CHAPTER TWELVE

The Monday after Lissy conferred with Shahid about lineups, he came to practice glowering. The next day, he was absent. He didn’t return her calls. The other guys worked their games, preparing for the Trinity match, and didn’t ask about their number one player. Lissy’s nerves were jangling. Shahid had been on top of his game, keen for the challenge of revamping the team. It had to be something personal getting at him. It had to be his sister.

“He say anything to you?” Lissy asked Afran.

Afran shrugged evasively. “He’s had papers to write.”

“Don’t you take Poli Sci with him?” she asked Gus, who appeared faithfully at every practice and was improving in tiny increments.

“That’s right, Coach.” Gus was bouncing a squash ball on his racquet, his eyes flicking up and down. She wondered. Had he seen Shahid’s sister? Did he know the girl was engaged? He gave no sign, and she couldn’t think of a way to ask. She’d never said anything to him about the moment she’d witnessed in the squash center. Sometimes players confided in her about their romances—certainly on the girls’ team they did—but Gus kept his own counsel.

“So was he in class?” she persisted.

“I didn’t notice, Coach. It’s a big class.”

The same with the others. They hadn’t seen Shahid, or they’d caught sight of him but he was busy, going off to study. He’d been working on his car, Carlos said. But Shahid had broken a major rule: shirking practice without calling the coach or informing any of his fellow players. While the guys ran drills, Lissy brooded. They were evasive, not because they didn’t like Shahid or because they were hiding stuff from her—she felt certain of that. They were confused, as she was. Shahid was their glue, their light, the wind at their backs. And they’d rather be seen as secretive than clueless about a teammate, especially one they all depended on.

Next day, again, no Shahid. Only a few days remained before the match with Trinity, the best squad in the country right then, the only one ahead of Harvard. Jamil plopped down on the bleacher beside Lissy after he’d finished a punishing series of setups and volleys with Chander. Even his dreadlocks sported beads of sweat. “Coach’s head be in the clouds,” he said.

“Sorry, Jamil. You looked good out there. Getting that wrist action.”

“We going down to Trinity.”

“They’re the best. We’ll give ’em a run.”

“You playing Shahid?”

“Doubt it. He’s missed practice all week.”

Jamil nodded soberly. “We got to get him back for the big one, though.” Looking at him—his walnut skin, aquiline nose, the dimple in his right cheek, details the likes of which she came to memorize for each player—she raised her eyebrows. “Harvard,” he said.

Lissy chuckled drily. “Let’s get past Trinity first.”

“Without Shahid—”

“Either way.”

“Man’s doing a lot of sufferation, me think.”

Lissy’s eyes flicked to the others on court, then back to Jamil. “Are you, like, delegated to persuade me to let him play, Jamil?”

He put up his hands, the long pale fingers. “Ease up, Coach. I be on your side.”

Was there another side? she wanted to ask. Instead she rose; paced the courts; harangued Chander on his footwork.

February was in full stride, with its thawings and freezings. The roads were sloppy, icy at night, a fresh coat expected to fall and then melt by the weekend. At breakfast the next morning, after cutting the crusts off Chloe’s toast—spoiling her, Ethan thought, but Lissy had never liked crusts when she was a girl—Lissy said, “If Don Shears weren’t breathing down my neck, I’d cut Shahid slack. But there’s Trinity in two days. Harvard next week. Not even Shahid can go up against Harvard without practice.”

“Have you seen his sister?”

She shook her head. “Whatever’s happening with her and Gus, I’m probably best not knowing about it.”

Ethan looked up from the sandwich he was fixing. He often scheduled patients during lunch hour, when they could break free from their jobs, and he ate on the fly. “You could send Shahid to counseling.”

“To you? Not sure I could stay out of it. This is my number one we’re talking about.”

He smiled, his glasses reflecting the light. “I’m the one who keeps you out of it. But he doesn’t have to see me. Send him to the counseling center. Sounds like a young man with stuff on his mind.”

It was a misty morning. Outside, Chloe’s latest snow creature was losing weight, its fallen scarf a wet tangle. Lissy lifted her to kiss its frozen mouth good-bye, and then they left for day care. She made it through a morning coaches’ meeting with an extra cup of coffee. By noon students were slipping and sliding their way into the building for PE classes. The entrance hall carpet was soggy. Three calls to Shahid’s cell, meanwhile, had gone unanswered. Putting off lunch, Lissy keyed herself into the women’s faculty locker room in hope that a workout would lift her spirits. From the crisp blouse and slacks she wore to the office—male A.D.s, she’d noticed, got by in tracksuits—she changed to cycling shorts and a T-shirt in need of a wash.

