Rough Trade

and braced ourselves for the onslaught of mourners. Instead, we found ourselves barricaded in Beau’s house, under siege by the press, and abandoned by most of the people that Chrissy and Jeff had once counted as friends. Under other circumstances it might have been funny. What if you threw a wake and nobody came? But it was all too clear that the news that Jeff might move the team had set into motion the complex phenomenon of shunning.
    It was interesting to see who did show up. The Bennatos came, either out of a sense of loyalty to Beau or because the coach knew full well that the Monarchs were the only team in the NFL that would have him. The others who came were largely out-of-towners, league officials, sports luminaries, and broadcast executives who’d made the trip from places like New York and Los Angeles and were for the most part oblivious to the exigencies of what was going on in a place like Milwaukee.
    Of course, the other owners came, not just to pay their respects, but to welcome the newest member to their select fraternity. Taken together they were a strangely geriatric group sporting, in several notable cases, surprisingly bad toupees. There was no question they were men for whom dollars now made do for testosterone, a fact that their female companions seemed to bear out. I thought of the owners’ meetings that were held several times a year and felt a sudden pang of sympathy for Chrissy.
    As at the cemetery, the team was there to the man, whether out of loyalty to the franchise, the coach, or merely to do what they could to protect their highly paid jobs was hard to say. Seeing them in Beau’s living room made me realize that television does not do justice to football players. To really appreciate what sets them apart you need to stand next to them. Even after years with Stephen Azorini, who was six foot five, I found some of the players, especially the offensive linemen, nothing short of astonishing. Standing together near the bar, they seemed almost like a portrait of hugeness in repose—meaty arms that hung from their impossibly broad shoulders like thick-jointed clubs, hands that looked like they could crush coconuts as easily as peanut shells, necks like tree stumps. Collectively they seemed to evoke as many thoughts about the evolution of the species as they did about the evolution of football.
    Suddenly the group shifted and Jake Palmer caught my eye. He was dressed in what looked like a Brooks Brothers suit on steroids, and he had a pair of delicate wire-rimmed glasses on his nose that lent him the air of the world’s largest poet. At the sight of me his face broke into a broad, gap-toothed grin and he excused himself from his teammates to come over and talk to me. He shook my hand, and for an instant it seemed to disappear up to the elbow. I was relieved to discover that today he smelled of aftershave, not whiskey, but I was astonished to find that if anything he seemed even bigger sober than he had drunk.
    “I just wanted to say thank you for the other night,” he said. “You have to tell me what I can do to pay you back for your hospitality and all—you know, tickets, autographs, anything. You just name it.”
    “How about you just promise to stay out of The Baton for a while,” I suggested.
    “Are you kidding?” he demanded with a chuckle that seemed to originate deep within his three-hundred-pound frame and slowly rumble to the surface. “There’s no way I’m ever going back to that nasty-assed place again!”
    “Good. Then you’ve learned your lesson.”
    “I don’t know about that, but you had better believe that those special-team assholes that brought me there have learned a lesson or two, too,” he declared ominously. “But, hey, while we’re talking, can I ask you something?”
    “Sure.”
    “Jeff Rendell said that you’re some kind of big hotshot lawyer.”
    “Something like that.”
    “So then what I want to know is what the hell are you doin’ living in a place like the one I woke up at?”
    “What? You don’t like my apartment?” I asked, in mock offense.
    “I didn’t say that,” he replied quickly. “It’s just not the kind of crib I’d expect for some high-priced legal talent.”
    “The apartment belongs to my roommate, who’s doing a surgical residency. It’s cheap and it’s convenient to the hospital.”
    “So, you’re dating a doctor, huh?” He grinned approvingly.
    “No.” I laughed. “You met my roommate the other