“So what made you turn out for football in the first place?”
Trey smiles and stares at the recorder.
“You were serious.”
“Serious as AIDS,” he says as she reaches over and hits the stop button, then returns the recorder to her backpack. “A real journalist uses pen and paper anyway.”
“Jeez.” She drags out her notebook, closes her eyes a moment, and shakes her head.
“Wondering why you took this assignment?” Trey says.
“We’ll see. What made you turn out for football in the first place?”
“Keep myself out of juvy.”
“Really.”
“Yup,” Trey says. “Judge told my grandma if I’d turn out for football he’d hold off giving me a sentence. If I stayed with it a year, he’d drop the charges.”
“You stayed with it four.”
“I did. Actually I was going to take the sentence, but my grandma slapped me so hard on the side of the head when I said it, I thought I heard church bells. Judge liked that. He smiled and said, ‘You sure?’”
“What did you do to be standing before a judge in the first place?”
Trey smiles. “Let’s just say I was in possession of some things I couldn’t prove were mine.”
“Like?”
“Things I couldn’t prove were mine.”
Montana nods and jots that down. Actually this could be fun; he makes her a bit uncomfortable. Bad boys. Watch out for bad boys. “So I know all the ESPN answers, and I’m looking for a different article than that; you know, in depth.”
Trey smiles again, and Montana shifts in her seat. “In depth is usually a quarterback’s interview,” he says. “But let’s give ’er a shot.”
“How do you feel about the fact that football players are generally treated like gods in this school, that they get away with things the general population doesn’t?”
“I like it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m a football player. I like it.”
That’s the problem with asking a question you don’t think you’ll get an answer to. Dr. Conroy has warned her students about that. “So you agree? Football players get special privileges?”
Trey feigns confusion. “Oh, I thought you were telling me about some new policy.”
“No, I was stating the obvious and asking what you think about it.”
“Isn’t that like, a trick question?”
“No, it’s not a trick question—”
“I mean, if you say something you think is ‘obviously true,’ but it’s not obviously true to me, doesn’t that give you an advantage, like to get my ass in a sling?”
“It isn’t obviously true to you that football players get special treatment when it comes to discipline and rule breaking?”
“I wouldn’t know. I stay away from as much discipline as I can. Truth is, by the time they get enough goods on me to drag my ass to the office, there’s not a lot of reasonable doubt. What’s this article gonna be about, anyway?”
Montana lays her pen down on the table in exasperation. “I don’t know. It seems to be taking off on me.”
Trey nods toward the pen. “That mean we’re taking a break?”
“For a minute. I have to gather my thoughts.”
Trey picks up the pen and notebook. “I been thinking I might like this school paper thing. Lemme try it from your side.”
“Actually, I’m asking the questions.”
“Yeah, but you’re taking a break. Weren’t you a cheerleader back when I played JV, like when we were freshmen?”
Montana nods. “Yes, Trey, I was a cheerleader.”
“You didn’t get elected cheerleader wearing all that black shit, and all the inserts.”
“You mean my piercings?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Your piercings. In fact we had you on the fast track. Great legs, better…uh…torso, eight and a half face, maybe three percent body fat.”
“The fast track to what?”
“Feminine superstardom,” Trey says. “But you veered off on us. In a couple of simple sentences, so my fourth-grade level readers can understand, can you tell us why?”
“I can tell you in one simple sentence. Because you guys had me on the fast track.”
“Is it true you have a tattoo on your abs of a bird pulling a worm out of your belly button?”
Montana snatches her pen back, blushing only slightly. “Back to the interview.” She opens the notebook to her original page. Trey sits back. She says, “You say you don’t get special treatment as a jock, and specifically as a football player. Would you say that in general, athletes get special treatment?”
“Of course I wouldn’t say it. You want me to rat out my buddies on the gravy train?”
“So you’re saying it’s true, you just won’t say it.”
“A good journalist does not put words into the subject’s mouth.”
Football players are supposed to be jerks in Montana West’s judgment, but Trey Chase is fun. She wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but the way he plays her feels sexy.
“You know this is all on the record, right?”
“Yeah. Hey, would you like to go out for a Coke or a coffee or something? You know, sometime when you’re not doing anything?”
“Uh, I don’t know…uh…sure…sometime.”
“How about sometime today after practice?”
“That’s sometime, all right.”
“It’s a date, then. You gonna ask me any more questions?”
“Later, maybe. This interview is hard to control.”
Trey says, “Anything that’s too easy ain’t worth doing.”
Montana smiles. “That’s not what I hear about you and your stable of girlfriends.” She closes her notebook, winks, and gets up.
“You are not going on a date with Trey Chase.”
“Okay,” Montana says, “then I’m going out for coffee with Trey Chase.”
Maxwell West sets down his fork and pinches the bridge of his nose. “The only time Trey Chase has coffee is in the morning. For a hangover. Trey Chase is what we used to call an ass bandit.”
