You and Me and the Devil Makes Three Read Online Free PDF Page B

it should be a straight compliment, but something about the way Inigo says it bothers Cole, as if maybe he’s being a bit condescending. Good. Good?
    “I was all-city my senior year,” Cole says.
    “There is something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Inigo says.
    “Averaged fourteen a game—”
    “It is a bit difficult—”
    “I probably could’ve played small college ball—”
    “I thought maybe you could give me some advice.”
    This goes on for a few more minutes—the two of them standing above the table of revelers, talking past each other. Early-childhood experts call it parallel play, two toddlers with trucks playing side-by-side by without ever acknowledging the other’s imaginary world.
    “It is about Andrea,” Inigo finally says.
    This catches Cole’s attention. “What about her?”
    Inigo takes a drink of beer. “I need to figure out how to tell her . . . well. You see. There is someone else.”
    Cole stares up into the eyes of the team’s new big man. “What do you mean someone else?”
    “A woman other than her, yes? I have begun seeing another woman, a younger woman, yes?” Inigo smiles and holds his hands above his chest, making the universal sign for huge breasts. “A really nice woman.” He glances at the table below them, at the men drinking and toasting and plotting their next victory. “You know Andrea so well,” he says. “Tell me, how do you think she will take this?”
    I N THE EMERGENCY ROOM, Van Goose fills Cole in on the things he missed. He remembers hurling himself into Rodrigo’s chest, and pulling him down onto the table. He recalls the pitchers being launched into the air, cold beer raining down on them as they grappled on the sticky bar floor. He remembers hands on his shoulders as the other guys tried to pull him off of Rodrigo and a great rush of adrenaline—the scuffling, grunting sounds as he and Rodrigo fought on the floor. He knows that he threw a few punches and that Rodrigo did, too, and that, thankfully, neither of them connected.
    What he doesn’t recall is passing out.
    But after he hears the story, he’s not sorry that he was unconscious—especially when he hears how his ex-wife’s soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend administered CPR on him. “He was practically cradling you,” Van Goose says. “Poor guy. He thought he’d killed you.”
    Apparently, as Rodrigo lowered his mouth over Cole’s, Eck said something like, I’m sorry, but someone really needs to get a picture of this. Good, unflappable Eck. In the emergency room, Van Goose shows him the photo Eck snapped on his iPhone and immediately texted to the whole team. It looks like some kind of really specific, unfortunate pornography—two big middle-aged men kissing on a bar floor.
    “Jesus,” Cole says.
    Van Goose tells him there’s talk of using the photo as the team logo.
    “Yeah, I could see that,” Cole says.
    The emergency room doctor comes back in and asks Van Goose to wait outside.
    The doctor flips through a chart. He tells Cole that everything looks basically okay, that his high blood-alcohol level and the exertion of the basketball game and the fight likely led to his passing out. “Although,” he says, “there is this slight irregularity in your EKG. Just to be on the safe side, I’d like you to see a cardiologist.”
    Cole stares at the familiar heart chart—bump, spike, trough—and it seems suddenly like the pattern of his life, a good life, bumps and spike and troughs, the occasional barmaid, a rare fifteen-point game. “Oh, I have seen a cardiologist,” he says. He pounds his fist against his chest. “He said I have the heart of a bull.”
    “Well then,” the doctor closes his file, “all I can do is advise a little less drinking and fighting.”
    “Got it,” Cole says as he buttons his shirt.
    In the lobby, Van Goose is closing his phone, having updated the guys on Cole’s condition. He has some good news. In spite of the fight, Rodrigo still wants to be on the