“It’s okay, Jason.”

But it wasn’t. Because when the men got their carryout orders and were on their way to the exit, they had to pass the booth in which Griff and Jason sat. As the last one filed past, he said, “You suck, Burkett.” Then he hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat it at Griff. It missed, smacking into the vinyl upholstery inches from Griff’s shoulder.

Their departure left a vacuum. No one moved. Griff figured everyone was waiting to see what he would do. What he wanted to do was follow the guy out and kick his ass up into his hard hat. Had he been alone, he would have.

But with Jason there, he couldn’t. He didn’t mind the embarrassing scene for himself nearly as much as he minded it for the boy, who was sitting with his head down, his hands in his lap beneath the table.

Soon the clerks and other customers resumed their business. Everyone but Jason. “You finished?” Griff asked.

The boy raised his head. “It’s not fair!”

Griff was surprised to see that he wasn’t embarrassed but angry. “What’s not fair?”

“What that man did just now. What people say about you.”

Griff pushed aside his plate and propped his forearms on the edge of the table. “Listen to me, Jason. Spitting like that was disgusting. It only made him look like an asshole, but what I did five years ago was much, much worse.” He looked through the window at the three, who were climbing back into their utility truck. “How much do you think that guy earns in a year?”

Jason raised his shoulder in a disinterested shrug.

“A fraction of what I made when I was playing football. A tiny fraction. That guy works hard and doesn’t earn as much as I spent on having my tailored shirts laundered. He doesn’t hate me for making more money than him. What he hates is that I was living the life every guy dreams of, and I threw it away. I took money for cheating. I was stupid and selfish, and I broke the law. There’s no getting around that.”

“But you’re not bad now.”

He was screwing a paraplegic’s wife for money. That was pretty damn bad. The only thing worse would be to want to screw her whether he was being paid to or not.

He’d tried not to think at all about what had happened. When he did, he tried passing it off as physiological cause and effect, sexual mechanics that, with all the gears oiled and working, had produced a predictable result.

Or as caprice. A fluke. Stars had collided, but it wouldn’t happen again for another million years.

But in whatever terms he tried to explain it, it stayed on his mind. Constantly. Every time he thought about her teeth sinking into the bottom of his thumb, he got hard, his gut tightened with longing, and all he wanted was to be inside her again.

“I’m nobody’s hero, Jason. Don’t make me into one. You want a hero, look at your dad.”

“My dad?” Jason scoffed. “What’s he do that’s heroic?”

“He loves your mom. He loves you. He takes care of you, worries about you.”

Jason, still sullen, said, “That’s nothing.”

“That’s huge.” Then, to keep from sounding too preachy, he added, “But he can’t throw a football for shit. And don’t tell him I said shit in front of you.”

“He says it all the time.”

Griff laughed. “Then he’s my hero.”

Jason started smiling again.

The following day started out like every other. Griff got out of bed and went into the bathroom. As soon as he’d peed, he consulted the calendar he’d tacked to the wall. This was his routine now. He was marking off the days, for crissake.

He’d bought a computer and taught himself to use it. After extensive Internet research, he thought he had a fairly comprehensive overview of the female reproductive system and how it worked, more than he had learned from basic biology in school.

Some of the message boards he’d logged on to gave him more information than he wanted-did he really need to know about mucus plugs and yolk sacs?-but he’d learned a lot about timing and what happened within that twenty-eight-day cycle. He’d learned what an LH surge was.

If he’d been with Laura on the day she ovulated, he approximated when she would have menstruated-if she was going to. Those five days had come and gone. If she’d had a period, and if his calculations were correct, he should have heard from her three days ago, when she should have been ovulating again.

But she hadn’t summoned him back to the house on Windsor Street. So did that mean she hadn’t had a period and therefore had conceived? Maybe she was holding off breaking the glad news until she’d had her pregnancy confirmed by a doctor. Or maybe, because of what had happened the last time, she didn’t intend to call him, ever again. But wouldn’t he have been notified that the deal was off?

Not knowing was making him crazy, but all he could do was wait.

As he did every morning, he made a notation on the calendar, then showered. When he stepped out of the tub, he heard his newspaper being thunked against his front door. Disinclined to dress yet, he wrapped a towel around his waist. He retrieved the paper from his small porch, went into the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee.

While waiting for it to brew, he perused the front page and drank orange juice from the carton. He flipped the paper over, read the headlines beneath the fold, and finding them relating to the same world crises that they’d related to yesterday, he pulled out the sports section.

The headline caused his heart to stutter. Blood rushed to his head and made him momentarily dizzy. “The fuck is this?”

BURKETT QUESTIONED IN DEATH OF BOOKMAKER, the headline read.

FURTHER WOES FOR FORMER COWBOY?

VETERAN COACH DENOUNCES FALLEN STAR.

Recognizing the stories, he looked at the dateline. Not this morning’s issue. It was five years old, and though it was well preserved, he saw now that the paper on which the sports section was printed didn’t match the rest of the newspaper. It had yellowed some with age.

Rodarte.

He knocked over a kitchen chair in his rush. In seconds, he was out of the kitchen, through the living area, and flinging open his front door. He charged out onto his narrow patch of yard and scanned the street. He didn’t really expect to see the green sedan, and he didn’t. Rodarte had given himself time to get away.

“Son of a bitch!” Griff grabbed the towel, which was slipping off his waist, and stormed back inside, slamming the door behind him. Rodarte hadn’t reappeared in almost two months. Now, just when Griff had begun to think-hope-the bastard had given up and gone away, this.

Clever of him, planting this old sports section in today’s newspaper where Griff was certain to find it. Rodarte was rubbing his nose in the shit he’d made of his life five years ago.

When he felt composed enough to confront the fine print, he righted the chair and poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat down at the kitchen table and began to read. Every word was like a blow, hurtful because it was true.

Not since Pete Rose’s gambling and Jose Canseco’s admission to using steroids had a professional athlete scandalized himself as much as the record-breaking, all-star quarterback Griff Burkett had. Media coverage had been extensive and pervasive. The story had made headlines internationally. ESPN had dedicated hours of programming to it.

But Rodarte had done well to choose this particular issue of The Dallas Morning News, because these stories were summarizing chronicles of his long, inexorable fall.

The gambling had started small, but it grew like a creeping vine he couldn’t kill or control, until it dominated, becoming more exciting for him than the Sunday games. Winning big on a wager was more thrilling than winning big on the gridiron.

It had evolved into an addiction. Before it had got out of hand, he should have been smart enough to recognize the danger signs. Maybe he had. Maybe he had just ignored them.