Eleven

I SAT WITH MY ex-husband at a table near the wall at the Horseshoe Tavern on Chestnut Street, once my father’s favorite hole-in-the-wall bar. Fascinating that Joe Wolf, the guy who had such a taste for the finer things in life, also loved places like this.

Just not as fascinating, in the whole grand scheme of things, as my once being married to the quarterback of the Wolves.

Ted Skyler had his navy cap imprinted with the white wolf logo pulled down low.

My phone was in front of him next to his mug of beer. The screen was filled with a headline in end-of-the-world type on the Tribune’s home page:

SHE WOLF

Now my ex tipped his cap back and grinned.

“What did you expect? That your brothers were going to fight fair?”

“I didn’t do this to them,” I said. “Dad did.”

“You should have heard your brother Danny in the locker room after practice today,” he said. “He’s pacing up and down and yelling that hell would freeze over before his sister was going to take over his football team. And his imagery got even more colorful after that.”

“Jack probably feels the same way about the paper,” I said. I pointed at the phone. “Hence the hit piece.”

“You have to know it’s only the beginning.”

He clinked his mug against mine.

“Well, cheers.”

“Easy for you to say.”

We both drank.

There were only half a dozen customers at the bar. All guys. They’d made Ted Skyler the moment he walked in. I had called him from the car after I’d seen the Tribune, then driven around a little more before arriving at the decision that drinking with my ex was better than drinking alone. There had been a time when we’d only spoken to each other through our lawyers. My position had softened, at least slightly, over time. He wasn’t a better person now. But he hadn’t gotten any worse, either.

Low bar, I thought.

We’d married in his second year with the Wolves. It had been treated in San Francisco like a royal fairy tale, a Wolf marrying the team’s star quarterback. The marriage had lasted until his fifth year. He swore he still loved me. It just turned out that before very long he liked the sports anchor at one of the local network affiliates more.

He was thirty-seven and still looked remarkably like the golden boy he’d been at USC. Somebody had once written that when Ted Skyler walked into a room, all the women—and half the guys—wanted him.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I said.

“Nobody knows that better than I do,” he said. “You spent your whole life running away from the team. Even when you were married to me.”

“It had nothing to do with the team. Everything to do with them. And being afraid I’d turn into them.”

He checked his own phone. I didn’t know if he was seeing anyone at the moment. But the night was young. And he was still Touchdown Ted Skyler. God’s gift.

All you had to do was ask him.

“You are going to do this, right?” he said.

“No.”

He had the mug halfway to his lips.

“You’re joking.”

I didn’t say anything, just gave him a look he probably felt he knew as well as he did the deferred money he had coming to him when he retired.

“Okay. You’re not joking.”

“I had spent most of the day talking myself into it,” I said. “That somehow I owed it to Dad to honor his dying wish, or whatever you want to call it, and make things right between us even though he’s gone.”

I drank more beer.

“Then I saw that headline and I knew I was kidding myself. That I couldn’t hold on to the life I’ve made for myself and go back to the life of being a Wolf.”

“She Wolf,” he said.

“Don’t start with me.”

He waved at the bartender, who came over and took Ted’s order for a Scotch. I didn’t say anything, but almost by reflex he said, “I’ve got a driver.”

“Of course you do.”

“This is some serious shit here. I need a real drink.”

He waited until the bartender came back with a glass of Johnnie Walker. He told me he’d read once that Joe Namath used to drink Johnnie Walker.

He toasted me, drank, and said, “You have to do this.”

“Why? Because you think I’d give you a better chance of holding on to your job?”

The grin disappeared, but only briefly. “Maybe you’re more like them than you think.”

“Sorry. I did call you.”

“So you did,” Ted said. “But you sound as if you’ve already made up your mind. So why did you call me?”

“I wanted to see if maybe you could un–make up my mind.” I grinned. “Other than on the subject of that TV twink, you were always pretty honest with me.”

“I think you should do it,” he said. “You’d be good at it. A lot better than your brother is.”

“Any random member of the grounds crew would be.”

“Look at what Jeanie Buss has done with the Lakers.”

“She didn’t mind having a public fight with her brother over control of her team,” I said. “But that’s not me.”

“You sure? And what fight are we really talking about? Sounds like you got all the power you need today.”

“Dad used to talk about being famous. He said it was like living in a Macy’s window. That’s not me.”

“I was under the impression everybody wants to be famous,” he said.

“I had my taste just being married to the quarterback of the team. And found out I didn’t like that particular taste.”

He leaned forward. He was still cute as hell, even though I could see him getting older around the eyes.

“If you quit, they win. You get that, right?”

“Or maybe I win, by holding on to the things that really matter to me.”

“Forget the paper for the moment,” he said. “This is an NFL team we’re talking about, Jennifer. You need to think about this, because your father obviously gave it a hell of a lot of thought.”

“Maybe he just wanted to screw Danny over.”

“Or maybe he wanted to save the Wolves.” He gave me another one of his lopsided grins. “Though now that I think about it, they might be the same thing.”

“I’d be walking right back into everything I walked away from,” I said.

“When you broke your father’s heart.”

“He sure found an interesting way to get even. And what heart, by the way?”

“Whoa,” he said, and then I told him I’d stolen that line from the second Mrs. Joe Wolf.

We sat there in silence. He’d shown me something tonight, I had to admit. He’d been engaged for ten long minutes in a conversation that wasn’t about him.

“I’ve been thinking about something since Joe died,” Ted said. “After the last preseason game, I went up to have a drink with him in the suite. We used to do that a lot. Anyway, he and Danny were arguing when I came in. And your father said something like the worst mistake he ever made was putting Danny in charge of the Wolves, and the second biggest was leaving him in charge. And Danny said, ‘So take the team away.’ And Joe said, ‘You think I won’t?’ And then Danny said, ‘And you think I won’t end up with it anyway?’”

“What did that mean?”

“No clue,” Ted said.

“You ever ask him?”

“Sounded like a Danny problem, not a Ted problem.”

“For now,” I said, “Dad has taken the team away from him.”

“Has he ever.” Ted finished his Scotch. “Sleep on this.”

“I don’t need to.”

“You’re really going to walk away.”

“Kind of my thing. I’m going to call a press conference tomorrow.” I shrugged. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I already have the only team I need.”

We walked out together. He signed a couple of napkins for the guys at the bar. By the time he got into the back seat of his car, he was already talking on his phone, most likely setting up a date or confirming one.

By the time I got back to Bayview, the television trucks were gone.

But someone was waiting for me on my front steps.