Raging Fires by Candace Camp
Chapter Four
The next day was as bad as Jake had expected. St. Cat’s was filled, and the mass went on forever, and there was that casket sitting there in front of him the whole time. Last night Jake had still felt somehow, deep down, that Pops might walk into the room at any moment, that Jake would hear that belly laugh or Pops throwing his crazy curses at the Suns game on TV. It was pretty hard to hold onto that delusion when you had that big steel gray box right in front of your face.
But he’d gotten through it and through the wake. He’d hugged all Gran’s old friends and let them cry over him and tell him Pops was in a better place. He’d talked football with all the men at the wake and hadn’t drunk himself into oblivion. He’d even managed to avoid being anywhere close to Kelli the whole time. Gran had insisted on Kelli sitting with the family, but he’d had Gran and his mother and Dr. Bob between them. He’d hung back at the cemetery to make sure there were people between them again. And at the wake, she’d spent most of her time in the kitchen of the bar, running everything. They hadn’t had to speak to each other. Perversely, it annoyed him a bit that she hadn’t even tried to say hello.
The rest of the weekend was easier. Mom was there to take up Gran’s attention. Jake bit the bullet and played a round of golf with Dr. Bob, so he felt justified spending the rest of his time working out and watching some of the Pumas’ games from last year. It was pretty clear that aside from injury or late game garbage time, there wasn’t any likelihood of Jake getting to play. But that was okay. This year wasn’t about playing time. This year was about proving himself.
Monday morning he set out thirty minutes early for the Pumas’ complex. He knew his undeserved reputation for being chronically late—well, maybe some of it was deserved—and he wanted to make it clear from the beginning that he had changed.
Jake wouldn’t have admitted it, but he was glad Asa had offered to meet him there and introduce him to the head of Player Personnel. He’d been through the routine several times before, but it still put a few butterflies in his stomach to meet a new team. He felt like the new kid in school.
Jake found Asa in the lobby, flirting with the pretty receptionist, and they went up the elevators and emerged in a smaller lobby with a much older receptionist with glasses stuck in her short white hair. She could have been a hundred and four, easy, and even her glasses looked like they’d been made before Jake had been born. But Asa gave her the same flirty grin he’d used downstairs.
“Hey, Estelle, I’m bringing in the new guy to meet Howard.”
“Howard’s not in yet. You’ll have to wait for him.” She gestured toward the grouping of sofa and chairs a few feet from her desk.
“What’s this guy like?” Jake asked Asa as the two of them sat down.
“Howard’s okay—you know, for a management guy. He’s always looking for an angle, some way you can benefit the team, but he’s not a hard-ass or anything.” Jake nodded, and they fell silent for a moment. Then Asa asked, “How are you doing?”
“Okay. You know.” Jake shrugged. “We’ve just been keeping going. Gran bugged me into meeting her at the lawyer’s office later this morning about the will, so I have to do that when I get through here. And pretty soon I have to go back home and get my stuff. I’m supposed to report next week. The contract’s signed; we’re just waiting on the physical.”
“You’re okay there, right? Your knee’s good?” Before Jake could answer, Asa glanced down the hall and said, “There he is.” He nodded at the man hurrying toward them.
Jake and Asa stood up. The man who approached them was short and a little thick around the middle. He was pretty nondescript, except for the big purse he carried in one hand and a bright pink bag hanging from the other shoulder. Jake didn’t know the name of the purse, but he recognized it as expensive because there were little initials stamped all over it. The lurid pink bag had the words Sweetie Pie emblazoned in white letters on the side.
As he drew closer, Jake could see that the front of the purse was actually black mesh, and there was a little white dog lying down inside, watching the world with black button eyes. Okay, so the designer purse was a dog carrier; that wasn’t quite as strange. The dog jumped to its feet, its eyes laser focused on Jake and it lunged into the net, barking ferociously. Or, at least, it would have been ferocious if it hadn’t been high-pitched squeaks. As it was, it was just annoying.
“Sorry,” Howard said and set the carrier down on the floor, where the dog continued to yap in a continuous burst of sound, like a tiny jackhammer. The holder vibrated as the animal ran around inside it like a maniac. Howard looked down at the bag moving incrementally across the floor at their feet. “Shut up, Princess,” he said in a voice that showed no expectation of being obeyed and turned his attention back to Jake and Asa.
“Howard, I want you to meet Jake Riley,” Asa raised his voice above the noise of the dog.
“Howard Perry,” the other man said, reaching out to shake Jake’s hand. “Sorry,” he said again. “I’m running late. I had to go back home because I forgot Princess Fleek’s Sweetie Pie lunch bag.”
