But now I knew. For a second or two I was almost relieved, the way you are when you forget a name and then it comes back to you.
Larry Holleran.
You should have seen the way they greeted him—Coach! Great to see you! Welcome home!—their voices full of joy and wonder, like he’d returned from the dead.
So that’s who it is.
The job search had been stalled for weeks, and I hadn’t been able to figure out why. I’d heard a rumor that a new candidate had popped up at the last minute, but that was it. No name, no identifying details. Just a rumor.
It hadn’t made sense at the time. I knew my competition—it’s a small world in secondary ed—and all my rivals were out of the running, including Angela Vargas, the only one who’d seemed like a genuine threat. I asked Jack if he’d heard anything and he said no, and told me to relax, because these things always take longer than you think they will. I’d thought about calling Kyle again, but I didn’t want to look too needy or paranoid. I figured he would warn me if something bad was happening, and maybe give me some advice about how to deal with it, because we were friends, and he was on my side.
But that was my mistake, because Kyle wasn’t my friend and the knife was already in my back.
- 28 - Jack Weede
I walked Diane out to her car. She’d had several glasses of wine over the course of dinner.
“You sure you’re okay to drive? I’m happy to take you home if—”
“Thank you,” she said. “But I’m fine.”
The night was windy and clear. She was wearing a dark coat I’d never seen before. It had a nubbly texture and gave her a flattering youthful silhouette. I was a slouching old man in a rumpled sport coat.
“That was nice,” I said. “I’m glad we got a chance to catch up a little. It’s been a long time.”
“It has.” She glanced back at the restaurant. Some members of our group were loitering near the entrance, talking and laughing, not wanting the night to end. “I can’t believe Larry Holleran showed up. He hasn’t changed a bit.”
“I bet he dyes his hair,” I said. “You can’t be that age and not have a little gray, right?”
Larry had always been vain. He used to brag about doing a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups first thing every morning, and would challenge his football players to punch him in the stomach as hard as they could.
Go ahead, he’d tell them. You can’t hurt me.
But they would never do it. They were too afraid.
“Is he moving back here?” She had to hold her hair down to keep it from blowing in her face. “It kinda sounded like he was.”
I’d noticed that too. Larry had made a toast during dessert. He said how great it was to see us all again, and joked that we might be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
“I hope not,” I said. “I like him a lot better when he’s in Pennsylvania.”
“What do you care?” She was smiling, but there was an edge in her voice. “You’re gonna be out in your RV, living the dream. You’re gonna forget all about us.”
“I won’t forget you,” I said.
Our dinner companions had finished their goodbyes, and now they were heading in our direction, pressing their key fobs, their cars blinking and chirping in response.
“Oh, Jack.” She stepped forward and hugged me, the first time we’d embraced in almost a decade. Her coat felt rough against my hand, but only for a second, and then she stepped back, out of my reach. “You take care of yourself, okay?”
“You too,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tracy Flick
I made it through the rest of dinner on autopilot, keeping one eye on Larry Holleran and the other on Kyle, my ears tuned to the conversation on the other side of the room. I tried to slow down, to convince myself that I was jumping to a bad conclusion, but the wet cement in my stomach told me otherwise. I’d been betrayed before; I knew what it felt like.
And Larry wasn’t even trying to hide it. He made a circuit of the table, shaking hands like a politician working the rope line, looking everyone in the eye, radiating authority and easy masculine charm, the self-confidence of a proven winner. He grabbed my hand in both of his and squeezed a little too hard.
“Tracy, honey. It’s good to see you again. I’ve been hearing great things about your work. I’m gonna need to pick your brain a little one of these days. Get to know you a little better.”
“Please don’t call me honey,” I told him.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded crisply, as if I were his superior officer. “Your preferences are duly noted.”
I wanted to confront Kyle, but I didn’t trust myself, not with the other Board members around, so I fled the restaurant as soon as I could, before the fake smile melted off my face, and drove straight home. I pulled into my driveway, sat there for a few seconds, and pulled right back out again.
You’ve got to do something. You can’t just let this happen.
I went to the Lemon Drop Tavern, ordered a Manhattan at the bar, and tried to think.
What’s going on? I texted Kyle. Is there something you need to tell me?
Five minutes went by. No answer.
I thought you were my friend.
Two more minutes.
LARRY HOLLERAN??? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!
Larry may have been an excellent football coach, but he was a terrible Assistant Principal. I knew this firsthand, because I’d had to clean up his mess. He botched the schedule, made terrible hiring decisions, and was wildly inconsistent on disciplinary matters. His evaluations and reports were unreadable, completely useless, because he didn’t know what he was talking about and wasn’t smart enough to fake it.
This is amazing, Jack used to tell me when I first came on board. I can actually understand what you write.
But I also knew that it didn’t matter. Larry Holleran was a local legend, a charming loudmouth, the man who brought home the trophies.
And who was I? I was nobody. A woman. A lowly bureaucrat. A doctor in quotation marks. It didn’t matter that I was better than he was—smarter and more competent and harder working and more dedicated to the kids.
I couldn’t win.
They wouldn’t let me.
Kyle Dorfman
We had an after-party at my house, a casual rooftop gathering. There were six of us seated around the teak fire table, the blue flames flickering up through a bed of smooth gray river stones.
“I can’t wait to work with your son,” Larry Holleran told Charisse. “I’ve been hearing great things about him.”
To be honest, I was a little annoyed with Larry. We’d asked him to play it cool at the restaurant—it was a delicate situation with the job search, and there were still some procedural wrinkles to iron out—but he just walked in and dominated the room, acting like the job was already his. He was sending us a not-so-subtle signal, letting us know that he’d be calling his own shots from now on, and wouldn’t be interested in a lot of guidance or oversight. My colleagues didn’t seem to mind, though.
“Marcus is amazing,” Ricky said. “He can run and he can throw and he can see the whole field. He’s the real deal.”