The SJ.Com 2006 Summer Novel

[21]

Let's try again.  We never seem to get to the end, and we surely won't again, but it's been a helluva good time trying.

Only a few rules:
1) No Terry Haute and Shanna--we have done them to death, they are now married and living in Boca and having great sex without our help.
2) No comments in the middle of the story. If you have to make one, delete it later.
EDIT: 3) If you want the next installment, just post 'I got next' or something, and we will wait for you. That way, you don't spend an hour writing something only to find out your character was killed while you were writing.


I forgot the rest, but we'll figure it out.

And now, with great embarrassment and apologies, the SportsJournalists.com 2006 Summer Novel.

 

[21]

‘fork!  Fuuuckk!! forkforkforkforkfork!'

What else was there to say, in that stunning moment between the glass of vodka slipping out his hand, and then splattering all over the laptop.  He watched the last of the Grey Goose drip down in between the keys…$15 from the hotel bar, and most of it was ice, forkin New York hotel bars.  He said no twist or any of that other crap…but the dumb broad behind the bar threw in a cruddy lime, now taunting him as it lay like a dead slug on the Caps Lock key.

fork.  He picked up the sloshing laptop—heh, he thought, now we're both sloshed—and tipped it over to the side. A few drips tinkled out. He thought about licking them up off the bedspread.

What a forking day. forking game goes into extra innings, computer crashes halfway through finishing the column, which sucked anyway, and the only cab back to midtown had air in three of the tires and smelled like it had been hauling goat hides and used toilet paper.

Was this the same day? Was it just this morning that he woke up in his own bed in his own house in his own nice New Jersey suburb, next to his own wife down the hall from his own kids? Was that today, that he left for the ballpark early, realized he forgot his laptop at home, and went back to get it? Was it just today that he walked into the kitchen to find his wife and her hairy-assed cooking teacher making baked chicken on the new granite countertop, her legs pointed up toward the pot rack as she whapped him repeatedly with a spatula and screamed ‘More sauce! More! Sauce!!'

It had not been a pretty scene. Things hadn't been good—probably never had been. She was a rich brat who married him to pish off her parents, who wanted her to marry a lawyer, not a football player. He married her because his friends thought she was hot, and he was tired of dating bimbos. 

He had stood in the kitchen that morning, not sure whether to laugh or cry. By the time they noticed him, he had already thrown a few things in a bag and was standing over them. ‘You should turn over,' he said,' this side looks done.'

And now here he was in this lousy hotel room, thinking about his kids and his dog and wondering what the hell…..what the heck.

He reached for his computer bag, where he knew he would find his last friend today….the perfect Cohiba he had started a few hours ago.  His hand fished through the bag, under some gym shorts…sunglasses….socks…he had left in a hurry….cell charger….OUCH! shirt!  Pulled back his hand…his finger was bleeding.  Something had stuck him, hard.

He dumped out the bag onto the bed.  All his shirt tumbling everywhere…and then he gasped.  Five syringes, uncapped, taped together.  A note dangled...a scribble on a cocktail napkin...'Have a Toot at The Train Whistle' was stamped on one side, a smeared but delicate handwriting on the other.

He carefully picked up the napkin by the corner: ‘Wanna know who used these? Five needles, five guys…Don't look for me, I will find you.'

fork.

 

[Freelance Hack]

Just when Evan Seville thought his day was ending, it was just beginning.

 

[Boom_70]

Evan studied the note. The writer clearly had to be female judging by the neatness.

 

[21]

All you had to know about Dr. Mitch Mendel was that his mother joined mah jong groups just so she had more places to brag about him. Handsome, brilliant, finished Yale undergrad in three years before heading to Harvard Med School. He called his mother every morning before rounds, bought her a Camry for her 70th birthday, and never ate pork.

When she told people what he did, she shrugged and pretended she understood. “He's the Doctor to the Superstars,' she laughed, repeating the line from his website. ‘All the big players, they go to Doctor Mitch!'

And they did. Bones, muscles, joints…he was the man. If you were a player with a big future, or hoping for one, you knew Doctor Mitch.

The Feds knew Doctor Mitch too. They knew about the plainly wrapped boxes that showed up at his offices every day, and what was in them. They knew about the offshore accounts, and the investment in the Arubian pharmaceutical company, and they knew about the secret computer files that listed countless professional athletes, and their drug regimens.

