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  Upon signing his second contract, Jenny insisted they move to Wild Oaks. Cody, warned repeatedly by his agent not to buy the house, couldn't convince Jenny that the million and a half dollar contract wasn't guaranteed, and if he got hurt they could end up sitting on an expensive house with a big mortgage and no way to make the payments. She would hear none of it. Cody never got hurt, she reasoned, and even if he did, by then she would be making it big herself. Besides, they both believed that he was only going to get better, and after this contract there would be another even bigger one. If free agency ever came about, Jenny knew as well as anyone that she and Cody would have all the money they needed.

  She told him they had to think big. Wild Oaks was where "everyone" lived. Of course living in Wild Oaks wasn't enough in and of itself. Jenny fell in love with a six-bedroom Spanish stucco with a red tiled roof. The property came complete with a pool, a small pool house, and possibly one of the ten best views in the entire community. The price tag was $735,000. The team agreed to give Cody the first hundred and fifty thousand of that year's salary up front so that he could make the down payment. It was the least they could do for the player who was already the toast of the town and the leader of their defense.

  Armed with a place in the hills, four years of arduous acting classes at the University of Texas, and a celebrity husband, Jenny began to get steady work. Cody's trip to the Pro Bowl and Jenny's success in her budding career made everything seem right. The two of them seemed destined for only bigger and better things to come. None of Jenny's work, however, was anything major. She would get a few lines here, a few lines there, and a lot of background scenes as a glorified extra. At first, just that had been enough to thrill her, and she and Cody were happier than ever. As time wore on, though, she was harder and harder to please, and she became increasingly frustrated with the fact that she hadn't gotten her big break. She knew everyone in Austin who was anyone in the industry, but when the time came for the final cut, there was always some casting director or some out-of-town director or producer who would nix her. Once she got a real role, albeit a minor one, in a feature western. She appeared in three scenes and had several lines each time she appeared. She thought this film would be the answer, but it never made it to the theaters.

  Frustrated and embittered, Jenny became more and more difficult to get along with, not just for Cody but for everyone. She couldn't keep the same agent for more than six months, and despite her social ties, the big producers stopped taking her calls. The Greys were still welcomed at every event, but that was because of Cody. Jenny became an annoyance, and at times, if she drank too much, she was even an embarrassment. Sometimes, if Cody was surrounded by a throng of admirers, he would finally break free only to find Jenny off in some comer talking and smiling with some unsuspecting mun. He and Jenny would fight about it. She protested that he couldn't smoth<:r her that she was doing nothing wrong. Cody could never articulate what bothered him, but his instincts told him he had a right to be angry.

  More than once, such an evening would end with punches being thrown. Young bucks, undeterred by Cody's size, were stirred to action by his flirtatious wife and an evening of drinking. Cody soon developed a reputation as a roughneck. He wasn't the kind of man to lose a fight. Sometimes he turned vicious. Noses were broken. Three times lawsuits had ensued and Cody had paid dearly to avoid more bad publicity than he already had. Jenny seemed to enjoy the fiery turn their lives had taken. She believed that any publicity was better than no publicity at all. More and more it seemed Jenny prompted Cody to anger. More and more they fought, openly and bitterly, privately and publicly.

  Near the end of the 1993 football season, Cody's worries got worse. The day after a game in Philadelphia, his knee swelled, and his leg was locked in one position. All he could do was hobble into the trainer's room the next day. The team's orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Randy Cort, examined him and ordered an MRI, predicting that they would find some kind of cartilage damage. They did, and the next morning Cody went under the knife for the removal of all that remained of the cushion that kept the two main bones in his leg from rubbing together and grinding each other into dust.

  After the surgery, Cody was shown a videotape of the procedure performed on his knee. He sat quietly with Cort in a tiny office that contained nothing more than two chairs, a TV, and a VCR.

  "You see that there?" said the surgeon, pointing to a tattered flap of cartilage that had wedged itself between the two bones. "The edges are wom smooth. This is an old tear, real old. It should have been taken out when it first happened. Do you remember when you first hurt it?"

