After Hours: Midnight Oil / Midnight Madness / Midnight Touch

THE NEXT DAY Troy stood in the baking afternoon heat and listened to Joe Vargas give him the rundown on Pop Warner football. The man’s wedding ring gleamed in the sun, accentuating his wholesomeness and making Troy feel like even more of a drinkin’, fornicatin’ bottom-feeder.

He had been up all night having sex with a woman he needed to betray for his own ends. He was a complete shit-heel. What business did he have trying to be a role model for a group of kids?

Worse, he wanted to see Peggy again in the worst way. And he couldn’t do that. He really, really couldn’t.

“So the secret is,” declared Joe, “you’ve got to find the fine line between tough and supportive. You can’t push them too hard—they’re only eleven years old. It’s a lot more important at this stage that they learn good sportsmanship than that they win the game.”

Troy nodded as if he were absorbing pearls of wisdom. Surely this was just common sense?

The kids on the field were scrimmaging in an enervated formation, wilting in an early burst of summer.

The air was hot, stagnant vapor without a single breeze. It hung over them like a vast, wet cloth, smothering anyone who tried to suck oxygen from it.

Vargas had gone into the politics of the team, specifically what the parents were like and how that affected their children’s attitudes and behavior. Troy tried to focus and retain what he said.

“Bobby Pitkin, now, his dad’s a real problem. Wants his kid to be the star no matter what, even if another kid gets hurt. You gotta watch him and step carefully. On the other hand, Aaron Tate’s parents don’t want him playing football at all—it’s his grandpa who signed him up. The father is a musician and worries about Aaron’s hands….”

By the time the boys were through with their warm-up, Troy had the goods on everyone. He and Vargas took them through some simple running plays together, and then had them play a nine-on-nine game: shirts against skins.

In the middle of it, Bobby Pitkin’s dad showed up, veering erratically in his red SUV, and climbed out to entertain himself by causing trouble. He started yelling instructions and other things from the sidelines, annoying the group of moms who sat in the bleachers.

Joe growled under his breath, “Guy’s a prize jerk. Owns his own construction company and shows up here a lot after having a few Jack Daniels for lunch.”

Troy listened to him for a while, his disgust growing. “I’m not putting up with that guy.”

“Watch it. He’s connected around town and he could cause trouble.”

“I don’t care.” Troy strolled over to the man. “Hi, I hear you’re Bobby’s father.”

The man was clean shaven, dressed in pressed clothes, but sure enough, he stank of whiskey. “Who’re you?”

“Troy Barrington. Used to coach the Jaguars. Now I’ll be coaching this peewee team.”

Pitkin ignored him for a moment, shouting onto the field, “Bobby, you pussy! Knock him down. Which part of the word tackle do you not get?” Then he turned back to Troy. “That’s quite a demotion, buddy. Then again, the way the Jaguars been playin’ for the past two seasons, any peewee team could beat ’em.”

Troy made himself count to ten slowly so he wouldn’t pound the guy’s face into the ground. In the meantime Pitkin exercised some more of his natural charm.

“Run, you little prick!” he roared at Bobby. “Run! By God, you better get your hands on that ball, or I’ll get my hands on you.”

Troy decided that he’d had enough. He began politely, suggesting to Pitkin that it might be counterproductive to call Bobby a “pussy” and that this term was also offending the ladies present.

Frank Pitkin declined the advice, so as the new coach Troy slung an arm around his shoulders and walked him off the field without anyone else knowing for sure that it was by force.

He didn’t harm him in any way, just removed him. Like a true gentleman, he walked Frank to the door of his Toyota 4Runner and helped him into it, ignoring the man’s insults and threats to have him fired before he’d even started.

“You want little Bobby to play on this team?” Troy asked. “Then you don’t verbally abuse him from the sidelines or make the atmosphere uncomfortable for the other parents. If that isn’t clear enough, or you feel you need to challenge me on this, you can take it up in front of the school board.”

