Of course, LaDonna had been clueless about the other women. At least at that point. She started working as a hotel maid when Marcus attended Duke on a full scholarship. Because of strict NCAA eligibility rules, her paycheck was the only thing that had kept the family afloat. There were a lot of ups and downs in those early years, including an almost career-ending injury that had cost him his scholarship and kept him out of his first draft.
LaDonna had stood by her man. She had taken on a second job, then a third. Marcus had trained his ass off and come back to what was considered one of the shittiest sophomore seasons in history. He almost got cut from the team, but then something happened. He found his groove. He grew up a little. He’d had another kid by then, and an ailing mother who needed hospice, and a father who wanted to make amends. Marcus Rippy had turned into a superstar, and finally, LaDonna’s hard work had paid off.
Her victory lap had lasted one season. That’s how long it took for Marcus to rise to the top again. The magazine covers and endorsements followed, as did all his other shit. Through it all, LaDonna kept up the Tammy Wynette act, standing by her man. She had stood by Marcus when TMZ posted photos of him with various young actresses. She had stood by him when he was accused of rape—both the time Will knew about and the time he did not. And now she was standing by him as the blonde receptionist hung on his arm like taffy at the fair.
Angie put down her glass as she hurried through the crowd. She had her hand around the blonde’s waist, her fingernails digging into the skin of the girl’s arm, before LaDonna could notice.
Angie told the girl, “You so much as look at him again, your ass will be on the street. Understood?”
The girl understood.
“Excuse me, please?” Ditmar Wittich tapped his pinky ring on the side of his champagne glass. He looked around the room, waiting for silence. It came quickly. The lawyer had gotten Marcus Rippy off a serious rape charge. His firm had put together the All-Star deal. He made more money than could ever be put on the LED sign, and through the kindness of the Lord Jesus, he was going to let the assembled people share in the making of even more wealth.
He said, “I would like to propose a toast, please.”
Everyone raised their glasses. Angie crossed her arms.
“First I must say that we are very pleased that Marcus’s problems have been dealt with.” He smiled at Marcus. Marcus smiled back. LaDonna looked at Angie and rolled her eyes. “But today is a celebration of our new collaboration between One-Ten, our international partners, and some of the greatest athletes the world has ever known.”
He kept talking, but Angie wasn’t interested. She glanced around the room. Harding was drinking champagne because he wasn’t yellow enough already. Laslo was slinking in the corner. Kip was playing with his ball. Two more of the bigger stars had arrived. They stood in the back, towering over the mortals in the room, their gorgeous wives at their sides.
That was when Angie saw them.
Reuben and Jo Figaroa. Fig was not the biggest star, but he was the only one that Angie was interested in. At six feet eight inches, he was easy to pick out of the crowd. His wife was harder to find, mostly because she worked to stay in the shadows. Jo was petite compared to most of the player’s wives. She was built like a ballerina. Not Misty Copeland, but the old-school ballerinas who were such wispy waifs that they could turn sideways and disappear.
That was obviously what Jo was trying to do now. She stood beside her husband, not touching him, her body turned at an angle as she looked down at the floor.
Angie took the rare opportunity to study the girl. Her curly brown hair. Her perfect features. Her graceful neck and elegant shoulders. She had poise. That was what made you notice her. Jo was trying to disappear, but she didn’t understand that she was the sort of woman you couldn’t take your eyes off of.
“Jesus, Polaski.” Harding elbowed Angie in the ribs. “Why don’t you ask for her number?”
Angie felt her cheeks go hot.
“Sick bitch.” He elbowed her again. “She’s a little younger than your usual.”
“Fuck off.” Angie stalked across the room to get away from him. She could still hear him chuckling his old pervert laugh even with fifty people between them.