  "No," Cody said. "My knee has been fine. It gets a little sore every once in a while, but it never seized up on me like it did."

  The doctor nodded. "Well, you may not have even noticed it, but I would think that a tear this big would have given you at least some pain and swelling for a few days."

  "You know," Cody said thoughtfully, "in college 1 had that for a few weeks, but it got better."

  The doctor frowned. "Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. That tom piece in there over the years is what ground the rest of the cartilage into hamburger. It's like having a loose bit of metal floating around in a gear box. Before you know it, everything's ruined." The doctor got quiet again, and together they watched the screen as the enlarged image of the microscopic instruments cut and snipped and sucked the tissue out of Cody's knee.

  "I had to take it all out," the doctor said solemnly. "Once it seizes up on you like that, you've got to get it out. Otherwise you can't play. But you should be ready to go again in three to four weeks."

  The doctor stood, but Cody nodded with an absent look on his face and remained seated. He was used to this sort of thing. He'd accumulated a series of injuries like most NFL players. His body was battered with scars and hampered by joints and muscles, damage that would never allow him to lead a life free from physical discomfort. Nothing to date, however, had actually been removed from his body. Hardware had been added, a plate in a broken arm and some staples in his other knee, but this was the first time he'd lost cartilage forever. "What's it gonna do?" Cody asked slowly.

  "Excuse me?" said Cort.

  "What's it gonna do?" Cody asked again.

  "What do you mean?" the doctor said, nervously adjusting the round rimless glasses on his face.

  "I mean, I got no more cartilage. What happens to my knee?" Cody looked intensely at the doctor's face. He wanted to know.

  The doctor averted his eyes and said, "You can play--"

  "Yeah, but what happens after?" Cody persisted.

  "Well, this could give you some problems," the doctor said briskly, jamming his hands into his white lab-coat pockets. "You know, football causes a lot of wear and tear on your body. But, hey, those two bones might just wear into a nice groove that allows you to play with a real tolerable level of pain."

  "So what kind of problems? Worst case," Cody added.

  "Well, worst case, you get a knee replacement, when you're older of course, and only if it bothers you a lot. If it does... well, sometimes it's not that bad."

  "Have you ever known of a football player who had this and it didn't turn out bad?" Cody asked.

  The doctor thought for a minute. "I really couldn't answer that. When players leave the team, I rarely see them again."

  Cody digested that information and nodded slowly. He stood, and the doctor held out a prescription bottle filled with fat, white codeine pills, a sort of peace offering. Cody's knee was screaming now. It was a deep, low, gutfral scream of pain. He took the pills.

  'Thanks," he said.

  "Hey, no problem," the doctor replied. "It's the least I could do."

  Cody thought that might not be far from the truth.

  He worked the knee as hard as he could, doing everything that was asked of him by the doctors and the training staff. After the third week he was back on the field. He could play through only after having the knee, which seemed to be permanently swolle
n, drained and then refilled with a mixture of cortisone and Xylocaine. Cody called it high-octane. With his knee relatively numb and the swelling temporarily reduced, he could almost play like his old self. The only problem was that he hadn't practiced with the team the entire week, and Cody knew he wasn't at the top of his game. But the coaches didn't want to disturb the chemistry of the team that late in the season, so they kept Cody in the starting lineup despite his lack of practice and hobbled performance. The Outlaws were playoff bound again. They would eventually lose in the second round, but Cody was one of the mainstays.

  One thing that was obvious though, to Cody and his coaches, was that since his operation he wasn't making as many plays as he normally did. He wasn't certain whether or not this was because the deadened knee was slowing him down or because of the practices he constantly missed. Either way, when the team watched game film together on Mondays, Cody heard his name called out less and less as an example of how things should be done.

  Then, for the first time in his career, a sportswriter used the word "old" in the same sentence as Cody Grey. It hit him hard. It was like a crack in the dike, and once the water started to come through there was no way to stop it.

