The Total Package
Authors: Stephanie Evanovich
For Robert and Doris
a.k.a. Boris and Natasha
a.k.a. Dad and Mom
With all my love
CONTENTS
ALTHOUGH SMOKING HAD
been outlawed inside public establishments more than a decade ago, the bar still had leftover smog. Invisible yet pungent, it hung like an indiscernible cloud. Adding to it were eons of postadolescent hormones and a corner that never could completely ditch the smell of vomit. Aptly named the Bunker in this particular rural Pennsylvania college town, it was where a college freshman managed to get served a few beers, and the owner could get away with it as long as neither acted like a jackass. The red-plastic-covered barstools and chairs were sometimes sticky from humidity and residual sweat from game-winning celebrations and defeat commiserations. When ordering pitchers of beer you didn’t look too closely at the glasses, telling yourself that the alcohol would kill any germs, which was part of the general belief that one was invincible. Still, the Bunker inspired the kind of nostalgia that made it a must-stop whenever former students attended homecoming.
Everyone remembers their old college hangouts. But while Tyson Palmer sat alone at a table in the barf corner of his alma mater, he was grasping for memories. Maybe it was the weed that dulled his senses. Or maybe the Percocet. He still believed he could hold his liquor.
“I’ll take another Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.” He jiggled the ice in his now-empty glass at the server making a pass across the room, his voice deceptively steady. “Make it a double.” Some of the recollections were so clear. Not too long ago, around these parts people had described him as promising and gifted. Tyson had been the classic success story, raised in a hardworking, middle-class family that met all the American Dream criteria, even if those requirements were throwbacks from the ’50s. There was one boy and one girl born to a mother who worked part-time when they were in school and dressed them up for church every Sunday. A dad who came home every night from his management job at a local building supply store at five fifteen on the dot to enjoy a cocktail with his loyal wife as she finished preparing dinner. Douglas Palmer was the kind of father who played poker once a month with the neighborhood fellas and never missed a peewee football or baseball game. Whose eyes lit up when he realized just how far and accurate his then-ten-year-old son could aim. He tried to downplay his pride as the accolades began rolling in and coaches took real notice. Then, slowly but surely, he became the father who vicariously began to live his own variation of football fantasy through that son. After acting as his agent when Tyson signed with the Boston Blitz, his dad divorced his mom and moved in with a twenty-three-year-old exotic dancer.
Within the last three years, the adjectives attached to Tyson Palmer’s name slowly morphed into overrated, reprehensible. A real waste. Wanting to stay in his father’s good graces, Tyson had often joined him in his downhill slide. Douglas Palmer proved a bad example. Tyson took responsibility for his mother’s heartbreak, stuffed all the hurt and pain deep down inside, and set the sequence on his time bomb to self-destruct.
Coming back here was supposed to be a kind of victory lap. But Tyson wasn’t being followed by throngs of alumni or asked to attend any ceremonies, not even the ones taking place on the football field. He wasn’t invited to any parties. Instead Tyson had been forced to retreat to the Bunker, where he was pointed at from a safe distance, like an animal in a zoo. Occasionally someone would approach him, politely engage him for a few moments, mostly about the weather, and be on their way. Nothing to see here—the phrase cops always used to move spectators along from a crime scene. His teammates and Blitz management had tried to be supportive . . . in the beginning. But it wasn’t long before Tyson’s shenanigans robbed him of his ability to lead, and they all had grown weary of him, even before he started racking up more interceptions than touchdowns on game day. He knew that within the next twenty-four hours his dirty drug test results would leave him jobless and probably tossed out of the league. The book they were getting ready to throw at him was heavy
. I sure won’t miss those cold Massachusetts winters,
he thought to console himself.
“Tyson?”
Bloodshot eyes focused on a face that was vaguely familiar. It was a wisp of a ghost brushing by him. Someone insignificant, but at the same time, not—pretty, but low maintenance. Dark hair, hazel eyes with a glint of determination magnified through the lenses of her glasses. When he’d seen her last, she had something he needed. And something he’d wanted.
“Helen?” he tried to zero in. They had spent quality time together, at least for a while. He hadn’t seen her naked, but it probably wasn’t from lack of trying. Those whose pants he didn’t get into were much more likely to stand out. “Ellen?”
