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“And why’s that?”
“You feel like home. ”
Warmth bloomed in my chest, born of nostalgia and truth and familiarity. “You feel like home, too. ”
“Friends, then?”
I smiled back. “Yes. Friends. ”
* * *
By the end of my third week at Sports Today, I realized I was dreaming about my job. About stupid things, like that I actually pressed Reply when I mean to hit Forward, and about getting emails from readers asking why all the articles had gone downhill lately. I resented the imposition on my unconscious; the last time I remembered dreaming about a job was from my stint as a barista in high school. I’d spent a month having nightmares about mile-long lines where every order was a venti-non-fat-triple-shot-raspberry-white-chocolate-mocha-no-whip.
Which sounded pretty good about now, actually.
I’d learned other things so far, too. Like that New Yorkers called New York—Manhattan, in particular—the City. I tried telling the editorial guys that we called San Francisco the City back home, and they regarded me with something akin to amused pity.
New Yorkers spent a lot of time regarding outsiders with amused pity.
I learned exactly where to stand and board my train at my station in order to be let out directly in front of my exit on 23rd Street. I learned how to sweep my Metrocard without making the stupid reader say Please swipe again.
I learned that lunch, which I had once believed to be an inalienable right, was eaten at one’s desk. Occasionally people would pop out en masse to frequent fast-casual chains or food trucks, but more often than not meals were assembled from the kitchen’s inexhaustible supplies.
I learned how to differentiate between the types I saw in the elevator at work. The finance people wore suits, the general news pencil skirts and khakis, the women’s magazine sundresses or jeans. Tanya was right—no one took sports that seriously, and while they’d smile at us in the elevator they didn’t seem to believe we had real news to impart. It was aggravating. I hoped we schooled them all in the company softball league.
If that was still a thing. Did companies actually have softball leagues?
But I’d also learned that just as lunches weren’t an inalienable right, neither were weekends off. Which was why it was once more Sunday, and I was seated at a rough wooden table deep in Brooklyn.
For the sixth game, the Leopards were off playing Cleveland and I joined the guys at a dive bar they’d claimed as their own. Carlos opened his arms as though to embrace the entire bar when I entered. “Welcome to Waxy’s. ”
Waxy’s was a long, narrow dive bar with three TVs, a bartender with a menacing air and a handwritten sign that said CASH ONLY. Pendants celebrating half of New York sports teams hung above the bar.
“Hey, Ray. ” Carlos grinned widely at the barkeep, who did not reciprocate. “Four PBRs. ”
Keeping it classy.
Carlos brought the drinks over to our table, narrowly avoiding disaster. He pushed them over to me, Jin and Mduduzi.
The game streamed on all three screens, and everyone inside focused on the game. The guys and I all brought our computers, but Jin and I both took notes by hand. We were the favorites for the evening, but by halftime it was still 17-0, Cleveland in the lead. Carter had recovered from last week, but he threw three interceptions. When the cameras panned over faces, they were set and slightly depressed. Coach Paglio screamed so much we could see the spittle flying from his mouth.
Mduduzi gloomily drained his pint. “I have the worst luck in the world. ”
I turned to smile slightly without looking away from the screen. “Hm?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t start watching American football until I came to the States for college. My school’s team lost every game. I must be a glutton for punishment. ”
I laughed. “To be fair, they’re usually really on top of it. ”
“It makes it even worse when they lose. I feel like they’re stabbing me in the gut. That’s what my recap’s going to be. ‘Stabbed in Gut. Repeatedly. ’”
“Maybe it will turn around,” I said hopefully. “Remember last year when they played Miami? They were at 22-0 at halftime, and the Leopards still turned it around and won. ”
“Yeah. ” He sighed, clearly not holding out much hope. “Maybe. ”
Carlos came back with more beers to assuage the sadness, and apparently decided we might as well talk if we weren’t going to win. “So how’d you get into football, Tamar?”
I shrugged. “I was in the school newspaper in high school. And in marching band, which meant I went to every single football game. I also paid attention. . . It seemed pretty natural to write about it. ”
The game did not turn around. Instead it fell apart. Jin didn’t even want to look in the end. I was pretty sure he was one beer away from cowering in the corner with his arms over his head.
Part of my heart hurt, but the rest of me was having a really good time.
When the Browns decided to go for it on the fourth down, everyone in the bar went dead silent, except for Jin, who sort of whispered, “No, no, no. ”
They had two running backs and one wide receiver on the field. My brain went into overtime trying to decide how they were going to run it. A sneak? A handoff?
A handoff. Their quarterback passed it to one of the running backs, but Abe was there. He forced a fumble. When the limbs settled, he had the ball.
Waxy’s erupted in cheers.
The Leopards still lost that game, but at least we had something we could be proud of.
Though it also left Abe with a concussion.
* * *
That Monday, at the pitch meeting, I volunteered my first idea. “I was thinking of doing a feature piece on concussions and helmet regulations. ”
Every head at the table turned toward me.
I’d already felt conspicuous, offering an idea, but now I started to sweat. “What?”
Tanya pushed her chair away from the table. “I need a drink. ” She walked out.
Carlos smiled uneasily at me. “We don’t really do concussion stories. ”
I blinked. “We don’t?”
“It’s tricky. We have to maintain a. . . delicate balance. ”
“It’s not that tricky,” Mduduzi said. “We report on concussions, and the helmet manufacturers pull their ads from Sports Today. It’s worth mentioning that their parent company would actually pull all their ads from all the Today Media platforms. ”
“Wait, so. . . ” I tried to sort it out. “Tanya said she wanted us to report hard news, not go along with whatever’s best for the team. But doesn’t this fall in that boat?”
“Yeah,” Carlos said, still clearly uncomfortable, “but there are still some lines we don’t cross. ”
“How is that a line? Concussions seem like a pretty standard topic in the NFL right now. We’re just supposed to. . . not mention the correlation?”
“We mention it. We report on it. We sum up other articles and reports. But we don’t do feature pieces specifically targeted at helmet manufacturers until we have cold hard evidence, and we don’t have that yet. ”
I frowned. “Because the stupid manufacturers will pull their ads from Sports Today?”
Carlos smiled grimly. “Because the stupid manufacturers at Loft Athletics are owned by Kravenberg, Inc. , which buys a large percent of the ad revenue in all six of the Today Media’s different platforms. ”