  Cody started to notice things in the mirror. When he pulled his hair back, he could see patches of white hair covertly taking over his scalp. The aches and pains seemed to bother him a little more, or maybe it's just that he noticed them more. Either way, by the time his eighth NFL season with the Outlaws was over, Cody Grey was considered old and beat-up, and at thirty years of age, he was.

  Chapter Four

  Striker looked out of the class doors that led to the terrace of his penthouse apartment. The clear night sky was filled with brilliant stars. The moon was not yet up. The skyline of the city stood around him like tombstones in some titanic graveyard. Striker stretched his naked frame and yawned loudly before taking a mouthful of red wine from the crystal goblet. He slid open the glass door and the wind rushed in. The steady breeze on Striker's face made him feel alive. He finished the wine in his glass and turned his attention back toward the bed.

  She was up from her midnight nap. In the light of the city and stars, he could see her dark hair blowing gently in the cool stream of air. Her skin was milky white, and in the shadows she looked more like an apparition than a woman. She was on her knees, this thin white figure, facing him. One of her hands moved gently to the dark patch between her legs while she reached out across the open space for him with the other. Striker felt the blood tush to his loins, and he moved closer to the bed.

  She fixed her free hand on his shaft and began to jerk him roughly. As he grew she reached out with her other hand and grasped him before plunging him into her mouth. She held him firmly with both hands and continued to jerk as she spun her tongue wildly. Striker arched his back and ran his hands through her long silky hair while she worked. His abdominal muscles were stretched like banded steel. When he was almost there, his hands instinctively tightened, gripping her hair. The muscles in his stomach began to convulse. She stopped, pulling away from him with a wicked smile. She lay back on the bed completely naked and spread her legs invitingly.

  "Now fuck me," she said. It wasn't a suggestion. It was a command. Striker felt the adrenaline rush from his heart and fill his body. He kneeled over her, smiling at her wicked face and her wicked words. He positioned himself, then plunged inside ^f her for the second time that night. Striker arched his back, driving deep and rising up on his hands to watch the beautiful pale form beneath him writhe like an impaled serpent.

  Around one-thirty, Striker lay back on the sweaty sheets and shut his eyes. A small smile pulled at the comer of his lips. He heard her rustling at the bedside, and he opened his eyes without lifting his head. She was dressing in a hurried, distracted manner. Striker spoke without moving any part of his body except his mouth.

  "Going somewhere?" he said.

  "Uh-huh," she said casually.

  Striker was amused at the way she dressed herself, like a man would do after sleeping with a cheap whore. She pulled a sheer white evening dress over her head and wiggled into it as she tugged at the hem. She took one more swipe between her legs with a tissue before she pulled her panties on and wedged her long foot into a shoe at the same time.

  "Home?" Striker asked, tilting his head now so he could see her better. It was a small thing, the way she was leaving him, but Striker had a keen eye for detail, and he had never seen anything quite like her.

  She looked at him straight in the eye. 'Yes."

  Striker rose up on his elbow, wide awake, intrigued. "And where is home?"

  "That's really not your concern," she said, lifting a gold-sequined purse from the night table and fishing daintily around until she found her keys. She snapped the purse shut and, keys in hand, turned for the door.

  Striker got up off the bed. He had to scramble to beat her to the door and stiff-arm it closed to prevent her escape. He laughed in an uncomfortable way.

  "Wait," he said. "I want to see you again." Striker felt the complete fool. He couldn't remember the last time he had acted this way. It must have been while he was still in high school, more than thirty years ago.

  "What's your number?" she said impatiently.

  "What?" Striker asked.

  "What's your phone number?" she said.

  "556-5690," he said. "How about yours?"

  "Maybe I'll call you," she said, then pushed his arm down and slipped out the door.

  Striker watched her walk down the hall and wait for the elevator. "Don't you want to write it down?" he called to her.