“Lunch bag?” That seemed like a better thing to ask about than the name. Princess Fleek?
“Yeah. It’s got her individually-formulated, preservative-free, Omega 3 enriched, high protein, low carb, made from organic grass-fed New Zealand beef dog food.” Howard rummaged around in the bag that wasn’t barking and shimmying across the floor. “Also her glucosamine chews, her vitamins, her morning snack, her afternoon snack, her probiotic supplement, her allergy pill and the pill pockets for the last two, cause if you don’t hide them in something, she’ll spit the slimy things right back out on your shoes.”
Jake’s lips quivered, but he kept them firmly pressed together. Asa managed to say sympathetically, “Sounds like she’s pretty sick.”
“Nah, the little psycho’s twice as healthy as I am. Jumps around like a goddamn pogo stick.’
“Then why…” Jake knew it was a mistake to ask, but he couldn’t resist the impulse.
“Oh, I didn’t turn around for her food. I’d just have thrown her a burger. What I went back for were the Sweet Dreams Calming Hemp Chews.” He held up the bottle. “Not that it works for longer than an hour. I gotta give her at least six of the things a day. Sometimes I think it might work better if I was the one who took them. But it’s better than the doggie Xanax we used to give her. And for back-up, there are the chamomile chewables, which don’t do anything, but at least she shuts up for half a minute while she eats them.”
Howard reached down and unfastened the mesh. The tiny ball of fluff shot out of the carrier and launched herself at Jake’s leg, barking so fast and so shrilly it sounded like feedback from a mic. She hit Jake’s thigh—damn, she really could jump—and bounced off him, tumbling to the floor.
“I’m sorry.” Jake reached down to help her, but Princess was already up and launching herself at him again.
“Don’t worry,” Howard told him. “I’d say she’s made out of rubber except she doesn’t weigh enough. She’s always bouncing off everything like a pinball.”
Undeterred by repeated failures, Princess continued her assault on Jake’s leg. Despite Howard’s words, this scene didn’t seem to Jake like the best way to impress your new head of player personnel. When she leaped at him next time, Jake slid back a step to avoid the collision, but that turned out to be the wrong move. Princess went sailing past him through the air and landed on a decorative table. The dog slid across the polished surface and ran into a slender glass vase. The vase fell over, and Princess careened sideways onto the sofa, where she hit the cushion and bounced off, landing upright on the floor on all four feet.
“Wow. Nailed it,” Asa said. “I’d give that a 9.8, Princess.”
Jake meanwhile lunged for the vase that was rolling off the edge of the table and caught it before it reached the ground, but the tulips and water splattered all over the floor. Jake stood for a moment gazing down at the mess, then set the vase carefully back onto the table. He was glad the contract had already been signed. And, looking on the bright side, he’d had an opportunity to demonstrate his fast reflexes. Jake turned toward Howard, who looked completely unsurprised by the whole incident. Maybe stuff like this happened around here all the time.
“Estelle!” Howard called. “Come get this dog.”
The receptionist, who’d been sitting watching the show, heaved a sigh and got up from her desk. Estelle was spry for a hundred and four and she easily scooped up the wriggling Princess, saying in a resigned tone, “I’ll call maintenance.”
Things moved more normally after that. Asa took off, and Perry led Jake down the hall for the personal ‘getting to know you’ talk. Howard was the first one Jake had ever seen who had a typed list of questions he went through, raising his head after reading each question and smiling to give it that conversational touch.
Since they were pretty much the same questions everyone asked in these situations—So, Jake, I see you’re from right here in Phoenix.” “So, Jake, what are your hobbies?”—Jake didn’t have any problem answering. Then Howard whisked him down to the basement— “Welcome to the dungeon, ha ha,”—to meet the doctors.
There he was poked and prodded and asked questions about every injury he’d ever had since first grade and had to run on the treadmill with wires hooked up to him before he was shuttled off to the X-ray room to have multiple pictures taken of his knees—and his shoulders, elbow, wrists and just about every other bone in his body. Jake was fairly sure that his ultimate demise was going to be from radiation poisoning.
When they finally ran out of tortures, he was allowed to dress and leave. He pulled out his cell phone to get directions to the lawyer’s office and the time popped up first. And, oh, crap, he was late. Again. Jake broke into a jog.
He reached Mr. Morton’s office in fifteen minutes and without getting stopped for speeding, which he thought was pretty impressive. And he wasn’t even thirty minutes late. Besides, they didn’t really need him there to begin with.
Morton’s secretary popped up and whisked him down the hall to a conference room. Jake stepped inside to find an unknown man and three women gazing at him with varying degrees of disapproval on their faces. His mom and Gran he expected. But what the hell was Kelli doing here?