What they didn't know, when they busted into Doctor Mitch's office late one night, was that they'd find his bloody body at his desk and his severed head in the toilet, so badly beaten that even his mother couldn't identify him.

 

[DyePack]

Willie McAndrews was the lucky agent who found the good doc's decapitated body. He had led the raid, but now he had more than he bargained for. The neck stem drooped down the doc's back. Blood saturated the carpet, the desk and the doc's $800 office chair.

"Better glove up, boys," McAndrews said. While the stooges fished for the routine evidence, McAndrews turned to the file cabinet. The records were all on the computer, but the agent knew there was something more important in the room. He reached behind the cabinet and found the safety deposit box key taped to the back.

"Money. Dough. Coin of the realm," he mumbled to himself as he recalled a line from a dime-store novel he'd picked up a summer or two ago.

 

[Boom_70]

Evan removed the tape from the syringes and layed them all on the table. He picked up the note and held it up to the light. The writing style was very familiar he thought. He then carefully picked up one of the syringes and studied it. Upon closer inspection he noticed a black mark next to the calibratiion "3 cc". He picked up the others and found that each had the same mark on a different calibration - 1- 5 CC. He layed the syringes in their correct order 1-2-3- 4-5 .

 

[21]

His cell phone rang. 'START ME UP! IF YOU START ME UP I'LL NEVER....'
'Yeah, Seville here..."
He knew from the breathing it was Marcee...now that she was smoking three packs a day (another quirk to pish off her parents), he could hear her and smell her three counties away.
'Evaaaaaan,' she whined. 'We need to taaaawwwwk.'
All the Louis Vuitton and Burberry her parents' money could buy, and she still pure Garden City.
'Marcee,' he sighed, still staring at the note and the needles and wondering if he could get a disease from being stuck by one. 'I don't want to talk. Not tonight. I called the kids on their cells earlier and told them I was on the road for a few days....'
She wasn't listening...he could hear her crying and snuffling and babbling about being a-PREE-see-ated and WHAHN-ted.
He caught his own reflection in the mirror as she blew her nose into the phone. Still looked pretty good for a guy in his late 40s….his hair had been silvery grey since he was in his 20s, and he still had all of it. Still had the physique of a lineman…still had the slight limp from the busted knee that ended his college career in the middle of his senior year at Michigan. Becoming a sportswriter was just another result of the injury…if he couldn't play, at least he could stay close to the game.
‘….and I never feel that you caaaaaaare about me…'
He closed his eyes. ‘Marcee…I am hanging up. You do what you do, and I will do what I do, and we'll see what happens. Go cook something, you'll feel better. Goodnight.' And he snapped the phone shut.
For a long moment he shut his eyes...he needed sleep...he needed a drink....he needed to know who was putting syringes in his bag.
The phone rang again. 'WHAT DO YOU WANT, MARCEE?!' he snapped.
But instead of Marcee's gravelly I-just-ate-a-razor-blade voice, he heard soft breathing...soft music...silence.
'Hello? he asked. 'Anyone there?'
A gentle wispy voice wafted through the phone and straight into his pants.
'You get my package, baby?" she whispered.
'Ummm.'
'I got a story to tell,' she breathed. 'Decide how much it's worth to you. Sleep well, baby.'
Click. She was gone.

 

[DyePack]

Willie fingered the key in his palm, just for an instant. Then he slipped it into his pocket.

"Tomorrow," he thought. "Tomorrow I'll go to the bank. After that, I just have to wrap up this case without anybody getting wise. Then, off to Tahoe forever."

