Chapter 9: It's Not Porn

Beep beep beep. The sound was right in Eric's ear. He'd slept with his watch on and set it's alarm to go off early so that he could get up and make Tami breakfast on her first day of work. Quickly, before the alarm could wake her, he stabbed the button. He felt himself drifting off to sleep and forced himself awake. He slid out of the bed, feet first, stood, stretched, yawned, and scratched. He didn't look at the bed but pulled on his pants over his boxers and walked straight to the kitchen, where he found Tami standing, showered, dolled up, and dressed in a knee-length skirt and pale silk blouse. She was holding a cup of coffee, and an empty plate, with the crumbs of an English muffin, sat on the counter by the sink.

He blinked. "What are you doing up?" he asked. "I was going to make you coffee. I was going to make breakfast for your first day."

She was staring absently at the refrigerator and turned. She smiled slightly. "That's sweet, hon. I appreciate the support. Sorry to ruin the surprise. It's just…I've been up since four. Figured I might as well get ready."

"Nervous?" he asked and came and slid his arms around her waist and leaned in to kiss her. She pulled away and set her coffee cup on the counter.

"Don't mess up my hair," she said, and then began smoothing her skirt.

"Okay, then. The hair's important on the first day, I guess. The hair communicates."

"Your hair certainly communicates," she said, and looked at the disordered, tussled, sleepy strands leaning this way and that at the front top of his head, and laughed.

"Yeah?" he asked. "What's it say?"

"All sorts of things. Right now it says, 'I'm dead tired but I dragged myself out of bed to earn points with my wife and somehow I'm still at zero, and I can't even get a good morning kiss. Why is my world so unjust?'"

Eric put a hand in his hair and grabbed a chunk. He pulled it left and right. "What's it saying now?" he asked.

"Ow. Leave me alone." Smiling, she stepped forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. "Thanks for the thought, really. But I ate already. Dry English muffin and a strawberry."

"One strawberry?"

"Didn't think I could stomach anymore."

"You'll do great, Tami. You're the most competent woman I know."

She had reclaimed her coffee cup from the counter and the red ceramic rim had just reached her chin when it froze in place. "Now why would you say the most component woman you know and not just the most competent person you know?"

Eric ran a hand through his hair and shook his head.

"Now your hair is saying, 'Seriously, Tami? Seriously? Don't I ever get a break?'"

"Don't I?"

She walked over and smacked him on the butt. "More than you deserve." And then she disappeared from the kitchen.

"What was that for?" he called from the empty kitchen, but it was Julie who came in and not Tami.

"What was what for?" Julie asked.

"Your mother just spanked me for no reason."

"Ewwwww….TMI."

"I'm making breakfast. Your mom already ate, but I'll make it for us. What do you want?"

"Mom said she got some tofu bacon."

"Tofu bacon? You can't qualify the word bacon with a word like tofu. That's an oxymoron."

"Nice vocabulary, Dad," she said, opening the refrigerator door and pulling out something that did look reasonably like bacon.

He took it from her hand. "You know what? If my little girl wants tofu bacon this morning, then she'll get tofu bacon this morning."

He brought it over and lay it on the counter top next to the stove and turned on the gas burner. It popped popped and flamed. He turned it down and set the pan on flame.

"Who are you?" Julie asked.

He lay the strips of bacon in the pan. "More importantly, how are you?" He turned and looked at her. The bacon made a sizzling sound. "Seriously, Jules, how are you feeling? You hanging in there?"

Julie slid her hands in the back pocket of her jeans and nodded.

"You and your momma have a good talk last night?"

"Not really. We just watched a movie. I'd rather talk to you about it."

"It being Bugsy?" he asked.

"Yeah. Do you think we could have like…I know it sounds totally silly – "

"Family memorial service?"

"Yeah."

"I think that would be a good idea," he said. He looked beyond Julie and saw Tami had re-entered the kitchen and overheard some of their conversation. She looked…he didn't know…hurt?

"I'm going to get my backpack ready," Julie said and ducked from the kitchen.

"I don't know why she'd rather talk to you than to me," Tami said. "I'm supposed to be a counselor. Starting today. And my own daughter doesn't even want to talk to me. Why is that?"

Eric shrugged.

"Seriously, Eric, why is that?"

Eric was holding a spatula in his hand and he raised it and pointed to his hair with it. Then he lowered the spatula and flipped the bacon.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tami asked.

"I assumed my hair would answer your question. It didn't?"

/FNL/

Coach Taylor yelled at his quarterback to re-run the play he'd just screwed up. He was working with Mark Jacobson now that Jason had gone off to the Panthers. The second string quarterback was a pale shadow of Jason Street. There was no way Eric was going to have him up to scratch by Friday's game. They were going to be here late this evening.

Eric walked away from the field and called Tami on his cell. "Are you home yet?" he asked.

"No," she answered. "I just left. I'm heading for the car. Aren't you going to ask me how my first day went?"

"How'd it go?"

"Great." There was silence, then, "A little boring actually. I didn't get to see any kids one-on-one today. It was a kind of orientation."

Coach Shannon, another one of the assistant coaches, came up to him and held up five fingers and pointed to the field. Eric nodded.

"But I think it's going to be good," Tami continued. "It'll be fun working with so many kids of different ages. And maybe I can do some good. The extreme academic pressure that comes from going to a small, competitive private school like this…I think that's one of the main things I'll be dealing with."

"Well, there's some extreme academic pressure in Julie's advanced classes in public school."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment and then Tami asked, "Are we having this argument again?"

"No."

