Chapter 66: Recruit Hostesses

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The Beacham was one of Orlando’s loudest clubs in the 1990s, a converted theater with a large shaking dance floor and enough reputation to draw tourists every year.

Nolan sat in a second-floor booth after Pat brought him through the back entrance.

Pat Barrett sat across from him, no longer in team gear. He had changed into something sharper and had a young woman on each side of him.

"Relax," Pat shouted over the music. "Enjoy the last wild stretch of high school."

Colored lights cut through the dim air and scattered across the booth, turning faces red, blue, green, then gone.

Nolan, eighteen himself, looked at the two college women seated to his right. Both were adults. One studied nursing. The other studied art and design. Both were Tennessee cheerleaders and both had some connection to the school’s recruit-hostess program.

Orange Pride had around fifty members. Officially, they helped recruit players.

"Hypothetically," Nolan asked the nearest woman, "if Pat Barrett committed to Tennessee, what would you get out of it?"

She turned toward him. Her lipstick was bright red and her makeup pale under the club lights.

"Orange Pride is a part-time campus program," she said. "We get some pay, good seats for games, recommendations, things like that."

"Only that?"

She looked surprised.

"What else should there be? It is a chance to meet top players before everyone else. If you build a relationship early, maybe it lasts. Maybe you date. Maybe it becomes something real. It helps the school too. This is one of the few ways we can contribute to the team."

She added, almost defensively, "I went through three interviews for this. Dozens of women wanted a spot."

"Football is real money on a college campus," Pat said, leaning into the conversation. "Tennessee’s recruiting staff is talking to my family about the serious part. These women handle the player."

His mind went back to the locker room.

"You see the lump on Tommy Fraser’s thigh? He’s overdoing it. If he keeps going, he may burn himself out before the NFL draft. He is choosing to empty everything he has in college."

Pat grinned and pulled both women closer.

"Me? I am going to the NFL, winning rings, making the most money, entering the Hall of Fame, and dancing with the prettiest women alive."

Young confidence poured off him like heat.

The night loosened after that. Nolan suggested a few party games to warm the booth. Pat immediately understood what Nolan was doing and began loudly selling Nolan’s performance from the afternoon.

In Pat’s version, Nolan’s already impressive test results became almost supernatural.

"Honestly," Pat said, half joking and half not, "in another year, Nolan will pass me."

The women had assumed Nolan was Pat’s younger brother or some hanger-on. Hearing that changed the way they looked at him.

His face and build helped too. Nolan was broader through the chest than Pat and cleaner in the face. Before long, the booth shifted. Nolan sat between the two Tennessee women, and the games became more intimate under the influence of music, alcohol, and attention.

The restroom break that followed stopped being a restroom break.

When they returned, the women were softer with him, touching his arm and laughing closer to his ear.

Pat, under the pressure of alcohol and nerves, lost the confidence he had started with. He pushed too quickly and found himself stalled.

That was the difference between a new driver and an old one.

Nolan smoothed things over anyway. In the end, Pat and his two companions still left in a car together.

"Where are you going tonight?" one of Nolan’s companions asked as he turned away.

"I know a hotel nearby," the other said.

Appetizers had been served, and they wanted dinner.

Nolan shook his head.

"Not tonight."

"Then we should visit you in Los Angeles this summer."

"No problem."

He gave them a number.

It was fake.

He had no intention of keeping contact with either of them. The night ended there.

When Nolan returned to the hotel suite, a figure in a robe lunged at him the moment the door opened.

"Brat," Lisa said. "Do you know what time it is?"

She sniffed once and caught the alcohol first, then the cheap perfume layered under it.

Her hand smacked the back of his head.

Nolan had trained all day. Lisa had expected him back earlier. Waiting was what had made her angry. The perfume merely told her what kind of waiting she had been doing.

She was beginning to understand that Nolan was even worse than she had imagined.

A pure-bred creature of appetite.

Nolan smiled with enough drunken looseness to sell the act. He could pretend innocence. He could also pretend intoxication.

Lisa hit his back again, but the force drained out of it almost immediately.

Some arguments could not be settled by talking.

They used the floor, the chairs, the bed, the coffee table, the carpet, the sink, and the bathroom before the night was done. By the end, Lisa was exhausted, half asleep, and muttering broken words, but her breathing was steady.

Nolan checked the clock.

Five-thirty in the morning.

Before leaving for training, he checked Lisa again. She had barely moved from the position she had fallen asleep in. That kind of stillness came from total exhaustion. Her breathing was steady, at least.

When he returned from training that day, she was still in bed, eyelids heavy, looking as if she had survived an illness.

Nolan went to comfort her.

"I think you almost erased my memory," Lisa mumbled, clinging to him. "Everything hurts."

Then she added, "Next time we need more people. If I keep trying to handle you alone, I am going to die."

Nolan’s body was unreasonable, and his restraint got worse once he stopped holding back. Lisa, after thinking it through, chose the plan most likely to keep her alive.

"What about that girl?" she asked.

"Charlize? Late July."

He wanted her in Los Angeles sooner too, but her mother’s illness had delayed everything. She would likely arrive only a few days before the playoff final.

"God," Lisa muttered. "I was ready to fly her here today."

She covered her face.

"My whole body is sore. At least Susan is here. She has been handling calls for me..." Lisa lowered her hand and looked at him. "What do you think of Susan?"

Nolan did not answer.

"Do not give me that face. I know you. She was working for me before you knew what one plus one was. Her husband died in an accident years ago, and part of her stayed there."

"You do not get to decide for her," Nolan said.

"I am not that awful." Lisa poked him weakly. "I have seen enough to know she is not dead inside. She packed a toy for this trip. Black. Terrifying."

Nolan stared at her.

"She is still young," Lisa said. "I do not want her frozen in the past forever. For my sake, you could help her remember she is alive."

"She will not agree."

Susan was strict, quiet, and conservative in the way she carried herself.

"We do not know that until we try," Lisa said. "I will think of something. You focus on training."

"There is an event tomorrow," Nolan said. "The magazine arranged a tour of some local spots. They want players to bring companions if possible."

He looked at Lisa’s condition and changed his mind.

"Never mind. Rest one more day."

The event was mostly promotion between the magazine and local partners. For Nolan, it was a box to check.

Not long after, his portable cell phone rang.

Coach Thomas was calling to ask about the exact end of the All-Star schedule.

"There is an awards ceremony the night after the game," Nolan said.

"That conflicts. If we calculate the flights, the semifinal will already be underway by the time you get back."

"Can we win if I do not play?"

"With only Rice? Probably not."

"What if I arrive in time?"

"Then we should win."

"Good. Leak that I cannot play because of the All-Star Game, but that I may arrive at the last second."

"Move the number?"

"Exactly."

Weak opponents were best used to bleed bettors who thought they understood the game.

When Nolan hung up, Lisa was propped on one hand, watching him.

"So you are still making money that way?"

"It is the fastest way."

Nolan explained his own rules. Lisa listened and nodded. If he understood the risks, she could live with it.

Her body was in no condition for anything else, and Nolan had no urge to push her. They ended up shoulder to shoulder, watching Pretty Woman, the romantic hit from a few years earlier.

Through Nolan’s future eyes, the movie’s values looked warped. A wealthy businessman and a Hollywood sex worker, packaged into fantasy and sold as love. Audiences had adored it.

Lisa offered industry gossip instead: Julia Roberts’ messy private life, Richard Gere’s marriage to Cindy Crawford nearing collapse, the kind of stories only people inside the business heard in detail.

Her voice faded halfway through.

Nolan turned his head and found her asleep, mouth slightly open, breathing long and slow.

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