kept going, “Locker rooms aren’t lounges of flirtation, Mr. Smiley. Not in my experience. Nobody is thinking about sex after a battle. And if women are allowed to be war correspondents, they should be allowed in a locker room after a football game,” I finished, feeling jubilant, as if I had scored one for female journalists everywhere.
He looked at me and nodded, as if quietly acknowledging that I’d won the point. We spoke no more of gender after that, just silently spooned big helpings of hash browns and glazed carrots onto our plates and cut into our steaks, moving on to more general sports banter.
About an hour later, we had finished lunch and were walking out to the parking lot. Arriving at my car first, Smiley eyed my Walker bumper sticker circumspectly and said, “You’re sure you can be objective?”
“Those peel off, you know,” I said, picking at one curling edge of the sticker.
“So that’s a yes?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What if I told you the beat was for Texas?” he said.
“Is it?” I swallowed, hoping he was calling my bluff. That the beat was for any team but Texas.
“Yes,” he said. “The proud state university with the color you once called ‘bile orange’.”
I cringed, remembering the piece I had written in college as he continued to quote me. “ ‘The hue of regurgitated beer and burritos.’ Ring a bell?”
“Well,” I said. “It is a bad color.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I wrote that when I was in college. Writing for the Walker paper. That was a different job description. I can be objective. I know I can.”
“Good. Because if a reporter so much as lets out one cheer in the press box, he’s done. He—or she—is history in this business.”
I nodded and said I understood, surprising myself by how very much I wanted the job, even if it involved a whole lot of bile orange.
Nine
After lunch, I headed to the Lea Journo Salon, where Lucy had booked me a blowout with her favorite Dallas stylist—a heavily tattooed, ripped gay man named Ricardo.
“Do you want sleek, big, or something in between?” Ricardo asked, as he unharnessed my ponytail and tousled my long hair.
I told him to go big, silently finishing the sentence with Coach’s words: Or go home.
“Old Hollywood big? Victoria’s Secret big? Cindy Crawford–throwback big? Or Miss America big?” Ricardo pressed.
“Whatever you think,” I said. “Just make me … glamorous.”
“Oh, honey, glam is a given in this chair,” he said, turning to tell his mousy, bespectacled assistant that I was ready to be washed—and that we were going to need a truckload of Velcro rollers.
“The purples?” his assistant asked.
“No, girl. The blues! You heard the lady! We’re going to make her big! Pow! Shazam!”
A full forty minutes later, after my hair was mostly dried, Ricardo put his turbo dryer down and said, “Honey, you’re making me work. Good gawd, you have a lot of hair!”
I smiled, knowing that was a compliment, and thinking that it was nice to have at least one outstanding feature. Two if you counted my collarbone.
“So I take it you have big plans tonight?” Ricardo asked as he began to wrap my hair into the rollers.
“Yeah, I’m going to a charity function at the Ritz,” I said.
“Love that Ritz!” he said. “A lot of folks swear by the Crescent Court, but it has nothing on the Ritz. Such a classic. And do you know that they have their own nightly guacamologist? How divine is that?”
“Quite divine,” I said.
Then, wondering how so many gay men had the knack of making you feel like you were their best friend within an hour, I caved and said, “So. Guess who I’m going with?”
He took the command seriously by saying, “Oh, I love guessing games! Tycoon, politician, chef, actor, model, or … stylist to the stars?”
I laughed and said, “None of the above. Athlete. Football player.”
“Gurrrl,” he said. “Don’t even tell me. Don’t even! That Dallas Cowboy stone cold fox? What’s his name? James Ryan?”
“Ryan James,” I said.
I watched Ricardo’s assistant perk up slightly and realized that I was doing the very thing that would get me excommunicated by A-listers in any field. I was kissing and telling even before I had kissed. So I tried to backtrack, explaining that Ryan and I were just friends. But Ricardo was off to the races, speed-dialing the salon’s resident makeup artist and asking her if she could come in on her day off and do a face for his new