Fallen Gods

Two

"It must have been a hell of a shock for you, with your husband just dropping in his tracks like that."

"Have you been playing football for long without your helmet?" Sarah

Grace Skinner asked, wryly, her voice suddenly brittle. "Of course it was a hell of a shock. All I could do was scream." Her mouth set tight for a few seconds. "Bob collapsing at my feet, I'm a damn doctor, and all I could do was stand there and scream."

Ron Neidholm's massive quarterback's hand enclosed hers. "Hey there," he murmured. His voice had always struck her as surprisingly gentle in such a big man; its contrast with the rest of his physical makeup had always amused her. Indeed it was that, rather than his rugged good looks, or the blueness of his eyes, which had caused the fluttering in her chest at their first meeting, thirteen years earlier. "Don't go taking the guilt on yourself," he told her, earnestly. "This is your husband we're talking about, and at your parents' burial into the bargain. Goddamn right you screamed. In your shoes I'd have done the same thing."

She glared at him across the small table, and then the moment passed, and her face creased into a smile. "Oh no you wouldn't," she retorted.

"You're a lawyer. First you'd have checked whether the ground was slippery, in case you could sue the funeral company, then you'd have gone straight home to look out the will."

He laughed out loud. "That's what you think of me, is it? I may have a law degree, but I've never practised, remember."

She took her hand from beneath his and reached out to touch his face, her fingers tracing its scars, gently, on his nose and above his left eye; then she slipped it inside his open-necked shirt, feeling the lump on his collarbone, the relic of an old fracture. "Maybe it's time you did," she whispered.

"Maybe it is," he admitted, with the awkward grin she remembered so well, 'but it's just I love football, Sarah. Even when I was at college, it was my whole life. Apart from you, that is," he added, quickly.

It was her turn to laugh. "I don't think so. That damn ball was always more important than me, when it came to the crunch. Pity help the woman who forced you to a choice."

"That's never happened: not even with you, if you remember. When I told you I was going to Texas to turn professional, you just said

"Fine. Good luck." You didn't give me any argument."

She leaned forward and looked him in the eye. "Would there have been any point?"

He shook his head. "No. To be honest I was glad when you took it so well. I had this idea that I'd come back from the season, whenever it ended, and you'd be there, waiting for me. Was I ever wrong, huh? Like

Babs Walker said, you got bored damn quick."

Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth tightened once more. "Yes, my dear friend Babs… devious little bitch that she is. I tell you, if she wasn't Ian Walker's wife I'd have knocked her head clean off her shoulders for what she did. I thought it was just going to be the three of us for supper, after Ian's evening church service. When I walked in there last night, and saw you…"

He grinned again. "I could tell, don't worry. When I caught the look on your face, I thought Oh shit! and tried to remember what I'd done to make you hate me."

"It wasn't you."

"I know that now, otherwise I wouldn't have dared suggest we have dinner tonight."

"In that case, I'm glad you understood: you never did a thing to make me hate you. No, it was Babs who got under my skin. I knew straight away it was all her idea; it's in her nature. She's supposed to be my best friend, yet she does things like that. She'll say she's only looking out for me, and I guess she thinks she is, but sometimes it's her motive I can't stand. She hated Bob from the start, you know."

"I'd guessed as much," he admitted. "She…" He was stopped in mid-sentence by a tap on the shoulder; he looked up, into the eager face of a middle-aged man.

"Mr. Neidholm," the intruder burst out. He had fine features, lank brown hair and wore a formal black suit. He was holding a white card, and a pen. Oddly he was wearing white gloves, but Sarah noticed blotches on his wrists and realised that he suffered from a skin disease. "I'm sorry to interrupt you and your companion, but I'm a shameless fan of yours," he gushed. "Would you be kind enough to sign this menu for me?"

The big, fair-haired foot baller smiled across at Sarah apologetically, then shrugged his wide shoulders. "Of course," he said. "Gimme it here." He took the card and the man's Mont Blanc ballpoint and scrawled a signature.

"Thank you so much," the man exclaimed. "You've made my summer." He turned to leave, then paused. "May I just say that I desperately hope you play at least one more season. Will you?"

Ron reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "We'll see," he said.

"In a couple of months I'll know for sure."

"That was really nice of you," she said, as the fan made his way back to his table.

"Comes with the territory; football's about guys like him, about little men with physical limitations to the point of handicap, even more than it's about the fat guys with dreams who dress up in the colours and make jackasses of themselves every Sunday in the season. I'm always available to someone like him. Besides," he added, with a grin, 'if I ever do practise law… not that I'll need to… he'll remember it, and so will everyone in this restaurant who saw us."

"I don't believe you're that cynical," she said. "I know you, Mr.

Neidholm. You did it because you're nice, and for no other reason. Not everyone's as devious as our Babs." She hesitated. "You were going to say something about her when that man appeared. What was it?"

"Nothing. Or something that's probably best left unsaid."

"Too late now, big boy. Go on."

He sighed. "If you insist. I was going to say that she made a point of showing me a photograph of you and a guy she said you had a thing with, when you and your husband had marriage problems a while back."

"Cow!" she hissed. "I told her to get rid of that."

"So that was true?"

"Yes, it's true. Bob and I did break up at one point; I came back over here to the States and I did have a relationship with someone. But it's history, and so, very definitely, is he. God," she gasped. "Babs really does hate Bob, doesn't she? Even now, she won't let go."

"Forget her," he said, firmly. "She was always like that, even years ago. You're right; for a minister's wife, she's something of a bitch."

He picked up the empty bottle of San Pellegrino that lay on the table and glanced idly at the label.

"Did they ever pin down what happened to him?" he asked.

She shuddered. "His heart stopped, just like that. Makes you think, doesn't it. There is no Superman; there is no Planet Krypton. Not even the great Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner was invulnerable. Now let's talk about something else."

"Okay, but why are you so bitter?"

"Because he's gone," she snapped. "That's why I'm bitter. I'm angry with him, and I'm angry with the whole fucking world. Ron, I'm trying to come to the terms with the fact that my peaceful, lovely parents have been robbed and murdered in their peaceful, lovely lakeside cabin.

Even now, with them both in the ground, I can barely make myself believe it. I needed Bob beside me more than I ever did before, and yet he's gone, and left me here in Goddamned Buffalo New York, with my three children, and the aftermath of all that horror."

"But come on, Sarah. It was hardly his choice."

Tears welled in her eyes. "Yes it was! He's gone because of his career, his fucking career!"

"Okay, okay, okay, calm down."

She took a deep breath and dabbed her eyes, briefly, with her napkin.

"I will if we talk about something else."

"Sure, let's do that. Do you still have much to do to get your parents' estate through probate?"

"Not about that either," she said. "Let's talk about you. Will you play another season, like that man asked you?"

Ron Neidholm, Sarah Grace's college lover, looked at her across the table, in an hotel dining room which seemed, suddenly, to be empty apart from them. "Honey," he said, in the soft drawl he had acquired in his Texas days, "I have three Superbowl rings, and I have been

All-American or Pro-bowl quarterback more times than I can even remember. That doesn't stop me wanting more glory, or more trophy jewellery, and the Nashville Cats are offering me an unbelievable amount of money to throw that damn ball for another season.

"If that guy had asked me a month ago whether I'd take it, I'd have said "Too damn right!" But now, I'm not quite so sure."

She frowned; she had always showed her surprise that way. "What's making you hesitate all of a sudden?"

"You are, Dr. Sarah Grace Skinner. You are."