Rough Trade

beer?”—which they dra nk from tankards the size of turrets.
    There was even an actual monarch, a three-hundred-pound welder who ruled the bleachers from beneath a crown of beer cans and moth-eaten ermine robes. Home games found him attended by his court: his Rubenesque queen, an assortment of swaggering knights who demonstrated their fealty (and foolhardiness) by baring their chests in all weather, and a leering, gap-toothed jester in purple tights and a cockscomb cap.
    As I waited in the shadow of Monarchs Stadium for the guard to wave me into the players’ lot, it occurred to me that if the team was looking for a physical symbol of their problems, this was it. Built as part of the city’s unsuccessful bid for the 1932 Olympics, it was a structure that was simultaneously imposing and decayed. Big enough for the opening and closing ceremonies of an Olympiad and designed as an oval to accommodate the track-and-field events, it was a spectacularly flawed venue for football. Not only were the sight lines terrible, but over the years moisture seeping through the concrete had caused the structure to crumble, leaving gaping holes and rusted, exposed girders. The Monarchs had played there for thirty-one consecutive seasons, during which time, Beau never tired of pointing out, the johns had never worked right.
    I eased my battered Volvo in between a Ferrari and a Porsche, both red, and trailed Jeff into the dark bowels of the stadium. He led the way through a series of narrow corridors, up a service elevator loaded with pallets of hot dog buns, and along a series of dimly lit concourses that smelled of spilled beer. The team offices were in the uppermost reaches of the stadium and consisted of three adjoining double-wide trailers suspended from the roof and accessible from the concourse below via a series of poorly lit metal staircases barely wide enough for one person to pass.
    Jeff’s office adjoined his father’s, and both were jammed with Monarchs memorabilia and done up in the team’s colors. The walls were painted a mustardy yellow, no doubt meant to invoke gold, and the indoor/outdoor carpeting was the color of grape jelly. Taken together the effect was of an old bruise. On the wall opposite Jeff’s desk was an enormous board on which was written the name of every player in the NFL, along with his team, the length of his contract, and his reported salary. A quick look at the totals told me that the Monarchs were carrying the third highest salary load in the league. It was, I reflected, a high price to pay for last place.
    Jeff sat down behind his desk, and I settled into the visitor’s chair. Up to this point our relationship had been one that could best be described as once removed in that it had always been dictated by or conducted through Chrissy. That was only natural seeing as he was my best friend’s husband. However, now that I was being thrust into the middle of the Monarchs’ financial crisis, I found myself taking stock of him afresh.
    In his early thirties, Jeff Rendell still had the kind of lantern-jawed, Clark Kent good looks that made you want to whip off his glasses and run your fingers through his hair—just to see what developed. However, compared to the men who Chrissy’d been involved with in the past—pro athletes and soap opera stars—Jeff was stunningly ordinary.
    Everything else I knew about him I knew second-hand. From Chrissy I’d heard about his disjointed childhood marked by a succession of opportunistic stepmothers and his own adolescent transgressions. From the sports pages I’d followed the course of his near epic disagreements with Coach Bennato, Monday morning volleys of accusation and blame acrimonious enough to have been picked up and reported in the national press.
    One thing was clear from all this: football had always been the one constant in Jeff Rendell’s life. He’d grown up in the sport the same way that acrobats are raised to the circus. He’d spent his childhood on the sidelines and in the locker room and gone to work in the team’s front office straight out of college. He’d literally known no other world.
    I understood, perhaps too well, about the burdens carried by the children of prominent parents, but at least I’d had the chance to put some distance between myself and the world in which I’d been raised. While no one could ever blame Jeff for not striking out on his own—there aren’t many people who’d turn their back on the chance to be a