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Groove stood 6-foot-6. His mother, a single parent from the projects in heck's kitchen, had christened him Orlando Battle, but he had long since cast that name aside, as he had all vestiges of his gangland life. No more drive-bys. No more sprinting home to beat the sunlight before the murderous thugs - as opposed to the ones who would simply beat you up over your Nikes - wound their way through the neighborhood.
No, Groove, who'd heard  “Baby Let's Groove” on the radio and couldn't get it out of his clean-shaved head and then decided to start introducing himself around that way, was now in a growth industry. Which meant he had nice accommodations that required no sprinting to safety. And a car. And girls. And, most important, respect.
It started with the small-time stuff, which really didn't last long. He'd narrowly avoided getting busted for selling weed. This strange man in a Mercedes had rolled through as Groove had sidled up to an undercover cop. Mercedes asked for directions, then cut his eyes at Groove in a way that clearly told him to walk away from what looked like an easy $100.
Strange thing was, Mercedes kept showing up, invariably close to the local hardcourts. And he kept doing so when street hoops legend Nasdaque Leeward was playing. It didn't take long before Groove figured out what was going on: Mercedes was dealing. Whatever it was, though, it wasn't weed. Groove knew enough to know this Mercedes wasn't the product of a gateway drug.
Then one day, Mercedes pulled up to him when nobody else was around. Or at least, visible. Though it was their second meeting, it was the first with a formal introduction.
“I hear they call you Groove,” he said to Groove's back, the wheels on the Benz slowly turning as Groove walked. This was enough to get his attention.
“Sez who?” You didn't just open up to strangers in this neighborhood.
“Oh, I see. Your mom taught you not to talk to strangers, right? Well, My name's Mitch Mendel. And I think you owe me one.”
“fork off.”
“Well, I could do that,” Mendel said, “but I could also turn on you. You do realize you were about to sell a cop some marijuana that day, right?”
Groove stopped walking and faced the car. Damn, that was a fine machine, he thought. I can see myself in every surface.
“Okay ... Mitch, so what do you want?”
Mendel had made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Even a ninth-grade dropout knew enough math to recognize that muling syringes to the Hamptons at the behest of this strange man in the Mercedes was more lucrative - not to mention safer and more interesting - than dealing small-time drugs in Harlem. And his general distrust of white people flipped on him with this dude, who seemed to have the attention of the most prominent hoops players on the streets. If he had the sack to mosey around the blackest of New York boroughs, then he must be serious, indeed.
That was eight months ago. Now, Groove had that sack in his briefcase. Walking to the No. 7 train, he kept looking at the briefcase to see if blood was leaking out of it. He'd thought about claiming a bigger souvenir, and Mendel's head in the toilet added a symbolic touch, if he did say so himself, but in the end, the good doctors scrotal endowment seemed most appropriate. He'd just take them down to Shea himself, hang out at the players' parking lot, and wait for the clients to roll up so he could break the news.


[[wow, i just noticed this was my 2500th post. Do I get a toaster or something?]]

 

[21]

The first time Bianca Macedonia forked a ballplayer, she thought maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe her expectations were too high, but it was without a doubt the worst sex she had ever had, and that was saying something.

Cole Slawicki was gorgeous and dumb, with a rotator cuff that looked like frat house spaghetti dinner.  He was the first athlete she ever slept with, an experience so stunningly bad that in the weeks and months that followed, she found herself forking an endless array of patients trying to find just one who could get her within remote range of an orgasm. So far, no luck.

In the five years she worked as a physical therapist for Dr Mitch Mendel, she had had her hands on more professional athletes than any woman on earth, and that was just in the office. She had seen them pee and puke, she had seen their ill-timed hard-ons and flaccid failures, she had seen them cry and scream and beg for mercy as she sunk her fingers deep into their muscle tissue, or their joint, or their rectum…whatever Dr Mitch needed her to do.  She avoided their gaze as they watched those 34Ds fight the restraint of her Doctor Mitch logo tshirt, avoided the random hand reaching for her ass, avoided the dumb lines about how their wives were frigid benches.

Basically, she had seen athletes at their weakest moments, and found them to be entirely unsexy. 

There was only one man who made her reach between her legs at night and dream, and that was Doctor Mitch. Five minutes in the same room with him, just seeing patients, and she'd have to go change her thong. When they were really busy on the road, like during Super Bowl week, she had to run out to Bloomingdales to buy a dozen more.

They had been together once, and she could still remember every moment.  A trip to the Pro Bowl, a gift from one of their players for the whole office staff after they saved the guy's knees and his career, and never told a soul the injury had come from a loan shark's baseball bat.  Bianca had traveled plenty of times with Mitch, but this was the first time he had shown up at her hotel room door, pretending he needed a button sewn on his shirt.  By dawn, he was still missing a button, but he had found hers.  She had never seen such a big cock….three days later, it still hurt to pee.  When they returned to the office the next day, however, he took her aside and explained it could never happen again. “I don't want to lead you on,' he said, patting her shoulder. ‘I could never explain this to my mother.'  And before she could respond, he announced, ‘Patients to see! Let's go!' 

Was it possible to hate and love someone with equal passion?

Cole Slawicki was just what she needed. 

 

[slappy4428]

She also realized Dr. Mitch has some major shortcomings; he wouldn't do.
(I made my own donation this morning...)