She leaned against the wall. She watched Ditmar finish his toast. He did that German thing where he had to look everybody in the eye. He did it with Marcus. He did it with LaDonna. He did it with Reuben Figaroa. He could not do it with Jo. She was staring down into her champagne flute, not drinking. Her hand was at her neck, fingers playing with a simple gold chain. There was something tragic about her beauty that broke Angie’s heart.
Maybe Dale Harding wanted to fuck his daughter.
Angie just wanted to make sure that hers was okay.
MONDAY—8:00 PM
Angie sat alone on the giant couch in Kip’s office. The lights were off. The party upstairs was winding down as people headed off to dinner. Her shoes were on the floor. A glass of scotch was in her hand. She could hear the steady hum of traffic snaking down Peachtree. Monday night. People still wanted to go out. There were clubs, shopping malls, restaurants. The rich and famous looking to see and be seen.
110 Sports Management was located in the center of Buckhead. Half a mile north, you could find one of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Sprawling mansions with guest houses and Olympic-sized swimming pools. Private security. Heavy iron gates. Mega-star athletes. Rap stars. Music people. Drug lords living beside hedge fund managers and cardiologists.
Since the seventies, Atlanta had been a mecca for middle-class African Americans. Doctors and lawyers from the historically black colleges graduated and decided to stick around. A lot of professional athletes from other towns kept homes in the city. They wanted their kids to go to private schools that understood that the only color that mattered was green. That was the great thing about Atlanta. You could do anything you wanted so long as you had the money.
Angie had a lot of money now, at least relative to what she usually kept in her bank account. There were the checks she got from Kip every two weeks and the pocket change she made off the girls.
None of it made her happy.
For as long as she could remember, Angie had only ever looked at the future. Nothing could be done about the past, and more often than not, the present was too shitty to contemplate. Trapped with her mother’s pimp? Temporary. Shuttled to another foster home? Just for now. Living in the back of her car? Not for long. Time is what kept her moving forward. Next week, next month, next year. All she had to do was keep running, keep looking ahead, and eventually, she’d turn that corner.
Only now that she’d turned the corner, she found that there was nothing there.
What did normal women want that Angie didn’t already have?
A home. A husband. A daughter.
Like everything else, she already had a daughter that she had thrown away. Josephine Figaroa was twenty-seven years old. Like Angie, she could pass for white or black or Latina or even Middle Eastern, if she wanted to freak out people on an airplane. She was thin. Too thin, but maybe that came with the territory. The other wives on the team were always cleansing or dieting or going to spinning classes or plastic surgeons to get things sucked and filled and pinned back up so they could compete with the groupies who swarmed their husbands. They need not have bothered. Their husbands were not attracted to the groupies because they were hotter than their wives. They were attracted to them because they were groupies.
It was a hell of a lot more fun to be with somebody who thought you were perfect than it was to be with a woman who wouldn’t put up with your shit.
Angie didn’t know what kind of wife Jo was. Only twice had she been in the same room with her daughter, both times at the 110 offices, both times from a distance, because both times Reuben had been there. He towered over his wife, radiating a quiet confidence. Jo seemed to like this. She leaned into his shadow. She kept her eyes down, demur, almost transparent. The be
st word that came to mind was obedient, which pissed Angie off because this girl had her blood and that blood had never taken orders from anybody.
Kate.
That’s what Angie had thought she would call her daughter. Like Katharine Hepburn. Like a woman who knew how to hold herself. Like a woman who took what she wanted.
What did Jo want? Judging by her demeanor, it seemed like she wished for nothing more than what she already had. A rich husband. A child. An easy life. The painful truth was that Jo was ordinary. She had attended a small high school outside of Griffin, Georgia. She had been smart enough to get into the University of Georgia, but not smart enough to graduate. Angie wanted to believe Jo had dropped out because she was a free spirit, but the math didn’t support it. She had left school for a man. Eight years ago, she had married Reuben Figaroa. He was two years her senior and already in the NBA. His reputation was that of a laser-focused player. Off the court, he was often described as reserved, cerebral. He wasn’t into flash. He was about doing the job right and going home to his family. Apparently, this was what Jo wanted. She’d followed him to Los Angeles and to Chicago, and now she had returned with him back to her home state. They had one kid, a boy, six years old, named Anthony.