"Julie can handle it. She's smart, and she's the type who needs to be challenged. And we didn't force her to take any of those classes. She chose them."

"She chose two of them. She was on the fence about the other three. You persuaded her, Tami."

"I thought you said we weren't having this argument again."

"Right. Listen, I gotta go. I just wanted to tell you I'm going to be late this evening."

"Why?" she asked.

"I've got to do some extra work with Mark."

He also had to get his resume together. Mitchell Street had given him the address of the head coach over at Dillon and had told him the man was expecting his e-mail. Eric didn't want to do it on the office computer, because he didn't want anyone on the Tigers to find out he was testing the waters over at Dillon. He didn't want to do it at home either, because he didn't want Tami to get upset about the possibility of having to quit her job without putting in a full year, not until he knew whether or not he got the job. Maybe he'd stop by the library on the way home from practice and do it there.

Eric was now seeing two fingers from Coach Shannon and so said goodbye to his wife.

/FNL/

The library apparently closed at five on Mondays—budget cuts meant erratic hours-so Eric just went on home at 7:30, reheated his dinner plate, and wolfed down the food before secluding himself in his study. The door didn't have a functioning lock, but Tami usually left him alone when he was in there working with the door closed.

He was now attempting to attach his resume to an e-mail. He was scouring the menu and saw the icon of a paper clip. Was that it? He didn't send attachments very often, and he didn't open them. The only person who sent him attachments was Buddy Garrity, who e-mailed him some kind of photo joke at least three times a week. Eric always deleted them without responding. He'd met Buddy when the Taylors lived in Dillon years ago. Buddy had been on the Dillon Panthers in his youth, but he'd also played for the junior high team for which Eric was briefly an assistant coach, and sometimes Buddy liked to stop by the field to give unsolicited pep talks and reminisce.

While working at the junior high in Dillon, Eric had simultaneously coached Jason Street in Pee Wee. Then the Streets had moved to Midland, and the Taylors had moved to Lamesa, before moving to Midland, specifically so Eric could coach Jason on the Tigers. But now Street was gone, and Eric was left with a losing team, a boss he could barely tolerate, and a quarterback who didn't have even a quarter of the promise of Jason.

He clicked the paper clip, and a window to his folders opened. He poked around. Where had he saved the damn resume? He'd just found the file and clicked on it when the door suddenly opened. Hastily, he reached up and turned off the monitor.

Tami shook her head as she entered. "I swear, hon, I don't know why you need that when you've got this – " She stretched her arms up in the air and did a sexy little dance until she reached the bookshelf, " - right here at home."

"What?" he asked.

She was bending over to grab a book from the bottom shelf of the bookcase, and she wiggled her butt at him as she did so.

"What?" he repeated. Had she seen the e-mail? Suddenly it dawned on him. "Oh, no," he said waving his hand in protest, "I wasn't looking at porn."

"Sure you weren't," she said, standing up straight and tucking the book she'd come to get under her arm. "You just didn't want me to see how well you were doing at solitaire." She laughed. "I didn't even mean that to be a double entendre. But now that I've got the analogy, I guess since you're so good at solitaire, you don't need me to play cards with you any time soon." She smacked him lightly on the head with her paperback as she walked to the door.

"I wasn't looking at porn!" he insisted again as she retreated through the doorway.

/FNL/

Eric heard sniffling later that night when he walked by Julie's room. He knocked. There were sounds of scurrying and then, "What?"

"Can I come in?"

"Just a minute."

He opened the door. It was clear she'd been crying. She'd tried to shove the wire wastepaper basket full of tissues behind the desk, but he could still see it. He sat down on her bed. "Bugsy?" he asked. She shook her head. "What then?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

"You don't want to hear about it."

"Why would you say that?" he asked. "You think I don't care when my daughter is crying?"

She rolled her eyes. "No," she said, rubbing her reddened nose. "I just…it's Marcus. He said he can't be my partner anymore. He got assigned to someone else. And now I have to work with Karen Washington, because she was the odd one out, the only one who didn't have a partner."

"So you have to start all over?"

"No. We're still doing the helmet thing. She didn't start on her project. Because she's a total procrastinator. Marcus has to do whatever project his new partner started on."

"So you're not losing anything. That's good."

"Yeah," she said. Crossing her arms over her chest. "Not losing anything. Right."

"You and Marcus can still talk in school. Julie, you shouldn't be this focused on – "

"I knew you'd say that. Can you just go, please?"

"A'ight." He stood up. "Love you."

She grunted.

When Eric got to his and Tami's bedroom, he said, "I think our baby girl needs her mother right now." Tami looked up from the book she was reading, her brow furrowed. "Marcus," Eric explained. "She found out today they aren't partners anymore."

Tami nodded and disappeared from the room. When she returned twenty minutes later, he asked how it had gone. "She's upset," Tami said, crawling under the covers. "Understandably. She'll get over it. They can still talk between classes and at lunch. It's not the end of the world. Frankly – not that I told her this – but it's probably for the best that they spend less time together. She was getting a little too intense. I told her she can call him twice a week, but she's got to quit this twice a day stuff."

He nodded. "How are we going to police that?"

"We're not. We're going to trust her. And she's going to disobey us. And we're going to pretend we don't know."

"That doesn't sound like a good precedent, Tami."

She shrugged. "It's not a big deal. The crush will burn itself out eventually. Faster if we don't try to interfere than if we do."

"Then why tell her to stop calling so much in the first place?"

"So she knows I care."

He shook his head. "I don't understand you sometimes."

"Good. A girl needs to maintain a little mystery," she said as she rolled over into her sleep position.