The thing is, we’re slammed here, I mean, seriously, Marna, and we’re not sure why you walked off and all. If it’s something . . . if there’s something I can do . . . something . . . you know I’m here for you. . . . Anyway—”
Beep.
“—call us,” she finished into air.
She replaced the receiver in its cradle and stood there. Noise and movement thumped above. Nine tables wondered where their waitress was. Food was getting cold, drinks warm—everything meeting in the middle and waiting. Colleen stood still. She had to go back up, but she didn’t move. She stayed put and felt the moment stretch out.
It was more of a large closet than an actual break room. You could tell it was meant to store jackets and personal items, but Bill had managed to squeeze in a table, a few broken chairs, and a filthy love seat so familiar they all sat on it anyway. Above the love seat, in purple marker, someone had scrawled: Drink the water. The back wall was lined with lockers. Most were empty and the rest had been claimed informally by the wait and bar staff. Colleen hated being down here alone. It made her nervous ever since the time, maybe a year ago, she’d gone through all the lockers. It was past close and everyone else was hanging out upstairs in the almost-dark at table 14, as they often did, hiding from the front doors because it was illegal to be drinking after hours. Colleen had excused herself to fix a contact lens and found herself down here, facing the lockers, then opening them, one by one. Any minute, she’d expected, someone would appear for a jacket or a pack of cigarettes. But no one did, so she rifled through the lockers and took things, slipped them into her pockets and handbag. A crumpled baseball card, some lip balm, a flowered notepad, three coupons for amusement-park discount, a stand-up comedy cassette tape. Just odds and ends, nothing important—or at least she hadn’t thought so at the time. She did it for no reason at all, none of it was stuff she wanted. She just did it. A throwback, maybe, to her shoplifting college days. And no one had missed anything until Lena, of course Lena, threw hell because the baseball card had belonged to her grandfather and gave her luck. A lucky baseball card. Go figure. Well, Bill had sat them all down and everyone of course denied it—Colleen herself was so caught up in the uproar that even she grew indignant. How could someone do such a thing? Trust and camaraderie and all. She and Lena went out for beers that night and tried to guess who it might have been.
It still made her nervous to be here. Partly—and Colleen knew this was irrational—she was worried that someone might suspect something, just like how in stores she still found herself being overly clear that she wasn’t taking anything, putting things down with crisp, exaggerated gestures.
She opened her own locker and found the vial of lorazepam in her purse, poured the pills into her hand, all of them, a pile of white. You heard all the time about people OD’ing on pills, swallowing whole bottles. How did they get them down? She had enough problems with one or two. Or three, the number she kept in her palm, emptying the rest back in. She choked them down with a few gulps of Cape Cod off her tray—she’d get Lena to pour another—and shuddered. She wasn’t a drinker. She liked the idea of drinks—ice, color, garnish—but not the actuality. Not the taste.
Colleen felt her stomach relax. She dialed the number again and listened to the rings, one after the other, imagined them filling Marna’s apartment, bouncing off the jumbled furniture, the colored walls. Lily was wanting to do her own bedroom in dark purple now, just like Marna’s. Or midnight blue, like Marna’s pantry. In Colleen’s opinion, Marna’s apartment seemed dark and unwelcoming, though at night it did brighten dramatically, the lamps throwing starbursts, changing the bloody reds and murky teals and purples into softer, jewel-toned versions of themselves. Glowing almost, like they were lit from within. If nothing else, the place was interesting. All that junk—real junk, not just a manner of speaking—Marna made it work. If Colleen dragged a chair in from the curb, it was just that, a chair from the curb. But with Marna, the same chair was something. It was funky, it fit in with the rest: the spool tables and beaded candle holders, the African mask, the wall she’d covered with the backs of cereal boxes. A zillion lamps. One was shaped like a hula dancer, with hips that moved back and forth. Even that. It all became décor.
For the first time it occurred to Colleen: What if there was a problem? What if Marna was not okay?
But it was Marna. Already things were chemically softened. Newly single, crazy, crazy Marna—who’d driven six hours for breakfast at a Wyoming diner last month because she’d heard they made really good French toast. . . . Lily was still talking about that one, Lily loved that one. She wanted Marna to take her next time. Lily, Colleen thought. Four more hours. Just thinking about her daughter gave Colleen a sense of peace. Unlike Marna, unlike Rick, and unlike anyone else in the whole world, no matter what, Lily was someone who would be there. Colleen had her daughter. It was fact.
Beep.
“Oh,” said Colleen, forgetting for a moment what she was doing. “I’m—I’m here,” she said into the phone and hung up.
5.
The way Denny saw it, there were two kinds of Broncos fans: the real kind and the idiots. There were the loyal ones—who stuck through the rough times, the lean seasons, the early ’80s—and the bandwagon phonies who made a big fucking fuss when things were going good, popping up out of nowhere for the playoffs, filling the bars, buying all the gear and shit, the blue-and-orange license-plate frames. Broncos baby strollers. Acted like just because they’d moved here last July and had a Denver zip code now, that gave them some right, some entitlement to the glory pie—and yet when you pressed them, they didn’t understand jack about the team. If Denny only had a dollar for every genius who sat at his bar and tried to tell him why it was Atwater and not Elway who should retire, or the real reason Elway was or was not going to hang up his cleats—Denny’d heard everything from coke addiction to turf toe. Fuck. Fuck Elway. Let him retire. Fuck him. Sure, he was great, a big talent and big star—media candy—but the Broncos were a team, not one lousy guy. They had Terrell and Sharpe, Atwater and Romo. McCaffery. Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. As long as they had him at the reins, as long as they had Shanahan—the Mastermind, the Rat, the Svengali of all things offense—the Broncos would be right back in the mix next year. And the year after that and the year after that. In fact, Denny was hoping Elway would retire. He was counting on it.
But most of all, he was pissed. Having to watch the game while he worked, it sucked bad.
Especially after last year.
He’d been looking forward to last year’s game for months—no, for his whole life—and planned to make a real day of it with Steph, who was also a true fan. It was one of the things Denny loved about her, the way she’d really watch and care about the plays, not act like being a girl was a reason to bow out, to play dumb. Neither of them worked Sundays back then, and they’d considered for a long time what would be the best way to celebrate. They thought about having a party—but then people would be loud, blocking the TV, and someone, Steph pointed out, always got sick. They thought about going to a party, but that would be worse. You didn’t have control over the volume that way, or the channel—once Denny’d been to a Bowl party where they kept switching during the commercials and forgetting to switch back in time. Christ. But staying home seemed a little lame. So, finally, they decided to go to the Marriott Damon’s, where Steph used to work. Everyone liked Steph over there and Denny was still pretty good friends with Barry, one of the managers, who promised them a good table and said he’d maybe sit down with them and buy a few pitchers. What could be better? Denny had figured. Broncos. Big screens. Beer.
(Steph, he thought now.)
Not even two weeks before game day, Denny had come home from work—dead-ass tired, feeling like he did now, not in the mood for anything but maybe a bong hit and bed—to find a note from Steph. Two notes. One that she was out with her girlfriends so he was on his own for dinner blah blah blah. And the other. On a napkin: Your dad, January 25–26. That’s all she’d written. Denny read it twice, three times. He tried to think