Montana almost spits her milk.
“Maxwell! There’s a little girl at this table.”
Tara looks up, smiles. That’s her.
“Who has no idea of the meaning of what I just said.” He turns back to Montana. “And what are you doing going out with a football player anyway? I thought you hated football players.”
“Maybe I was being a bigot,” Montana says, and shakes her head in disgust. “I’m doing a story on the football team.”
“You’re doing a story on the football team? That’ll be the day. Maybe two years ago, before you started dressing like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“Don’t be unkind, Daddy,” she says. “The Wicked Witch of the West isn’t the only person who dresses in black.”
“Darth Vader,” he says.
“Catwoman,” she says back.
“You can go out with any other football player you want, but you are not going out with Trey Chase.” Maxwell West has never figured out that the best, fastest way to create his worst nightmare is to identify it.
She should never have said she was going out with Trey. She should have said she was meeting one of the guys on the football team to do a story on him because her control-freak right-wing Christian father—who is also chairperson of the school board—and his evil elves Remington and Holden won’t let her write anything of substance. That’s a better fight. Now she’s stuck doing the two things she does best when it comes to her father.
“My dad didn’t want me to meet you.”
“Why not?” Trey and Montana are sitting in Connie’s, a cup of steaming coffee on the table in front of each. Trey takes a small flask from his jacket pocket and pours a splash into his coffee, holds it up as an offering.
“He says you’re an ass bandit. No thanks,” she says to the bottle.
He smiles and returns
it to his pocket.
“Did you tell your dad we don’t call superstuds that anymore? So how’d you get to come out?”
“I lied.” She nods toward the bottle. “Can’t that get you thrown off the team?”
“Only if a rat sees me with it,” he says. “Or if it shows up in the school paper.”
She smiles. “And if it shows up in the school paper, my butt’s in a sling because I’m not supposed to be out with you.”
“Because I’m an ass bandit.”
She nods.
“All the bases are covered.”
They sip their coffees, and Montana feels uneasy, which is not normal; Montana West operates in control. But Trey is different; different from what she expected from a run-of-the-mill jock, and different from anyone she has met. This guy is, like, unflappable, and he doesn’t lead with his jock status or his muscle. He looks over at the counter, brings out the flask again. “Sure you don’t want a little cream and sugar?”
She pushes her coffee toward him. “Just a little.”
He smiles and pours a splash into her cup.
She sips. Smooth.
“So seriously, West, what are you doing writing an article on me, or on football?”
“Not that you’re not interesting,” Montana says, “but they won’t let us print anything of substance. I had this great article on medical marijuana, but Remington told Conroy it was too controversial for a school paper. He claims the medical marijuana issue is a trick to legalize it so every pothead in the country gets a free ride.”
“That right? Wonder if he’s against medical OxyContin, or medical morphine? I should introduce you to my grandmother.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’ll see.” He leans his chair back on two legs. “So really, West, why the big change? You were a perfect match for this football culture.”
“I was, wasn’t I?”
He raises his eyebrows.
“It was too hard and it’s stupid, a waste of time,” she says. “When you’re playing Lilac Queen, you spend half your life plucking your eyebrows and finding the right lipstick for the right outfit and for that matter, looking for the right outfit.” She looks at the table. “And I didn’t like the expectations.”
“The fast track, huh. Don’t blame you.”
“To tell the truth, it was more the expectations at home. You can never be just right enough for my dad. He gives me a hard time now, but it was worse when he wanted my hair a little different, or was worried that I was showing a little too much boob, or that too much makeup made me look like a whore but too little made me look like I didn’t care. He’s such a prick. I saw how it had killed my mother and I figured, hey, I’m out of this.”
“Your ol’ man is kind of a dick.” He points his finger at her like a pistol. “You kept the body, though.”
Montana feels blood rush to her head.
“Some things you can’t hide with loose clothes,” he says.
“I stay in shape.” She doesn’t look at him; sits through an uneasy silence that is only uneasy to her.
“Hey,” he says. “How long you got?”
She remembers the lie she told to get out, and her father’s forbidding her to be here, at least with Trey Chase. “Long as I want.”
“Wanna meet my grandmother?”
She laughs. “You’re taking me home to meet the family already?”
“She’d like you,” he says. “Follow my pickup.”
“My grandson tells me you’re doing a story on him for the school paper.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Must be a slow news week.”
Montana sits at the kitchen table with Trey’s grandmother; Mari Chase. She is a small woman, wiry and muscular, and her smooth face belies her sixty-plus years.
“I dabbled in some journalism in my day.”
Montana thinks along with dabbling in journalism, she might have been a beauty “in her day.” “Really?”
“A little paper called the Berkeley Barb.”
“You wrote for the Berkeley Barb? Wasn’t that like the biggest counterculture paper of the sixties?”