The workout room wasn’t a fitness center yet, but it did the trick. A half dozen stationary bikes and ellipticals, a couple of rowing machines, a full set of Life Fitness stations, a mirrored corner for free weights. One of the first things Lissy had done as A.D. was to silence the Top 40 radio station that used to blare here. Sure enough, students now came in with their iPods and earbuds, and the faculty, like Lissy, appreciated the relative silence, the sound of straps sliding over heavy metal rollers and lungs expanding. With the new fitness center they would add tiny TVs to the treadmills and bikes, but that noise, too, would pass through the earbuds.

Two of Lissy’s female players, Liza and Margot, were already on the ellipticals. She waved to them. Some administrators refused to visit the run-down facility; Don Shears, she knew, had joined the local health club rather than let students see him in exercise shorts. But Lissy liked breaking through the barriers, and she didn’t mind having students, especially the girls, see a middle-aged woman staying in shape. “Some guys on the team were looking for you,” Liza said as she set her resistance higher.

“They’ll figure out I’m here,” Lissy said.

Normally she started with aerobic work, but this time she began with weights. In their heft she could feel the power of her muscles. Free weights first, to work on breathing and balance. Take her mind off the absence of Shahid, the pressure from Don to beat Harvard in eight days. Bench press, hammer grip. Tricep extension. She breathed and counted. As she turned to the leg press, she spotted Afran and Carlos, weaving between the bikes. They’d probably tried her office first, and this was their next stop. She waved with a fifteen-pound dumbbell, then frowned when she saw the looks on their faces.

“Got a sec, Coach?” Carlos asked.

“Always,” said Lissy, her standard response. Setting down the weights, she wiped her face with her towel. “You find Shahid?” she asked. “Did you talk to him?”

“It’s not Shahid,” said Afran.

“It’s Gus,” said Carlos.

“Gus?” Lissy frowned. Gus had been at practice yesterday, working hard as always. “What’s wrong with Gus?”

“He’s at Berkshire Med Center,” said Carlos.

“Christ.” She pictured a fistfight, a broken jaw. “Not one of those football guys,” she began, though what she was picturing was Shahid, seeing what she’d seen that afternoon in the corridor, Shahid breaking Gus’s nose.

“He had an accident,” said Afran. “With his car.”

With the news that no one else was involved came a hidden rush of relief. “Where? In this lousy weather? Is he hurt?”

A dumb question, she realized. Gus was in the hospital; they had just told her.

“Broke his leg, apparently, and a couple of vertebrae,” said Carlos.

“Was anyone else—”

“No. On the road to Northampton. His brakes, like, gave out.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have been driving in this crap. Have you seen him?”

“We just came from there,” said Afran. “They put him on a bunch of pain meds, he’s pretty out of it.”

“I imagine.” Vertebrae, she thought. Could mean everything or nothing. At the least, he was out for the season. “Well, thanks, guys. I’ll head over. Is Shahid there?”

“I—I left him voice mail,” Afran said with a quick glance at Carlos. “I think he’s on his way.”

“Yeah, good.” She stopped at the door. Margot and Liza had stepped off the machines and gathered around Carlos. “You boys tell the team, okay? Send out a quick e-mail. I’ll announce the new lineup at practice.”

“Right, Coach,” said Afran.

As she scraped snow from her car, she realized. Gus must have been headed out to see Afia. How foolish, to risk country roads in this freezing slop. Did the girl know? Someone had reached Gus’s teammates. They should have started with the captain, with Shahid. But it was Afran who’d come to alert her. Could it be that, after his burst of enthusiasm at the start of the term, Shahid was so wrapped up in his own life, his own future at Harvard, that he would just abdicate, hang his coach and his teammates out to dry?

“Selfish asshole,” she muttered to herself. Just when you think you’ve got the player of your dreams, the stuff of real leadership, he falls into drugs or infatuation or self-pity, and there goes everything you’ve tried to teach, all the honor of the team. She wanted to hammer her fists on Shahid Satar’s chest. To call him what he was: a traitor. Furiously she scraped at the windshield. When she was finished, she flung the scraper into the car. Then she leaned on the hood. She gathered her breath.

This wasn’t about Shahid. She was the coach. She had a wounded athlete. Her job was to tend to him. And to pull the squad together. And to win, Shahid or no Shahid. “Got that, girl?” she said to herself. She sounded like her own coaches years ago, making herself snap out of it. She tucked herself into the dark car and headed through the snow-misted morning, toward Berkshire Medical Center.