Rough Trade

and named Katharine in my honor, is deaf—undeniably grown-up problems for two girls who were once in too big a hurry to grow up.
    Now this.
    There are few businesses as public and as personal as an NFL franchise. Most people have no idea who runs Ford or General Motors, but a surprising number can tick off the ' names of the men who own the nation’s football teams. When Chrissy married Jeff Rendell, she knew that she was not only marrying the Monarchs’ heir apparent, but stepping into the public eye, as well. In Milwaukee the Rendells have always been treated as a kind of minor royalty. And if she occasionally missed the urban electricity of Chicago or felt suffocated by people’s rigid expectations for her in her new hometown, she had nonetheless always been careful about holding up her end of the bargain.
    No one knows where their life will lead them, but surely the Monarchs’ current problems were more than Chrissy or anyone else had signed on for. Through a combination of hubris and circumstance, risk and miscalculation, Beau Rendell had brought his family to the cusp of disaster. While I’m sure that Chrissy was prepared to remain at her husband’s side come what may, I was equally determined to steer them from the precipice—if I could only figure out away.
     
    A hundred years ago they would have hidden away their daughters when Jack McWhorter rode into town. Now, when he shows up in his private jet they practically offer their daughters up to him, debutantes and brewery princesses, all hoping to snag Milwaukee’s most eligible bachelor. Even though I am inherently suspicious of blatantly handsome men, I must confess that when he walked into the room, I had to suppress the fleeting impulse to if not exactly hurl myself at his feet, then at least to bat my eyelashes.
    Stray raindrops glistened among the strands of his jet-black hair, which he wore slicked back, no doubt something he’d picked up in L.A. along with his tan. His shirt was custom made and in a carefully chosen shade of blue that matched his eyes, which were hooded, hard, and glittered with self-assurance.
    Like so much of the money in Milwaukee, Jack McWhorter’s came from beer. His family owned a food service and concession company that supplied the stadiums and arenas in a half a dozen cities with not just popcorn and hot dogs, but the small river of brew the fans washed them down with. Jack was in charge of the company’s West Coast operations and as such divided his time between Milwaukee and Los Angeles. However, it was his California connections that brought him to Beau Rendell’s dining room today.
    Jack had come on behalf of the Greater Los Angeles Stadium Commission, a quasi-government agency whose mission was to bring professional football back to the City of Angels. He was an interesting choice of emissary. Not only had his family’s company long held the concession contract at Monarchs Stadium, but he was a contemporary of Jeff’s. As I sat there about to watch him make his pitch,
    I couldn’t help but wonder whether his masters in Los Angeles assumed that with Beau beaten and near ruin, the reins of the Monarchs organization had already been passed to Jeff. If so, I figured they still had a thing or two to learn about Beau Rendell.
    McWhorter began by telling us what we already knew. With the ignominious departure of both the Rams and the Raiders, Los Angeles had become a National Football League city without an NFL team—a situation that the municipal movers and shakers were prepared to pay handsomely to correct.
    “Believe me, no one wants to see the Monarchs leave Milwaukee,” Jack confided. “This is a great town, a football town. I should know. I grew up here. But things change. There are the realities to consider. It used to be that all that you needed for a successful franchise was fan support. Market size. Then it was television revenues. Now it’s stadium economics. Before free agency all you had to do was fill the seats, but nowadays less than thirty percent of a team’s revenue comes from ticket sales. Today you need revenue from parking, concessions, season ticket licenses, and skyboxes just to make ends meet.”
    One look at Beau Russell was all it took to see that Jack was already pedaling uphill. The Monarchs’ owner did not look like he was enjoying being lectured to by a man whose knowledge of football was limited to how many hot dogs he could expect to sell at the game. Harald Feiss wasn’t