“That’s the bad news to go along with the good news,” he said. “It can take up to six months.”
“Shit!” I said, too loudly, getting the attention of the old people at the closest tables, and maybe those in line at the cash register. “Even if you get him off, he’s still screwed in terms of making it to Paris.”
“But getting him out of that hellhole is job one,” Dad said, “and two, and three. Then the line can really get moving. And as much as you want him to get to Paris, I just want to get him back to Wellington, Florida.”
“How are you vaporizing the assault charge?” I said.
He grinned.
“I persuaded Gorton to drop it,” he said.
“You must be joking,” I said.
“I joke about a lot of things,” he said. “But not about something as important as your boyfriend.”
“Told you before,” I said. “Not my boyfriend.”
“This is me you’re talking to,” Dad said. “I see the way you look when you talk about him. He looks the same way when he talks about you. I don’t need to be a lawyer to figure that one out. Just your father.”
Then he slid his phone across the table. He said the video was ready to go, just to make sure the volume was low before I hit Play.
“Got this from one of the waiters who was working the tent that night,” he said. “He’d gone out back to have a smoke. Heard some loud voices from the road leading down to the parking lot. Recognized our friend Gorton and decided to shoot some video for his own amusement.”
“How’d you find him?” I said.
Dad shrugged. “When you’re good,” he said, “you’re good.”
And there were all the good parts: Gorton calling Daniel “chico” and objectifying me for all the world to hear. Gorton putting his hands on Daniel and throwing the first punch. Finally, there was Steve Gorton nearly bursting into tears when he saw all the blood on his clothes.
“What did he say?” I asked. “Gorton, I mean. When you showed this to him.”
“Tried to be a tough guy,” Dad said. “Told me he had lawyers to make things like that go away. I had to tell him at that point that Daniel’s lawyer was better.”
“You.”
“Me.”
“My hero,” I said.
“Many people might say superhero,” he said.
He dipped some toast into what was left of his eggs over easy, drank his coffee before waving at the waitress that we needed more.
“Anyway,” he said, “that’s pretty much all of it, at least for now. Still a long way to go.”
There was something about the way he said it.
“Pretty much all of it?” I said.
“Well, I might have mentioned something to Gorton about the video, just in case I needed him to do us a favor someday,” he said.
“Don’t make me beg,” I said.
“Actually, it was just three letters,” Dad said. “TMZ.”
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
MOM HAD GOTTEN HER MRI results back that afternoon, Dr. Garry informing her that she’d suffered an “incomplete” tear of the ligament he’d repaired when she first got hurt. He told her that in a non-Olympic year, he’d recommend arthroscopic surgery, and she’d be as good as new in a month.
“Not good enough,” she said.
Then she asked if she could hurt it more by continuing to ride. He said that he wouldn’t recommend it but he couldn’t stop her.
“But he warned me there were going to be days when it hurt like hell,” Mom said. “I told him not going to Paris would hurt a hell of a lot more.”
We’d just finished dinner at the house and had brought our drinks into the living room. Wine for Mom and me. Whiskey for Gus. Before her fainting spell, Grandmother had never been much for drinking, maybe an occasional glass of wine. Since the fainting spell she’d stopped completely. Mostly her drink of choice was strong black tea.
“Then he told me not to get into any ass-kicking contests for a while,” Mom continued. “I told him that’s what the Olympics were.”
We were getting ready to watch the announcement show on NBCSN for show jumping, the sport’s first time presenting it this way. By now, I’d had nearly a full week to convince myself that I was going to be the alternate and that Mom and Tess and Tyler would be the ones riding in Paris, in both events, individual and team.
“I’m prepared for it, I really am,” I said, not speaking to anyone in particular, more stream of consciousness. “Mom and Tyler have done it longer. They’ve got results going back years, not a couple of months. It’s going to be them. Totally. I get it. I do.”