Page 2 of Single-Minded
“It never occurred to me that you didn’t know. It seemed so obvious,” says Darcy. “I mean, you didn’t get your psychology degree online or stuffed inside a box of cereal, did you?”
I sigh deeply. This is not making me feel better.
Darcy asks, “Look, do you want me to get my crisis team on this and check it out? My best guess is that it’s going to blow up over the weekend, and depending on how it’s handled, die out by Monday. Unless there’s more. Or video. It’s not every day that a top draft pick and an ESPN broadcaster get caught screwing around. Michael is going to need a good publicist if he’s going to keep his job. The media loves to devour its own. Tell him to call me if he needs some names.”
“Mmmm-hmm,” I respond numbly.
“Or you can scratch that and just let him hang on live TV. Your call.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why does some stupid sports blog even care that two grown men are having sex, except for the fact that they both happen to work in sports?”
“Because Michael is married. Because Michael is a basketball commentator and Bobby is a top draft pick. Because Bobby is super-religious and has felt the need to speak to the media extensively against what he calls the sins of blasphemy and homosexuality. And because Michael is higher profile than the average hookup.” She snorts. “Between the homosexuality and adultery, all Bobby needs is for Michael to schedule an abortion and he’ll have Satan’s trifecta.”
“Are you sure it’s even true?” I ask. “Maybe it’s just a rumor.” Please, please, let it just be a rumor. A cruel but completely false rumor. A case of mistaken identity. Something we’ll all be laughing about a year from now.
“It’s true. There are… pictures,” she says. “I’m so sorry. It was probably bound to come out, one way or another.”
“Pictures?” I sit straight up in bed, gripping the phone so hard my fingers began to go numb. What the hell? Was I a serial killer, or a door-to-door magazine salesperson in a past life or something? Outrage and humiliation sear my every thought.
Disconnected sounds dribble from my lips, but my mouth can’t form any more words. Like I’ve been Tasered. Actually, I’d rather be Tasered. At least when you’re Tasered things go back to normal after the 18 million volts of electricity hit your heart. You lose your breath, your body seizes up, you twitch around on the floor, you drool, maybe you pee yourself. But you probably recover. There is no way I’m ever going to recover from this.
“Yes, pictures,” she says. “Listen to me, you do not want to get involved in this mess. There are plenty of reporters who will be happy to agree you’ve been wronged and that Michael is a bastard. And then they’ll put your puffy face and bloodshot eyes on camera and the story will last a week or a month instead of a couple of days.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” she says. “Don’t answer any calls on your cell that aren’t from people you know. Do you guys still have a landline?”
“What am I, eighty?” I ask.
“Lay low, stay home, order food, or rearrange your medicine cabinet or something. Don’t watch TV. Don’t surf the Internet. Don’t even think about googling ‘Craigslist hit men’ or ‘how to poison my husband with leftover pizza and household chemicals.’ Call your web designer right this minute and tell her to put a home page up on your Web site that says it’s under scheduled maintenance. Donotspeak to any reporters. The last thing you want to do in a firestorm is add oxygen. You need to lay low and hope it’s not a slow news day.”
“On camera? Is this really going to go that far? Michael isn’t Steve Phillips, he’s just a college basketball announcer. Oh God. I just heard myself.”
“Yes,” says Darcy in her most soothing voice. “He’s a college basketball announcer who’s screwing one of the top college players in the country. Not exactly some unknown intern.”
I put my head in my hands. Darcy kept talking but I couldn’t focus on the words.
“I can’t handle this,” I say. “What am I going to do?”
“Yes, you can,” Darcy says firmly. “Just break out the liquor and pray for a natural disaster.”
2
The second I get off the phone with Darcy, I dial Michael’s cell. No answer. Asshole!
“Call me,” I screech into the phone. “Call me right now!”
Darcy told me not to watch the news, and I should have listened to her. Darcy, after all, has gotten dozens of politicians through prostitution, drug, and undocumented nanny scandals, most of them with their careers still intact. If anybody knows how this is going to play out it’s her. I pop in my favorite old movie,When Harry Met Sally,to distract myself, a movie I’ve seen a million times, and I watch ten whole minutes of the DVD before I succumb to the temptation to turn on the news. I can’t help it.
That Carrie Fisher line from the movie keeps bouncing around in my brain, when all her friends keep telling her that her married boyfriend is never going to leave his wife:You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.
I tell myself it’s just a blog story, that it can’t possibly be true, that it will all disappear in a few days, a page buried under posts about trades and bad coaching and steroid scandals. But just in case, I check FOX Sports. I can’t bear to watch ESPN, for fear Michael is calling a game somewhere they play basketball at five-thirty in the morning. I don’t want to see him right now, even on TV. I do, however, want to see what Bobby Cavale looks like—no idea why. It can only make me feel worse. If the person your spouse cheats with is a troll, you’d say,I can’t believe he’d cheat on me with them. If the mistress (or in Michael’s case, mister) is gorgeous, perfect, a way better version of you, wouldn’t you feel even more depressed? Or would some level of physical perfection make you just shrug your shoulders and say,Did you get a look at that one? What mortal man could resist that?What was the reason for wanting to see the person my husband had cheated with? To have a face to tie to the horrible knowledge of betrayal—to give more meat to the memory it? To figure out what he has that I don’t? (Aside from a twenty-one-year-old body and a penis.)
HLN doesn’t mention anything about it for the first thirty minutes I watch, and I feel a glimmer of hope that they’ll skip the story altogether, but then I see the text crawl updating at the bottom of the screen:TOP DRAFT PICK BOBBY CAVALE AND ESPN COMMENTATORMICHAEL MILLER SEX SCANDAL.Shit.
I switch to MSNBC and they’ve got basically the same text crawl at the bottom. Oh God, oh God! This cannot be happening! FOX Sports is worse. They do a whole segment on Michael and Bobby Cavale, and one of the commentators mentions that Michael is married and wonders aloud if his husband Alex… Wait, WTF,husband? FOX Sports thinks I’m a man?
“Alex is short for Alexandra, you hack!” I shout at the screen. “Nice fact checking!”
