Page 75 of On the Ropes
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I pulled it out. Harry was calling. I silenced it and tossed it on the table.
“Was it Harry?”
I nodded, avoided looking directly at him. Of everyone’s mixed reactions at family dinner when I told them about becoming a commentator, Rowan’s had been cagey. And he wasn’t that kind of guy.
“We talked yesterday but he’s been calling nonstop. Checking in.”
“Trying to convince you,” Rowan said.
I exhaled through my nose. “Harry set a meeting with one of the show producers five days from now uptown at a restaurant. He’s flying through Philly for work and said he wanted to meet me in person.”
“That’s a promising sign if you’re gonna take it.”
I lifted a shoulder. “It could be an honest-to-god comeback for me, Rowan. A way to fix my reputation.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your reputation,” he said firmly. “People’s opinions about the decision you made for your own health aren’t worth a sack of old shit.”
I reluctantly looked back up at him. “I know. But what the hell else am I doing?”
As soon as the words were out, I wanted to snatch them back. They were embarrassing.
But Rowan’s reaction was to beam at me like he had life-changing news. “I wanted to wait a few more weeks, especially since you’ve got a lot going on, but…I’ve been talking with my director. I think you’d be a good fit here.” He tapped the top of one of the boxes filled with produce. “I want to hire you to run the senior food program.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack, big guy.”
I coughed into my fist. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”
Rowan leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t need to tell you why getting food to these folks is so important. You and I see it every day. But this program can’t be the ugly stepkid of everything we do at the rec center. We need to hire a paid person to run it, smooth out the logistics, expand it. I think it could be you.”
I swallowed hard, thinking about Eddie. “What do I know about running a food program? I’m a boxer.”
He held out his hand, ticking off fingers. “Would you say sparring with someone in the ring is stressful?”
“Uh…yeah,” I said sardonically.
“Have you had to manage your time, going to early practices and traveling and touring and shit?”
I nodded but didn’t see his point.
“Can you or can you not think on your feet?”
“That’s literally what a boxer does, but why would that—”
“Dean,” he said, interrupting me. “You’ve spent the past three years fixing up leaky pipes for people like Edna Kozlowski. You know our neighbors. You talk to ’em. They trust you enough to let you into their houses. Most importantly, into their kitchens.”
I jiggled my knee up and down. “Edna didn’t have any food in her fridge when I fixed it for her.”
His face softened. “That’s what I’m saying. She deserves to have a full fridge, yeah? That’s the job I think you could do. And do well. Plus, you and I would get to work together at a place that made us who we are. I know its bad timing, coming to you with a chance to work here when you’ve got your agent coming to you with a huge opportunity.” Rowan tore open a bag of carrots and began organizing them into boxes. “But I don’t want you to think there isn’t a place for you here. Because there is.”
I was quiet. It was a lot of information to process. Rowan knew me well enough to let me sit there and figure it out. I shifted my weight in the chair and stretched my right leg out, feeling an ache in my lower back. Apparently having passionate sex in the back seat of a truck wasn’t that great for ex-athletes who’d taken one too many shots to the kidneys.
I kept turning one question around and around in my mind but wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. “Would you take a commentator gig if it was offered to you now?”
“No,” he said.
The uncharacteristic certainty in his voice had me straightening up in the chair.
“I get the impulse,” he continued. “And I’ll be a baseball fan till the day I die. But my team owners made it clear the only thing that mattered was wins. Our bodies, our health, none of that registered for them. I know that was true for you too.”
I stared down at my swollen knuckles. “You’re not wrong.”
“This job at the rec center has plenty of its own bullshit, like all jobs. But when I show up to work, the priority is people. Our neighbors. No one’s making money off whether my arm’s having a good day or a bad day. It’s about looking out for each other. Like what you and Tabitha are doing with the vacant lot.”
Rowan had a point, and it was a smart one. If I sat with the truth that had been bothering me since that first call, I’d pick up the phone and tell Harry to fuck right off. The confidence I’d felt with Tabitha last night hadn’t come from tugging on a pair of boxing gloves. It’d come from moving my body for joy and pleasure, without the burden of overanalyzing everything.
Maybe I didn’t have to be Dean the Machine anymore. Or have a comeback I didn’t want. Around Tabitha, I was starting to feel like myself again.
I just had to figure out how to hold on to that feeling when she packed up her bags and left.
