the third, though."

"Yeah. I didn’t think they were going to get it at first. It just tipped of that guy, what’s his name, Smith or somethin’, and flew up, and then that other guy, the Mexican, I think his name’s Juarez, came out of nowhere and just snagged it right out of the air. Man, that guy’s fast. Wish he’d been on our side."

Dan took a long pull on his beer while he thought about the play. He was nearing the bottom of his bottle. Then he said, "Yeah. But the intercept was the turning point. It gave the other team enough momentum to get the touchdown. Then Melnyk threw those other two long incompletes that were almost intercepted in the same quarter. He throws too much away with those long passes."

"He made another couple of good ones in the fourth, though. We almost came back. For a while there in the fourth, I thought we might win it."

Dan twisted the top off his second beer. "Yeah. But we didn’t really have much chance. We lost a lot of yardage when Melnyk kept getting sacked. Remember that first play in the fourth? He tried that long bomb just to try to get a first down? That was way too risky He should have punted it out of there."

"Think so? He almost made it. If he’d a made the pass, he would have had first down and I think he might have gone all the way."

"Almost wasn’t good enough, though. He keeps taking big risks hoping for a single big score. But he’s letting the whole team down. It was different when we had Cronbach. He would have played the game a lot better. You know, he wouldn’t have kept letting himself get knocked back."

"You think they should have kept Cronbach instead of trading him for Melnyk?"

Dan nodded emphatically. "Yeah, I do."

"Cronbach never tried to make any seventy yard pass. Hell, you never even saw him try to make a twenty yard pass. He just kept popping it over the line or running it up a few yards."

"He kept advancing, though. Maybe not as exciting, but he kept working away at it and he made a lot of yardage. That won a lot of games."

Bob shrugged in acquiescence. It was hard to argue with success. He made a weak stab at criticizing Cronbach’s style. "He sure liked to carry the ball."

Dan carried his argument forward relentlessly. "He kept his eye on the goal. You never saw anyone as determined to make it to the goal line as Cronbach."

Bob had to admit that much. "That’s true. We made it to the finals twice with Cronback."

"Yeah. I don’t think Melnyk is going to get us anywhere near the playoffs. Melnyk’s big passing game makes for a great show, but it just doesn’t cut it in the end."

Bob hated to retreat completely. "They would if he could make enough of them."

Dan shrugged and brought the reality of this situation home. "He can never make enough long passes. And that leaves his team vulnerable. You can see his receivers down on the field looking around, never knowing which way he’s going to throw. They can’t help him out when they can’t rely on him to carry through with his plans, and Melnyk can’t win games without the rest of his team."

Bob conceded defeat under the evident truth of Dan’s logic. "Yeah. I guess you gotta feel for Senchuk. He spends a lot of time just running in circles while Melnyk is getting sacked or throwing the ball away."

"Yeah. Senchuk’s pass completions are way down from when he was snagging short bullets from Cronbach."

"Yeah." Bob didn’t have any other reply and thought carefully about his own logic while he finished his beer.

Dan finished his second beer in silence, letting Bob do his thinking.

When Bob eventually put his bottle down, Dan stood and said, "Well, I better get back to Maggie."

Bob nodded. "Yeah. Thanks for the beer." He stood up and mentioned, casually, "Ellen’s over at her mother’s. I better give her a call and see what time she’s coming home."

"See ya." Dan showed himself to the door. He heard Bob dialing the kitchen phone as he closed it.

When he reached the top of his front stairs, Maggie asked, "Well?"

He replied, "Well?"

"Well, what did you talk about?"

"Football."

Maggie squinted at him with irritation. "Football?"

"Yeah. We talked about the game last night."

She shook her head slowly. "Didn’t you talk about Ellen and the kids?"

"No. Just football."

Maggie looked disgusted and muttered, "You men. You just don’t know how to communicate with each other."

Dan just shrugged. He had no rebuttal that he could offer to Maggie.