To cap off the troubles he’d had sleeping, Brian Kelly caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, his towel higher on his frame than he’d remembered. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he thought to himself as he wiped the humidity from the mirror so he could continue his now intense self-scrutiny. “Moobs, Brian. You’ve got man boobs. Jesus, how much have you put on?” There was no questioning the season’s effects to date. Nothing fit the way it was supposed to. Letting the towel drop to the floor, Kelly stepped into the master suite in nothing but his flip flops, his arms held wide. “Paqui! Am I fat?!”
Before his wife could answer, the door bell chimed, shattering the otherwise silent Sunday afternoon. Kelly threw on his track suit pants and jogged down the curving grand staircase. He paused by the video screen to observe who was outside. It was the Athletic Director.
“Come in, Jack,” Kelly said, opening the crystal, iron and oak door. “Can I offer you a….”
The AD whirled around, forcing Kelly to recoil against the wall. “You can offer me a fucking idea of what the fuck you and your band of village idiots are doing out there, Brian!”
Kelly immediately grew defensive, angry. He jabbed his finger into his boss’s chest, pushing him across the marbled foyer. Snarling through clenched teeth, “You wanna know what the fuck we’re doing out there, Jack? We’re winning goddamn games.”
“Brian?” It was Paqui’s voice from upstairs. “Brian? Who is it? Is everything okay?”
http://youtu.be/th370QmFtk8
Hearing her voice, Kelly steadied himself and grew calmer, guiding Swarbrick into the kitchen, over to the island. “Fine!” he shouted. “It’s just Jack, honey! We’ll be in the kitchen!”
Swarbrick pulled a red seedless grape from the bunch in the bowl on the table and popped it in his mouth. “I’m not happy, Brian. I’m really not…dammit that’s a wonderful grape.” He pulled a handful from the bunch, holding them to the light. “What’re these, organic?”
Kelly took his bottle of Green Spot from its and put two rock glasses on the counter, pouring into each. “Jesus Christ, Jack, I don’t know. Meijer? They’re grapes from the fucking Meijer, okay, Jack? Did you come over here to break my balls about the fucking produce or the game? And why are you here? You couldn’t wait the ten minutes for me to get to campus?”
Swarbrick spoke through a mouthfull of grapes. “I’ll be candid, Brian. No one is happy, right now, and I need to know what you’re going to do to change that.”
Kelly dumped the whiskey down his throat and banged the glass against the counter top as he pushed the other glass towards the AD. “You mean other than win? You saw that we won yesterday, right?”
“Brian,” Swarbrick smiled sarcastically, “of course I saw that we won, but I didn’t think you’d need to dial up P.I. quite so often to get the job done. Do you honestly think that game felt like a win?”
“You mean anymore than Pitt or Purdue last year felt like wins? For Christsake Jack, what do you want from me?”
“I want confidence-building Brian. Two straight wins and we’re still sitting at twenty-second in the polls, Brian. You think that’s good enough to get me my game against the SEC and do you honestly think that if you get me that game that we have a real chance?”
Kelly walked to the Florida room, leaving his AD and his grapes. He fell into his recliner, admiring the ice in his glass and the thin width of whiskey at the bottom. He thought to himself, “I’m a bad interception away from 4-0 and I got this guy breathing down my neck.”
Swarbrick stepped into the room, his shoes lightly tapping on the polished concrete floors. “You know that winning isn’t enough, Brian. You need to be winning big with these boys.”
“Do I, Jack? For who, Jack? The fucking boosters who care more about those goddamn gold mums than they do about the game going on between them? You know what, for a team that’s not a full strength, I think we’re doing pretty good, and we’re a couple of missed assignments away from being a great team.”
Swarbrick choked down his drink, not moving further into the room. “What are you going to do about Oklahoma, Brian?”
“What about Oklahoma, Jack?” Kelly pushed his legs down, vaulting from the recliner. He loped into and through the kitchen, throwing on and zipping up his track suit top as he went, Swarbrick now trailing in his wake.
Kelly opened the door, heading down the path of slate pavers to his truck. “Brian!” Swarbrick called “Don’t you walk away from me!”
Kelly had by now climbed inside his truck and slammed the door closed. The tires spun in the drive, decorative gravel spitting away as the truck rolled down toward the street. Swarbrick began running down towards it, his black trench coat billowing behind him like disjointed bat wings. Paqui appeared in the bulls-eye window upstairs, watching.
The white truck dropped into gear and squealed forward, a cloud of exhaust and red brake lights as he observed, then immediately sped through the stop sign on the corner. Swarbrick ran after him for a few steps, “Brian! Stop the goddamn truck and get back here!” Realizing the coach was gone, he stopped at the corner, now doubled-over with his hands on his knees. “Jesus Christ, Brian!” To himself, he could only mutter over his gasping, “Is everything okay?”
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
- Finding Flaws in a Diamond: Clemson’s Rushing Offense - December 17, 2018
- Why Nobody Will Cotton to Notre Dame - December 3, 2018
- Irish Finish Regular Season Perfect 12-0 - November 26, 2018