“Ella,” she said hopefully. “I was your English tutor, in your senior year?”
Now he remembered. A flash that was stark and vivid, from the predrug days, before those first few injuries that weren’t so quick to heal. She had been one of several students handpicked by the administration when he fell short on his classes during football season. Hired for several hours a week to basically cram the exams into his skull and dictate his essays to him. He wasn’t stupid, but he also didn’t make it easy. Back then he thought about nothing but football and was easily distracted when it came to anything else. “Right.” He smiled at her, feeling the warm nostalgic wave. Her last name was something Italian. “Ella Bella.”
He had made up the cheesy nickname for her on a rainy afternoon four weeks into that semester, after they abandoned meeting at the library in favor of his dorm room. When he decided he would rather make out than recite the answers to an upcoming test. She was appealing enough, fresh faced and makeup free, a sophomore who had held on to her freshman fifteen. Not girlfriend material, but he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend.
And after one delicious kiss, Ella Bella had shot him down. Not in cold blood, of course; she’d stammered through the willing-to-date-him speech, but he’d never asked her for a date, and casual sex was off the table. She told him that she was still a virgin and she planned on staying that way. Something about a virgin never failed to make a horny guy hum. Tyson jokingly asked her to bang him every time they were together after that, but he was hardly brokenhearted when she laughed him off. There was always someone else on the sidelines. It was more his way of telling her he was available if she ever wanted to change her mind. He began to view her more like a little sister, especially since she could talk football better than any other girl he knew at school, even better than some of his teammates.
“You remember?” She smiled back at him, and then giggled. He still had it. And clearly she knew nothing of what was happening in his world. These days he was on almost every woman’s shit list.
The server dropped off his fresh drink, but Tyson kept at the remaining ice in his drained glass. Pheromones were producing an equally worthy rush. Ella with the Italian name had barely changed at all. She was still cute. The bar was starting to wind down. It was after 1:00
A.M.
The music had stopped playing, but the other drinkers in the bar didn’t seem to notice. Those in hushed conversations still were quiet, only now lip-reading was no longer required. Rowdy voices remained boisterous.
“Of course I remember. Thanks to you, I got a B.” Not sure if that was true, but he had a knack for mixing his caddishness with boyish charm, even when he was half in the bag. “You’re here for homecoming?”
“Yes, by default. I stayed here to continue on to my master’s. I graduate this year.”
“Congratulations,” he said, straightening up, envious that she would soon be rewarded for having learned all her lessons, including the one about resisting temptation. Suddenly being the biggest partier in the room was a dubious distinction. “Have a seat, let me buy you a drink. We’ll celebrate.” He slid his fresh drink across the table in her direction.
“I’m not there yet.” She took up his offer for a seat across from him and ignored the highball of whiskey. “I still have to make it through the year. How are you?”
A loaded question if ever there was one. And the first time he was asked it all night without the asker trying to quickly take it back. By the kindhearted look on her face, she really wanted to know. But how is anyone who’s about to lose everything and become a social pariah? Who will have managed to fall from grace in such a spectacular fashion and in record time? Looking into the eyes of this innocent bookworm, who was still protected from the outside world by two square miles of college campus, he longed to answer honestly. To tell Ella Bella that he wanted to go home but couldn’t remember his own address. And then confess that even if he did recall it, he couldn’t go there anyway because the repo man was probably lying in wait to take back his Land Rover, the only thing he had left after his exceptionally beautiful trophy wife cleaned him out and left when the rumors started to surface and the police came calling. He wanted to admit that he couldn’t tell the difference between stoned and tired anymore.
“I’m doing great,” he replied, longing to pick up one of the conversations from his past. And if there was one thing he could never be accused of, it was being a whiner.
Her expression didn’t change, and she continued to study him with the same gentle smile.
“You don’t have to keep up appearances for me, Tyson.”
At first it didn’t register, and then he just didn’t want it to. He had already attached himself to the fantasy that she was too busy being intelligent with her nose in a book to be bothered with television. Or the Internet, where his life seemed to play out as he lived it. A train wreck he couldn’t stand watching even as he stood at the helm and drove. He resisted reaching into his pocket for another Percocet, opting instead to take back the Jack Daniel’s he had previously offered her.