Free Playing for Pizza by John Grisham Page B

in arena ball.” The smile was gone and Sly was undressing. He looked much shorter than five feet eight, but he was solid muscle.
    “And here last year, right?”
    “Right. It ain’t that bad. Kinda fun, if you keep your sense of humor. The guys on the team are wonderful. If not for them, I’d never come back.”
    “Why are you here?”
    “Same reason you’re here. Too young to give up the dream. Plus, I got a wife and kid now and I need the money.”
    “The money?”
    “Sad, ain’t it? A professional football player making ten thousand bucks for five months’ work. But, like I said, I ain’t ready to quit.” He finally pulled off the orange sweatshirt and replaced it with a Panther practice jersey.
    “Let’s go loosen up,” Rick said, and they left the locker room and walked onto the field.
    “My arm’s pretty stiff,” Rick said as he made a weak throw.
    “You’re lucky you’re not crippled,” Sly said.
    “Thanks.”
    “What a hit. I was at my brother’s, yelling at the TV. Game was over, then Marroon goes out with an injury. Eleven minutes to go, everything was hopeless, then—”
    Rick held the ball for a second. “Sly, really, I’d rather not replay it. Okay?”
    “Sure. Sorry.”
    “Is your family here?” Rick asked, quickly changing the subject.
    “No, back in Denver. My wife’s a nurse, good job. She told me I got one more year of football, then the dream is over. You got a wife?”
    “No, not even close.”
    “You’ll like it here.”
    “Tell me about it.” Rick walked back five yards and straightened his passes.
    “Well, it’s a very different culture. The women are beautiful, but much more reserved. It’s a very chauvinistic society. The men don’t marry until they’re thirty; they live at home with their mothers, who wait on them hand and foot, and when they get married, they expect their wives to do the same. The women are reluctant to get married. They need to work, so the women are having fewer kids. The birthrate here is declining rapidly.”
    “I wasn’t exactly thinking about marriage and birthrates, Sly. I’m more curious about the nightlife, you know what I mean?”
    “Yeah, lots of girls, and pretty ones, but the language thing is a problem.”
    “What about the cheerleaders?”
    “What about them?”
    “Are they cute, easy, available?”
    “I wouldn’t know. We don’t have any.”
    Rick held the ball, froze, looked hard at his tailback. “No cheerleaders?”
    “Nope.”
    “But my agent …” He stopped before he embarrassed himself. So his agent had promised something that couldn’t happen. What else was new?
    Sly was laughing, a loud infectious laugh that said, “Joke’s on you, clown.”
    “You came over here for the cheerleaders?” he said, high-pitched and mocking.
    Rick fired a bullet, which Sly easily caught with his fingertips, then kept laughing. “Sounds like my agent. Tells the truth about half the time.”
    Rick finally laughed at himself as he backed up another five yards. “What’s the game like here?” he asked.
    “Absolutely delightful, because they can’t catch me. I averaged two hundred yards a game last year. You’ll have a great time, if you can remember to throw to our players instead of the other team.”
    “Cheap shot.” Rick zipped another bullet; again it was easily caught by Sly, who in return lobbed it back. The unwritten rule held firm—never throw a hard pass to a quarterback.
    Jogging up from the locker room was the otherblack Panther, Trey Colby, a tall, gangly kid too skinny for football. He had an easy smile, and in less than a minute said to Rick, “Are you okay, man?”
    “Doing well, thanks.”
    “I mean, the last time I saw you, you were on a stretcher and—”
    “I’m fine, Trey. Let’s talk about something else.”
    Sly was enjoying the moment. “He’d rather not talk about it. I’ve already tried,” he said.
    For an hour they played catch and talked about players they knew back