  The beautiful woman said nothing. She didn't even look back at him. She got into the elevator without another word and without even a sideways glance. Striker huffed and smiled to himself, shaking his head as he shut the door. He walked over to the living-room window and pushed the curtains aside, waiting to catch a glimpse of her car. A few minutes later her candy- apple red Porsche 928 raced down the street under the white lights and disappeared like a puff of smoke around the comer of another building. Striker let the curtain drop. He chewed lightly on his lip as he poured himself a straight scotch. He put on a CD of Carl Orff's opera, Carmitia Burana, and slumped down on the couch with his drink as the urgent pleas to Fortunes power reached a crescendo and filled his head.

  He pictured their sex as the music washed over him. The music grew in intensity, and in his mind's eye he saw her as vividly as he first had, sitting in a chair with her long legs crossed, her mouth turned down in a distracted print that added to her beauty. She was surrounded by doting men but in a world of her own. Then she saw him looking, and there was something small, a flicker of recognition in her eyes, although he had never seen her before. Striker shifted in his seat as the voices on the disk rose in a tempest of music. He saw her now, rising and falling in the heat of his bedroom. He tasted blood in his mouth and realized he had bitten the inside of his lip. He knew that he had to see her again.

  Cody woke up. He was alone in his living room. The bags of ice packed around his knee had turned to water. One of them was leaking. It had soaked the towel and half the couch. He'd tun on his knee too hard, and he would pay the price for the next four days. It happened every week. Cody would push the knee to its limits, anticipating that one day soon it would be well. He knew that sooner or later the day would arrive when he wouldn't have to suffer for running hard. It was nothing more than the basic training regimen necessary to prepare for another NFL season. He had to do it.

  His skin was soggy from the leaky bag and his bottom itched uncomfortably. The TV snowed and hissed. Cody looked at the glowing digital clock on the VCR above the set. It was 2:23 a. M. He heard the door shut, and he sat upright, swinging his bare legs out of the wet mess and rising to his feet. He stood there, his hair mussed and his face creased with sleep, wearing a wet, baggy pair of flannel boxer shorts and a T-shirt cut off at the waist. His legs looked bony and pale, and he felt silly standing there. Then he got angry.


  Jenny walked in with composed majesty and set her purse on a side table.

  She looked him right in the eye as she began to pull off her earrings and slip out of her pumps.

  "Hello, Cody," she said calmly, as if she had every right to walk into the house at this hour. "Are you feeling okay?"

  Cody flushed. "Where the fuck have you been!" he demanded. "Do you see the time?"

  Cody could see the fire in his wife's narrowed eyes.

  "You're not my father, Cody," she hissed. "Don't talk to me like you are. I'm tired of it!"

  "You're tired? You're fucking tired?" Cody ground his teeth. He didn't normally curse like this, but he was enraged. "I don't care what I sound like. Where the fuck were you?"

  "1 don't have to listen to this," she said and turned back out toward the hallway and went up the stairs.

  Cody hobbled behind her as quickly as his stiff knee would allow.

  Jenny was at her sink when he caught up to her. She was wiping makeup angrily off of her face. The white balls of cotton she rubbed over her eyes came away smudged with coal-black mascara. She threw them at the brass waste basket. Some missed. She didn't bother to pick them up.

  Cody gulped the bile in his throat down into his churning stomach. He knew better than to let this scene disintegrate into a shouting match. She would fight him toe to toe. It never did any good. They never got anywhere.

  "Jenny," he began, then took a deep breath, trying his best to mask the rage of a jealous husband, "we've got to talk--"

  "About what, Cody?" she snapped, continuing her work at the mirror. "About how you couldn't come with me tonight because you had more important things to do? About how you treat me like a little girl that you can punish or like some football player that you can threaten? I'm not a little girl, Cody. I'm not a football player. And I'm tired of your lack of trust. It's like you want me to be unfaithful. You're always accusing me. I have to hear it constantly, about where was I, who was I talking to, why wasn't I following you around like a damned whipped puppy. So what do you want to talk about tonight?"