Page 66 of Full Contact

She read the first page. It said Leah received independent final approval over everything involving Trier: media requests, interview availability, and the final cuts of the Peaches series. Carla would handle budgets, sponsorships, and anything Leah escalated. I would keep the Peaches shoots.

“Walk me through a disagreement,” she said. “Leah kills a cut you like. Then what?”

“It’s decided.”

“You won’t appeal to me?”

“Leah can escalate to you if she wants a second opinion. I can’t. If I could overrule her by walking down the hall, the structure’s only decorative.”

She made a small checkmark in the margin. “You wrote yourself out of your own chain of command.”

“For one player, yes.”

She looked at me. “You know what the first comparison is going to be, right?”

“Rafe and Max.”

“A year ago this department manufactured a relationship, and it blew up on national television. Now we have a PR director dating a player. How do you plan to answer those who think it’s fake?”

I slid the two-sentence statement across the desk.

“Trier’s approved it,” I said. “It goes out only if someone asks. We’re not announcing anything.”

“And if someone asks about the cat series? Whether it was preferential treatment?”

“I refer that question to you or Leah, with this structure already in writing and dated before anyone asked.”

“I have one note,” Carla said. “If we ever have to explain this arrangement publicly, it comes from me, not from you.”

“Agreed.” I wrote that on my copy.

“Then I’m comfortable.” She reached for her phone. “Let’s get Leah in here. No point approving a structure she hasn’t seen.”

Carla dialed, asked Leah to come down, and hung up. Then she folded her hands on the desk.

“Mark. Congratulations. He’s a good one, backbone of the team type.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Leah read the page about her new responsibilities before she looked at me.

“All right,” she said. “First question. Who decides what counts as involving Trier?”

“If it touches him, it’s yours,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked. Who decides whether it touches him?” She set the pages on her knee. “Say a request comes in for a feature on veteran defensemen. His name’s third on a list of five. Does that come to me, or do you read it first and decide it’s really about the other four?”

“Everything routes to you directly,” I said. “You decide what involves him. Not me.”

***

At ten I called Trier. He answered before the first ring finished.

“How’d it go?”

“Approved. Carla took it without a fight.”

“Good.”