Coach's Corner

I almost never answer the telephone. The time or day or identity of the caller is completely irrelevant. Mom, my office, daughter/son, MCI, Salvation Army, Magic Carpet Cleaner, it doesn't matter, I probably won't pick it up. I'm accused of "monitoring" my calls. This isn't true. The image of me hunched over a tiny machine is demeaning, implying a degree of concern that's not there. It's not personal at all. Lifelong antisocial/ hermit tendencies seem more pronounced with each passing year.

Some marriages are complementary -- meaning, I guess, if the husband likes to hunt the wife will chop up and cook the deer in the garage. This isn't the case in my life. My wife and I share many habits, most not so good. Kelly's telephone etiquette is as bad as mine -- maybe worse. Occasionally -- if I'm in an extraordinarily good mood -- I'll pick up the phone. And at these infrequent times I'll chat amicably with anybody, including those always interesting callers asking for "the lady of the house." But the only person Kelly will talk to is her mother, and then only sporadically.

This has set up a self-fulfilling prophecy: Since everybody who knows me knows I probably won't answer the phone, our phone doesn't ring so much anymore. Ergo, when it does ring I know I don't want to talk to whoever's calling. So when the howling beast shattered the deep silence of the house at 2am, I (operating in a deep, primordial, mindless state) reflexively picked it up. In those seconds before my hand finally found the ringing machine, I felt my heart jumpstarting from a reptilian winter state to racing at 185 beats a minute. The movies say only bad things make the phone ring in these wee hours. Many bad things flew through my head.

On the other end was my old friend, the Whipp. The Whipp's a high-powered, veteran prosecuting attorney in a Midwestern state, and perhaps it's wise to leave it at that. The Whipp's always been a tenacious fellow, with a clear view of right and wrong, black and white. It wouldn't comfort me to know he was prosecuting a family member. Tonight he was working late -- he said something about a car-jacking or liquor store robbery, but through the pounding jackhammer beating ferociously in my chest, I only understood that he wasn't a doctor or a police officer.

The Whipp, not normally chatty himself, began the conversation as if it were 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Except, of course, I wouldn't answer the phone at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. The Whipp knows this. "Coach," he said, "did you see that crazy fucker tonight?" "Ahhh," I mumbled before he impatiently cut me off. "Patrick Roy! Dammit Coach, I thought you were supposed to be a sportswriter. Didn't you watch the game?" I had, but the Whipp continued, "What's wrong with that guy? Twitching and jerking and blinking his eyes like he just came out of a pool with too much chlorine. He better be careful if he ever thinks of driving through [xxx]. People here would want a man like that put away." I myself have wondered about this. Does Roy twitch like this at the dinner table or while taking his daughter for a walk in the park? In any case, I didn't know the answer.

Kelly -- not the cuddly type -- was slumbering restlessly at the far end of the bed, unaware that a phone conversation was taking place. "Anyway Coach, I hate hockey. I once put a kid away for hitting an old lady over the head with a hockey stick. Bad game. Played on ice. What do you expect?" Though a lifelong Midwesterner, The Whipp intensely dislikes cold weather and anything (ice, snow, sleet) that comes with it. I'm certain he tacked on a few extra years because of the hockey stick and the cold weather in general.

The light blue L.E.D. display read 2:13, but the Whipp took no notice. "Coach, it disturbs me to admit you might be right about something." I did mention a strong sense of black/white? "Have you seen the halftime shows on NBC? Pathetic!" (A few weeks ago I commented on the embarrassing state of NBC's inept studio show.) "It's even worse than you said, Coach, and understatement isn't something anyone's ever accused you of." Indeed, with the network's showcase jewel, the NBA Finals, NBC doesn't even pretend to have a halftime show. They imagine that every game's a Super Bowl, and have a concert with U2 or an insultingly moronic NBA celebrity version of the insultingly moronic The Weakest Link, instead of letting PJ, Ahmad, and KJ discuss, however ineptly, the Game.

"But the Mummy, Coach, I love the Mummy." I was lost. The Mummy? "Whatthefuckareyoutalkingabout,Whipp?" Kelly stirred uneasily, her dreams twisted God knows how by this telephone conversation. "What Mummy!?" "Mutombo, man. Mutombo. He looks like he's just been unraveled from a … a … I don't know, whatever they bury mummies in. He looks 1,000 years old. The Sixers, Coach, that's what I'm talking about. The Mummy. The guy kills me." There was a pause, some rustling of papers. "Got a trial in the morning, Coach."

There was a click.

The Whipp was gone.