Frank Pitkin suggested that Troy screw himself with a two-by-four, and instead of pounding the man’s face into his steering wheel, Troy just nodded and said he’d take it under advisement.

Dadzilla sped away in a cloud of rage and dust.

Troy felt that perhaps he’d done something to redeem himself. He went to ask Joe Vargas who Bobby could get a ride home with.

The skins won the game, and after discussing with the shirts how they could have done things differently, Troy and Vargas talked to the boys about sportsmanship.

“The world of sports is competitive,” Troy told them. “But you’ve got to make sure you don’t let the competition turn you into a jerk. Winning is great, but it’s attitude and playing the game that’s most important. You don’t call each other names, you don’t cheat or injure other players to gain the upper hand. You don’t walk around like a grouch. Got it? I don’t care how many points you score, if you behave like that, you are a loser.”

He bought sodas for everyone and said he’d see them next time.

His mood stayed up until after he’d driven Derek back to Samantha’s house and he sat at the scarred kitchen table in the Coral Gables shack, staring with distaste at a greasy fast-food burger.

He ate it because it was there and better than the alternative: three-day-old garlic beef and a leftover pork egg roll that had been fried in rancid peanut oil to begin with.

Troy rinsed off the chipped plate he’d put the burger on, and watched a parade of tiny sugar ants emerge from a corner of the kitchen window. If he hosed them down with bug spray, he’d just have to inhale the nasty stuff, and a new line of them would be back tomorrow.

He looked at the four-inch stack of city regulations governing building codes and permits that sat like an oversize brick on the sagging cushions of the former owner’s olive-green couch. He sighed and hauled them into the room he planned to make his office, dropping the stack onto the computer table with a thud. He might have done a good thing today, but he still felt like an asshole. However, this was business. He needed that retail space. It didn’t make any financial sense to pay rent somewhere else when he owned the building.

He armed himself with a Spaten and a Cohiba and got to work, looking specifically at electrical and plumbing code. He wouldn’t be surprised if the business partners at After Hours had used illegal labor to cut costs on some of the installation. And if they’d cut corners that way, then it stood to reason that they might not have all the correct permits.

PEGGY SURPRISED EVERYONE, especially herself, by singing at work the next day. The singing wasn’t particularly tuneful, and the lyrics weren’t from anything hip, but just the fact that she warbled stanzas of actual song was a shock. “‘I wanna hold your haaaaaand…’”

“What’s wrong with you?” Shirlie asked. “You sound happy, and you’re never happy in the morning.”

“Even Oscar emerges from his trash can occasionally,” said Peggy, breezing by in a clean white lab coat.

“Now you’re putting yourself on par with Muppets?”

Peg just smiled and disappeared into the back.

Marly was the next to comment, when they came nose to nose in the supply closet. “Just one drink, huh? What’s with the circles under the eyes and the bowlegged gait?”

“So maybe it was a couple of drinks.”

“Uh-huh. Are you going to see him again?”

Peggy shrugged and tried to look as unconcerned as possible. Unfortunately the intercom squawked next to her ear, and Shirl’s voice said, “Peg? You have the most massive floral delivery here…. I swear it’s an entire South American jungle. Birds of paradise, orchids, tiger lilies, nasturtium—there’s a good possibility there’s a leopard hiding in here somewhere. Can you come up and get it?”

Marly tagged along, and her eyes widened when she saw it. “God Almighty, if it’s not the rest of the Amazonian rain forest!”

The arrangement was huge. Peggy stepped into the reception area just in time to see Shirlie holding the sealed card up to the light, trying to read the message and identify the sender.

“I’ll take that, thanks.”

“Who? Who? Who?” Shirl was almost jumping up and down.

Peg twitched the card out of her hand and unsealed it. The sender had written, “You are unforgettable. Looking forward to seeing you again.”

She tried to sidestep the receptionist, but Shirlie must have leaped over the reception desk like Daisy Duke over the door of the General Lee. “Who are they from?”