T.K.’s not angry. He’s let Ted Monreves handle his business dealings long enough to know Monreves wouldn’t deliberately sell him out, no matter what the price. If Ted made the deal, he did it because he honestly believed that, at the worst, it would do T.K. no harm. T.K. nods. “O.K., so I’m going to be the centerfold in EBS. What the hell do I care about my image, anyway?” He reflects for a moment before posing a question to Sarah. “Why me? Why not Matision or one of the younger guys?”

Her frankness is bluntly revealing. “Two reasons. First, you were the only famous player I could persuade to do it.”

T.K. throws a dirty look at Ted which Ted does his best to pretend he doesn’t see. “The other reason?”

“Your type of man fascinates me.”

For a moment, her totally unexpected admission leaves T.K. at a loss for words, but only for a moment. “So you’re attracted to old men and losers,” he says through a jovial grin.

She tilts her head, as though viewing his statement from a different perspective. “That’s exactly what interests me about you. Not the part about old men and losers. You’re certainly neither of those. No, something else, something I noticed in you in Atlanta and again, here, now. You’re so terribly hard on yourself. You seem to have an amazingly low regard for your abilities and, I sense, for your profession as well. I don’t see how you can survive, let alone excel, in street football feeling the way that you do.”

“I’m only kidding.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, I guess you’ll have lots of time to find out. When do we start?”

“How about tomorrow morning?”

“Super. Practice starts at six A.M.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Great. Bring your camera. As a special exclusive to the readers of EBS, I’ll demonstrate some of the more humane forms of hand-to-hand killing.”

Without waiting for her reply, he collects Eddie and leaves.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

“There’s the kickoff,” announces Timothy Enge, “and that starts another great season of SFL action.”

Jaime and Surdo Sakura watch this, the first game of the year, a hard-fought contest between the San Francisco Prospectors and the Honolulu Sharks, from a spacious one bedroom displacement home on Maui.

The game is being played on Oahu, in Honolulu, and its boundaries encompass the high-rise apartment house on Walinea Street in which the Sakuras reside. The official SFL playing area is 700 yards by 350 yards, approximately eight blocks by four, although it can be slightly more or less subject to the exact layout of the streets concerned. Depending on the precise location of the streets selected, this usually means that anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand people will have to be evacuated, given a one day football vacation as the SFL tactfully phrases it.