This was where the publicly accessible information on Jo Figaroa ended. Despite her age, Jo wasn’t on social media. She wasn’t a joiner. There were no groups with which she was involved. She didn’t go to parties unless they were for her husband’s work. She didn’t meld with the wives. She didn’t lunch. She didn’t wander around the mall or hang out at the gym. The only way Angie was able to track her at all was through her husband.
One year ago, a Google alert had popped up in Angie’s feed. Reuben “Fig” Figaroa was joining the Atlanta team. According to the article, the move was lateral, the kind of thing that could prolong Reuben’s career for another few years.
How had Angie felt when she read the news? Annoyed at first. She didn’t want the temptation. Only a raving bitch would show up in Jo’s life twenty-seven years after ditching her. Which is why Angie had vowed to leave it alone. No good would come out of trying to insert herself into her daughter’s peaceful world.
But then there was a second Google alert: the Figaroas had moved to Buckhead.
And a third: Reuben Figaroa signs with 110 Sports Management.
That was when Angie had finagled a job through Dale Harding, promising him some favors, because she knew that favors were the one thing Dale needed.
Why?
Angie wasn’t one for introspection. Reaction was more her thing.
And curiosity.
She had been tracking Jo off and on for almost twenty years. Background checks, internet searches, and even a couple of private detectives. At first, Angie had wanted to know who had adopted her daughter. That was a natural curiosity. Who wouldn’t want to know? But like everything else in Angie’s life, it wasn’t enough. She had to make sure Jo’s parents were good people. Then she had to know more about Jo’s husband. Then she wanted to know who Jo’s friends were, how she spent her time, what she did with all the hours in her day.
Greedy. That was a better word. Angie did all of this because she was greedy. It was the same reason she couldn’t take just one pill, one drink, one man.
She wasn’t going to blow up Jo’s life. That was a promise. For now, for today, all that Angie wanted was to hear her daughter’s voice. She wanted to see if the tenor was the same. If Jo shared Angie’s dark sense of humor. If she was happy like she should be because she had dodged the biggest bullet of her life the day that Angie had bolted out of her hospital bed.
Twice in the same room. Twice Jo stood silently by her husband.
The girl didn’t look at Reuben Figaroa much, and that bothered Angie. After eight years of marriage, there shouldn’t be googly-eyes, but something was off there. Angie felt it in her gut. She hadn’t worked for Kip long, but you didn’t need a PowerPoint presentation to understand the athletes’ wives. All they had was what their husbands did with a basketball. LaDonna always crowed the day after Marcus did something extraordinary on the court. Likewise, she was hell on heels if Marcus missed an important shot.
Not so much with Jo and Reuben. The more attention the husband got, the more it seemed like Jo wanted to disappear.
And the weird thing was, Reuben Figaroa was getting a lot of attention. Angie didn’t understand the terminology, but apparently Reuben’s team position wasn’t about the glory, more of a grinder than a breakout player. Somehow he had managed to make himself indispensable on the court, the guy who was willing to take a foul or knock some heads or whatever it took to make sure Marcus Rippy scored the basket.
Everybody won when Marcus Rippy scored a basket.
Reuben was the puzzle that Angie needed to figure out. There weren’t many pieces to put together. Unusually, he didn’t seek attention. He didn’t go to clubs or restaurant openings. He actively avoided the press. Interviewers always attributed his shy reserve to a childhood stutter. His background was as innocuous as Jo’s. Small town high school in Missouri, full ride to Kentucky, late-round draft pick to the NBA, middling career until he got dusted with the Rippy magic. None of this afforded great insight. The only thing that made Reuben stick out was that he was white in a sport dominated by black men.
