Page 54 of Cleats and Pumps

It was weird though. This house was set up as a B&B, so not officially a home. There weren’t many things worth stealing in here. I followed the women back to my bedroom and sighed when I saw the mattress had been thrown off and even cut through the middle.

“What could they have been looking for?” I asked.

The two cops looked at me skeptically. Ripping a mattress? Well, maybe whomever it was thought we had drugs. The cops could think what they wanted, but I wasn’t ever into that.

I looked over at the corner of the room where I kept my backpack and my heart fell to my stomach. “Fuck…” I said and rushed over to look inside. The laptop was missing. I turned to the two women who were still staring at me, and I told them, “It’s old, like really old and heavy as shit. Even some drugged-out maniac would know it’s not worth shit… Why would they steal that?”

Then a cold sweat prickled up against my skin. “Unless…” I swallowed hard. “Um, I’m a journalist, and sometimes I write things that I don’t want to get hacked or exposed so I use that laptop… It’s… it’s possible this was someone looking for that information.”

“What did you write?” the taller of the two women asked.

“Do you know Amos Clark?

They both nodded.

“There was a lot of information about him on there.”

They stared at me like I’d lost my mind. I knew they had no idea what this meant. Fuck… I shouldn’t have written that damned book. I’d known better. But why would anyone want that laptop? Why would they even suspect it was worth anything?

One of the cops asked if I had any surveillance video. “No.” I started to say we didn’t record anything because the house was usually used for guests, when I remembered I’d left my car parked outside. “Um… well, maybe…” I said instead. “Let me check my car.”

I’d put in a video surveillance camera after getting sideswiped by some asshole while driving down the interstate. I hadn’t gotten their license plate number, which meant I was out-of-pocket for fixing my car. I was determined not to let that happen again—thus the camera.

Luckily, it recorded even when the car wasn’t running. The only question was when this happened. If longer than forty-eighthours ago, the camera would have recorded over it, starting from the beginning.

I popped out the SD card, handed it to the cops, and said, “That’s the last forty-eight hours. If whoever did this was here before that…”

They both smiled. “We’ll have it analyzed and let you know.”

I thanked them, and when they confirmed I was probably safe, I went in, locked the door, and wedged a chair under the doorknob. I’d only been broken into once before, and that was when I was doing my internship and lived in a low-rent basement apartment in New York. It’d scared the fucking shit out of me then, and I felt violated again now.

I crossed my fingers and hoped beyond hope that the video from my car had filmed the culprit and he or she could be apprehended before they came back to do it all again.

38

Amos

“They’recuttingyou,butthe good news is you’re nonexclusive, so we can negotiate with other teams,” Erissa said and I could tell she was trying to be upbeat. What she wasn’t saying is they intentionally waited until after the summer to release me from the contract. Sure, I wasn’t in an exclusive contract, but who would bring in someone at this point? I hadn’t even been training.

No, the sons of bitches intentionally set me up. “Erissa, we need to get the attorneys to go for the jugular. This isn’t okay.”

She sighed into the phone. “No, it’s not, but before you go down that track, I might have an offer for you. Nothing as lucrative as your last contract, but it’ll get you back into the league.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

She paused then sighed again. “Let me make sure it’s a legit offer before I say any more, but, yeah, I… I’ll call you tomorrow either way.”

“Thanks, Erissa.”

“Oh,” she said, stopping me before I hung up. “I got a bizarre message from someone in New York. I was going to ignore it, but… Did you try out for a Broadway musical while there?”

Shit… busted. “Yeah, why? Did someone post pictures or something? I mean, I… I just got caught up in the moment. Fuck… this is going to bite me in the ass, isn’t it?”

Erissa chuckled. “No, well, maybe. I don’t know, but I got this random email asking me to let you know you got the part. Um, Amos, the musical is calledAlec in Wanderlust, and it’s a new one. Is this a gay musical?”

I laughed. “Honestly, that’s… I don’t know. I tried out for Lola fromKinky Boots.”

“Fuck, of course, you did. You are determined to give me gray hair. Goddamn… okay… well, shit. You’re gonna need to call them and let them know you aren’t interested… Unless you are? Are you leaving the game? ’Cause, Amos, if you are, I need to know before I chase down too many leads here. And you cannot be Lola or some drag queen and in the NFL. Not just because of the image, but because of the stupid time limitations in each.”

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