Page 1 of Tempted By the Safety

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Spencer

Strong safety is the last line of defense: you see the whole field, read the play before it develops, and when everybody in front of you blows their assignment, you clean it up.

I’ve played eight seasons in the league, and somewhere around season three it became a reflex.

“You missed the packaging supplier meeting,” Amanda says.

She’s got her glasses pushed up into her salt-and-pepper pixie cut, which is what she does when she wants me to see her whole face while she takes me apart. As my longtime agent, she knows exactly where all my buttons are and in which order to push them.

“I rescheduled it.”

“You missed the reschedule.”

I cut into the halibut, forty dollars for a piece of fish the size of a coaster. I know Amanda didn’t pick this restaurant for the food. It’s just that a place this expensive runs half empty at lunch, which means no crowds.

“Third double-booking this month.” She doesn’t even check her phone for that one, which means she’s been keeping count in her head. “And I want to talk about your emails.”

“What’s wrong with my emails?”

“Spencer, the co-packer asked you a yes-or-no question about the production timeline. You wrote back, ‘Fine. S.’ They read it as you pulling out of the deal, and I spent Tuesday convincing them you weren’t.”

“I saidfine. Fine meansyes.”

“To you. To anyone who doesn’t know you, it reads like a threat.”

Across the room, our waiter is refilling water glasses at a table of four. He’s young, twenty-three or twenty-four, curly brown hair, lean, and he moves through the dining room the way good slot receivers move through zone coverage: never still, never rushed, always ending up exactly where the play needs him. He tops off the last glass, says something I can’t hear, and the whole table laughs.

“It’s the offseason,” Amanda is saying. “Which would be great if you were actually taking one. But you keep training full timeandyou’re launching a nutrition company. You’ve got investor calls, a co-packer, a brand consultant you keep ghosting, and a calendar that’s trying to kill you. You need an assistant.”

“No.”

“Someone to handle the calendar. Keep you out of meetings you don’t need to be in. Run the errands you keep doing yourself at eleven at night because it’s the only slot left.”

“An assistant is one more person to manage. It’s not less work. It’s the same work with a middleman.”

“You know what’s fascinating?” She picks up her wine. “I’ve represented you for nine years and I have never once worried about your work ethic. What I worry about is that you think being tired is an accomplishment.”

I don’t answer that, because I’ve learned that silence ends these conversations faster than talking does. Talking gives her material. Silence gives her nothing to counter, and Amanda hates having nothing to argue against more than she hates losing. It’s an effective tactic, and I’m a big believer in running the play that works.

She narrows her eyes at me because she knows exactly what I’m doing, and I look past her shoulder because the waiter is doing something again.

There’s a kid at a table by the window, around six or seven, kicking the table leg while three generations of his family discuss the dessert menu. The waiter has dropped into a crouch next to the kid’s chair, eye level with him, holding the dessert menu and walking him through it. I catch fragments of their discussion: tart, pie, something about crust ratios. The kid stops kicking the table and leans in, invested in whatever the difference between a tart and a pie turns out to be. The waiter is explaining it like this is the most important question he’ll be asked all week.

“Are you listening to me?” Amanda says.

“Always.”

“You need someone whose job is making sure Spencer Rhodes’ life doesn’t collapse under the weight of Spencer Rhodes. That’s it. That’s the pitch. Calendar, meetings, errands. You keep training, you keep building the company, and somebody competent catches everything you keep dropping.”

“I don’t drop things.”

“You dropped the supplier meeting. And the reschedule. You’re one man, Spence,” she adds gently.

The waiter passes behind her carrying a tray, and I finally catch the name on his tag: Milo.

There’s another waiter two tables over, petite, with four plates stacked up her arm and two more waiting on the table she’s clearing, doing that panicked math when there are more plates than arms. Milo doesn’t say anything to her, just slides in and takes the two extras onto his own tray, on top of everything he’s already carrying. She exhales, and he’s already gone, no credit, no discussion.