Free Losers Take All by David Klass Page A

he’d broken his neck. But he dusted himself off like it was just another day in the life of a Latin teacher and walked off reading.”
    â€œWell, maybe a guy who trips and falls and doesn’t care if people laugh at him is exactly the kind of coach we need.”
    We reached the main entrance to Woodview Towers, and Becca walked in through a stone archway ahead of me. She was wearing snug blue Lycra biking shorts and a yellow T-shirt from some horse show, and just watching her leaning forward on her bike with her legs pumping and her hair flying behind her had taken my breath away for a good part of the ten miles from Fremont to Hackensack. She seemed so free-spirited and happy that it was hard to imagine this was the same girl who’d had the panic attack in the barn.
    She found a list of tenant names on the side wall near the locked front door. “Haskell,” she muttered, running her eyes down the list. “Here it is, Percy Haskell.”
    â€œPercy?” I repeated dubiously.
    â€œHe told me he was named for Shelley,” she explained.
    â€œFor who?”
    Becca gave me an exasperated look and rang the buzzer. “Don’t play dumb. Percy won’t understand it and I don’t like it either.”
    â€œI’m not playing dumb. Listen, he’s a part-time teacher, he has no connection to our school or town besides teaching one course there twice a week, and he may be the most unathletic man I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not being judgmental—I’m just saying that I don’t see how this is going to help us with Muhldinger.”
    â€œHallo there, friend or foe?” a voice called down in a British accent.
    â€œFriend,” Becca said into the mic. “It’s Becca and Jack.”
    A loud buzz sounded, and we pushed in and headed to the elevator.
    â€œFriend or foe?” I repeated.
    â€œI like the way he talks,” she told me. “He uses the language beautifully—he even writes his own poetry in verse. And part-time or not, he’s technically on the faculty. If he wants to be our coach, then we have a faculty coach.”
    â€œAnd why would he want to be our coach?” I asked her. “What’s in it for him?”
    â€œGood question,” she admitted. “But it won’t hurt to try.”
    We took the elevator to the fifth floor, and Percy Haskell was waiting for us in gray flannel pants and a purple polo shirt. He was several inches shorter than me and so thin I wondered if he had been ill. “Welcome,” he said, greeting Becca with a smile and then shaking my hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
    â€œJack Logan,” I told him. “I take Spanish. But I hear you’re a great teacher.”
    â€œI wouldn’t rely on my favorite student for an accurate opinion on that score,” he said with a laugh. He led us into his small apartment, and the door swung closed. It looked very solitary, like a jail cell or a hermit’s cave. Besides an old bicycle and many well-thumbed books, there weren’t much in the way of personal touches to indicate he had friends or a girlfriend or any kind of outside interest. I didn’t see a computer or a TV or any electronics. I wondered how such a smart guy from England had ended up alone in a dingy one-bedroom apartment in Hackensack, with a job as thankless as part-time Latin teacher at our jock school.
    â€œTea?” he asked us.
    â€œI’m fine with a glass of water,” I said.
    â€œMe too,” Becca told him.
    â€œCold tap water it is then,” he said, “coming right up.”
    He waved us into the living room. There was a couch and a table near the one window, which looked down at an auto parts store. Several old books with leather bindings sat on the table, some of them propped open. Wedged inside were file cards with notes written in tiny handwriting in different-colored ink.
    He came in with two