Hollywood is Newark, NJ with Palm Trees
Act I
The coach filled the final box, closed it, and looked around one last time. He placed it on the floor and heard the office door creek open.
“Hey Fred.” The man who walked through the door said as he sat down in front of the coach’s desk and crossed his legs.
“Hey Tom.”
Fred sat down at the seat behind the desk and the two men stared at anything but each other in an uncomfortable silence.
“I tried Fred, but my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do,” Tom said, breaking the silence.
“I understand.”
Fred reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and placed a bottle of scotch and two coffee mugs on the desk. He glanced at Tom before he poured. Tom shrugged and Fred filled his mug close to half way.
“Was it worth it, Fred?”
“Was what worth it?”
“You know, all of it.”
“Now that I look back Tom, obviously not, but I guess it was at the time.”
Fred took a sip from his cup.
His statement oozed of an unwarranted sarcasm which made Tom’s face contort in confusion.
Tom tried again, this time with a different question.
“You know what I mean. Why? Is what I want to ask, I guess?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could give you a better answer.”
“They wanted your head. The parents were going to the press, and we couldn’t have that. The alumni cut a deal and you were part of it, plus they weren’t all too impressed this season,” Tom replied.
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure. So where are you headed,” Tom asked.
“I don’t know, south I guess.”
After Fred put the last box away, they sat in silence for several minutes, taking small sips from their respective cups, only grunting and shifting in their chairs from time to time. Any feeling of camaraderie that the coach and Tom may have shared had left the room and all that remained was the silence.
Tom’s attention shifted to the scene playing out in the window behind Fred. The trees were beginning to turn green and the blossoms would come soon, turning the campus into a springtime bounty of fragrance and colours that would be a delight to experience once again, Tom thought.
The trails around campus would be littered with flowers. Every year was somewhat different, creating a sense of wonder every spring Tom spent at the University.
“Candidates?” Fred asked, bringing Tom back to the present.
“For?” Tom asked, finishing his cup of scotch and getting up to leave.
“The next head coach- Who were you thinking?”
“That’s none of your concern anymore, is it? Good luck Coach,” Tom said curtly as he strolled out the door out onto the campus quad glancing up at the trees from time to time as he made his way across campus, and out of sight.
Fred fell back into his chair, poured the last of the scotch into his cup, and stared out the door into the hallway. He could almost see the gym floor through the open doors.
For ten years this building had been his home. He lived the last decade of his life in those ninety feet between his office and the gym.
Just to throw it all away, he thought.
Fred left the mug, grabbed the last box, and shuffled down the corridor, past the gym and through the arena doors.
His van was parked in front of the arena and the rear door was still open from his last trip.
That was it.
Ten years packed into the back of a rented Econoline van.
The things and awards that seemed so important, but became insignificant over time.
Broken picture frames of people he knew, but who never really knew him, sat next to ceremonial basketballs with people’s names scrawled across them.
After closing the van cargo doors, he glanced down the street toward the main gate of the campus and saw his daughter was striding down the sidewalk.
Through this entire ordeal he never stopped to think of the people he had hurt.
His daughter was a junior at the school. She had turned down scholarship offers to Stanford and Princeton to come here, to try to get to know the father that had been absent for most of her life pursuing his dream. Her eyes were bloodshot and Fred could see nail marks on the inside of her hand as she walked up to him. He wondered if she knew the reasons behind his abrupt departure from the school. Unless she asked, he decided not to bring it up.
“Hey,” she said as she walked up to the van.
“Hey,” he answered back, packing the last of his things into the van.
“So you were just going to leave?”
“I was gonna give you a call when I got to where I was going,” Fred said walking past her and climbing into the front seat of the van.
“You know what they’re saying don’t you?”
“Yea, I know.”
“Well, is it true Dad? Is it?”
Fred looked at his daughter and wanted to bring himself to explain.
His brow furrowed, pensively, as if he were going to relent to his urge to finally be completely up front with his only child.
He envisioned a rosy faced baby girl running downstairs to open her presents at Christmas, and he and his wife watching the anticipation as she tore through the wrapping paper.
But now, Fred saw a look of the highest betrayal. Her face contorted and twisted with every thought that raced through her head as she tried to make sense of the situation she just found herself in. It reflected a culmination of years of hurt, pain, and longing that Fred knew she had to feel. His eyes were glassy, and if he maintained eye contact they would have shattered.
Fred turned the key to the ignition, starting the engine.
“What am I supposed to do now? You tell me what I’m supposed to do now, Daddy?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure you and your mother will figure something out. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
She stood there in the window of the van shivering with disbelief. He opened his mouth and shut it several times as his daughter’s grip on the door turned her knuckles white.
“I don’t know,” Fred said putting the van in gear.
Fred pulled away from the curb and exited the campus making a left onto the main street out of town.
As he drove away, he could see His daughter on the curb in front of the Athletics building.
The coach drove through the center of town and it seemed as if people were queued up along the sidewalks of the streets leading out of town, interrupting their daily grind, to see Fred Castellano off.
