My Team Cut Me on Stage for a Younger Star, So I Took Last Place to the Final novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Phoenix
Joel hears the Phoenix entry jump on his fourth step and the Owls win their first match of the season, then Moberly hands the widow four million dollars in an envelope.
"We're going to put the Reseda hospice out of its misery," the Phoenix coach said into the press table microphone.
The reporters laughed.
He was forty-four, with a headset around his neck and Toni Kasten's word in his mouth.
The Circuit's studio in Burbank held about three hundred people, and on Saturday it was full.
The Owls sat in a row on the stage in brown and cream jerseys.
The widow sat in the front row with her knitting and her owl brooch.
I stood behind my players with a coach's headset over my good ear.
In a real match, I could talk only in the thirty seconds between rounds.
I had two timeouts a map.
Phoenix took the first map before I learned anything worth saying.
Their entry player, the one who goes through the door first, kept coming around corners into Bodie's face.
Bodie died to him four times.
At three rounds to six, Phoenix pushed the vault on B and Mac missed a shot she never misses.
That made it seven rounds to three, Phoenix.
"Bodie," I said. "Give me your ears this map."
My headset could carry one player's game sound at a time.
I picked Bodie's, because he was the one dying.
In the second map, I closed my eyes on the stage in front of three hundred people.
Somebody in the seats yelled, "Wake up, grandpa!"
I listened to the Phoenix entry coming down the hall to Bodie's corner.
He took three steps, and on the fourth, he jumped.
It was a little hop around the corner, so his head came out higher than you'd aim.
The landing slapped on the tile.
The next round he did it again.
Three steps, a jump on the fourth, and the slap.
At four rounds to five, I called my first timeout.
The stage screens went to the Owls logo, and the five of them turned around to me.
"Bodie, their entry jumps around every corner on his fourth step," I said. "Count his boots."
"Copy," Bodie said.
"Don't aim at the doorway. Aim a foot above it."
"Above?"
"He'll be in the air."
Mac was looking at me with a sunflower seed in her teeth.
"And if he doesn't jump?" she asked.
"Then I'm wrong, and you can drive me to El Segundo yourself."
Bodie aimed a foot above the corner.
One step, two steps, three, and the Phoenix entry jumped into Bodie's crosshair and died in the air.
The Texan pushed his shield into the gap he left.
The studio made a noise I hadn't heard for the Owls all season.
We took that map seven rounds to five.
Phoenix's coach called a timeout in the third map and yelled at his entry so loud we heard it through the glass.
It didn't matter.
You can't fix a habit in thirty seconds.
The third map went to six all, and round thirteen decided everything.
Phoenix came at B with all five.
Their entry stepped three times and jumped.
Bodie hit him in the air, and the four behind him came through a door with nobody in front.
Mac was on the balcony above that door.
She killed two, the night manager's drone kept the Texan standing, and the Canadian took the last one and apologized.
That made it seven rounds to six.
We won the match two maps to one.
It was the Valley Owls' first win of the season.
Bodie jumped out of his chair and hit his head on the monitor arm.
The widow put her knitting down and clapped with her hands over her head.
Mac turned around in her chair and looked at me for a long second.
"Okay," she said.
The Phoenix coach shook my hand at the end of the stage without looking at my face.
At the press table afterward, a reporter asked him how it felt to lose to a hospice.
He took the headset off his neck and walked out without answering.
A league runner took my elbow and steered me to the studio desk.
Toni Kasten was waiting under the lights with her partner, a big gray-haired man with a voice.
Before the camera light went red, she tapped the desk twice with two fingers.
"Joel Strickler," she said. "On Monday I called your team a hospice."
"I heard."
"Is a hospice allowed one good day?"
"You can call us anything you want," I said. "Just call us on Saturdays."
Her partner laughed, and Toni didn't.
She looked at me the way Mac had looked at me in the kitchen.
"How did your eighteen-year-old know to aim above the door?" she asked.
"He counted."
"Counted what?"
"That's the job, Toni. Ask Phoenix."
She held my eyes for one more second, and the corner of her mouth went up.
"The hospice wins one," she said to the camera. "We'll see if it lives till Saturday."
When the light went off, I saw the scar on the back of her right hand.
It was a small burn, a pale line across the knuckles.
She saw me looking.
"Curling iron," she said. "I was sixteen."
Then she turned to her partner.
The widow was standing beside her old Buick with her knitting bag.
Glenn Moberly was standing beside her.
He was in a gold Crown pin and a white golf shirt, with a tan.
He was holding out a long white envelope, and he was smiling at her the way he'd smiled at me on stage.
I was close enough to hear him.
"Four million," Moberly said. "But only if you sign before the Seattle match."
The widow took the envelope.
She put it in her knitting bag beside the yarn and didn't say no.
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