It did Angie no good to know that Jo had married a man who looked like her father.
Angie put her glass on the table. She stared out the window at the dark sky. Ten basketballs were lined up on the ledge. Championship balls, she guessed, but Angie gave not one shit about sports of any kind. The whole concept of men chasing a little ball back and forth bored her to tears. She didn’t particularly find the players attractive. If she wanted to fuck a tall, lanky man with perfect abs, she could go home to her husband.
At least she’d always thought she could. Will had waited for her. That was his thing. Angie would go away. She would have a little fun, then a little more fun, then a little too much fun, which would necessitate her going back to Will so that she could recharge. Or hide out. Or whatever she needed to do in order to reset herself. That was what Will was for. He was her safe harbor.
She had never anticipated that a fucking redheaded dinghy would drop anchor in her calm waters.
Angie got it. She saw the attraction. Sara was a good girl. She was smart, if being smart that way mattered. She was corn raised, from a good family. If a woman like that loved you, then it meant that you were normal, too. Angie could see where Will would be drawn to Sara’s wholesomeness. He had always been such a freakish Goody-Two-shoes. Volunteering to help Mrs. Flannigan at the home. Cutting the neighbors’ grass. He wanted to do well in school. He studied his ass off. He always tried for the extra credit. Except for being retarded, he probably would’ve been a star student.
It breaks my heart that he’s so ashamed of his dyslexia, Sara had told Tessa. The irony is that he’s one of the smartest men I have ever known.
Angie wondered if Will knew Sara was talking to her sister about his secret. He would not be happy. He was ashamed for a damn good reason.
The overhead lights flickered. Angie looked up at the ceiling. She watched the fluorescent bulbs spark to life. Harding ambled over to the drink fridge and took out a bottle of BankShot. He plopped down on the opposite end of the couch. His eyes were more yellow than white. His skin was the texture and color of a dryer sheet.
“Jesus,” Angie said. “How much longer do you have?”
“Too long.” He grabbed her scotch. She watched him top off the glass with the radioactive-looking energy drink.
She said, “That stuff will kill you.”
“Here’s hoping.”
They both heard a basketball bouncing against marble tile. They both scowled.
“Where’s Laslo?” Kip asked.
“Here.” Laslo was right behind him. He had a sour look on his face. Angie had tapped a favor for a peek at the guy’s sheet. Laslo Zivcovik was small, compact, but he was good wi
th a knife and he had no hesitations about using it. He’d done a stint in jail for slicing up a girl’s face, but the heavy time had come from a knife fight outside a bar. Somebody had ended up at the hospital. Somebody had ended up at the morgue.
And now Laslo was in Atlanta with his knife.
“All right, gentlemen.” Kip held the basketball under his arm. He retrieved a black folder from his desk. “We’ve got a problem.”
Dale leaned over and helped himself to the bowl of peanuts. “Rippy rape another squealer?”
Kip looked irritated, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “I don’t know if y’all noticed tonight, but LaDonna was more pissed off than usual.”
Laslo groaned. He sat down in the chair opposite Angie. “What’s wound her up this time?”
Angie guessed, “Her husband cheating on her?”
Harding said, “You get the bank, you take the spank.”
Everyone but Angie laughed. They never got it, these guys. They thought that the wives only wanted money.
She asked Harding, “Would you fuck Marcus Rippy for LaDonna’s checkbook?”
“Ain’t that Kip’s job?”
“Shut up, asshole.” Kip was so far in the closet he practically lived in Narnia. “Remember where we are.”
Harding nodded. “All right. I get it.”
They all got it. 110’s athletes were jet-setting multimillionaires, but they were also small town boys whose mamas had dragged them to church every Sunday. Their religion skipped over serial adultery and smoking weed and stopped dead at two guys doing each other.
Laslo said, “What’s she up to?” He meant LaDonna. He was trying to steer things back on track. “She find out about the girl?”