“That was the biggest counterculture paper of all time,” Mari says. “In the late sixties, when the civil rights movement was cranked up and the war in Vietnam was headed into the shitter, the Barb was the place to get the real news, at least if you thought like we did.”
“Hippies and stuff, right?” Montana says.
“See?” Trey says. “I said you had to meet my grandma.”
“Wow,” Montana says. “The Berkeley Barb.”
“That’s right, little girl. You have arrived at the heart of journalistic subterfuge.” Mari leans against the table and coughs. “We had some fun. And we took care of a lot of people, including me. Max Scherr, who created the Barb, conscripted street kids to sell it. Flower children, we called ourselves.” She smiles. “We did wear flowers in our hair, but a more accurate moniker might have been weed children.”
No sweat figuring where Trey Chase gets his cool.
“We’d come in with something of value to use as collateral for some papers on the day it came out. If Max thought it was valuable enough that we’d come back for it, he’d give us a bundle to sell on the street. We’d return and buy our stuff back and there’d be enough left over for a new bundle to sell for food. I loved that paper. I started doing research for them and a little bit of editing. Finally he put me on staff.”
“How did he pay to get it published? I mean, to print it up and all?”
“Sex ads,” Mari says, shaking her head. “You should have read some of those. It was actually a pretty powerful newspaper at its peak. Max wasn’t bound by the same constraints as, say, the San Francisco Chronicle. Once he printed a piece claiming dried banana skins contained bananadine, which would create an opium high if you smoked it. Totally made-up bullshit, but it found its way into the mainstream press, which caused a run on bananas in local supermarkets. There was actually an article in the New York Times on psychedelic substances, including banana skins. The Food and Drug Administration did an exhaustive study on them before declaring what Max knew all along. No psychedelics in banana skins.” Mari is misty-eyed. “Those were the days.”
“And I can’t get an article published about gay marriage or assisted suicide. Just had the stops put on a really good article on medical marijuana.”
Mari shoots a knowing glance at Trey. “No wonder my grandson doesn’t like school. You’re not going to sleep with him, are you?”
Montana blanches but recovers quickly. “I don’t even know if I’ll have coffee with him again.”
“I hear that. He can be such a little prick. I’m afraid he has some of his mother’s appetites, and about the same good sense for indulging them.” She shakes her head. “I love him like no other, but somewhere between his hippie grandmother and his poly-addictive mother, neither of whom had a brain in her head when it came to mate selection, any sexual good sense that might have existed was lost.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Trey smiles and shakes his head. “Grandma, you’re making it hard to work my magic.”
“That’s my intention,” his grandmother says. “I have opened the front door to face a tearful, jilted football-player-loving bimbo for the last time, if I have anything to say about it.” She glances at Montana. “That’s not you, dear. You seem different. But my grandson is a one-trick pony, and he uses that one trick on all the girls. Did it hurt when they pierced your cheek?”
“Not as much as you might think, and actually that’s technically my upper lip. It’s called a Marilyn,” Montana says.
“A Marilyn.”
“Yeah, it’s in the same place Marilyn Monroe had her beauty mark. You’ve heard of Marilyn Monroe, right?”
Mari smiles. “Yes, dear. Marilyn Monroe and I share much of the same time in history.”
“Oh, right. Anyway, the tongue was the tough one for me. Whoo. If I’d known it could rui
n my teeth, I’d have never had it done. Plus I couldn’t get used to it. I just wore it long enough to piss off my dad.”
“How’d that work?”
Montana brightens. “Like a charm.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mari says. “Why don’t you come out to the back porch with me?”
Montana rises, as does Trey. “You stay here, Trey. We’re talking business.”
Trey sits back down. “Your wish is my command.”
“Don’t forget that,” his grandmother says.
On the porch Mari reaches into her purse to extract a doobie. Montana’s eyes widen. “If you want an up-close and personal interview for your article on medical marijuana, I’m your girl.”
Montana lets it register. “Are you…”
“Dying of cancer? Mmm-hmm.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, honey, I’m fine with it. I’ve been resigned for a while. Trey turns eighteen in a month. I got him from where his mother blew him off to here. He still needs some work, obviously, but I swear, it’s work for a younger girl.” She nods toward Montana. “He’s not really as bad as I let on, if you keep him on a short leash. In fact he has a lot more manners when he’s on that leash. Remember that.”
She lights the joint, inhales, and closes her eyes. “If those bastards had any idea the relief…” She takes another toke. “What arrogance. What…I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to get you involved in my radical left-wing politics.”
“No, no, this is great stuff. I could stay out here with you all night.”
“The best days of my life were my days on the Barb,” Mari says. “Showing the world what free speech was about. Actually I thought we cleared the road for you, but here we are, forty years later, afraid to hear the truth.”
“So much for evolution,” Montana says. “I guess things don’t get better, they just swing back and forth.”
“Know what you should do?”
“What?”
“You should write the hell out of that article. I’ll interview for it. Submit it every week. What kind of balls does your teacher have?”