Chapter 12

Brock had expected Tara and Meredith to return to the house long before J.C. and Tia arrived. He was wrong.

It was also obvious to Brock that J.C. had done nothing to prepare Tia for the amount of people she was about to meet. The young woman's mouth dropped the moment she and J.C. came around the edge of the house. She stopped in her tracks and seemed to survey the scene before her.

It took Brock a moment to realize what it would probably look like to a complete stranger. Three men were lounging around the pool while six women splashed and laughed in the pool. He imagined it was what the Playboy mansion must look like in its heyday. Chastity saw her former teammate and hustled over to greet her while J.C joined the guys on the other side of the pool.

"She is totally cool," J.C. remarked after he had placed Tia's luggage in the house. Brock looked across the way. He decided Tia Barnett looked anything but cool at that moment. She was engaged in a somewhat heated discussion with Chastity – and it didn't appear from her gestures that it revolved around the U.S. Women's Soccer Team.

J.C. didn't appear to notice the look of disbelief on Brock's face.

"She's a lot like me," J.C. continued. "She's from a small town in Alabama and the only way she managed to get out was through her athletic skills. We had a great conversation on the way back."

"Which didn't appear to include the number of people she might see when she arrived," Brock pointed out helpfully. J.C. turned to look where the other three men were gazing.

"Uh, no," J.C. confessed. "It really didn't seem important. I mean, geez, we're having a cookout and a pool party. We even have Al here for adult supervision."

He seemed to realize that there was another face he didn't recognize.

"Hey, you must be, uh, Meredith's dad," he said, extending a hand to Sam. "Sorry, I only met her for a little while. I missed all the excitement this morning. I'm J.C. Michaels."

Sam shook the man's proffered hand and wondered how many professional athletes felt the need to introduce themselves – particularly to a guy who had owned season tickets for five years.

"It's a pleasure," Sam said.

"Here, too," J.C. replied. He turned his head to see if Tia was still upset. "Maybe she's a Baptist or something."

Brock couldn't help but burst out in laughter. Sam and Al soon joined him.

"Maybe she is," Al said. "Or equally as likely she thinks you've dropped her off on the set of a porn movie. Either way, you probably shouldn't get comfortable until you see if you need to drive her back to the airport."

J.C. glanced back over his shoulder and frowned.

"That would suck," he said.

After a moment, Tia went inside and Chastity motioned for Brock to come over. The fact that she didn't come to them let the others know she probably needed to speak to Brock alone. They were extremely happy for the understanding.

"She didn't realize there would be all these people," Chastity said. "She expected for you and me to be here but she was a little put out when she saw you had a harem of women to pick from. I explained your friendship with all of them but she's a little, uh, backward about some things."

"Like the whole one man, one woman thing?" Brock inquired with a wink.

"Something like that," Chastity replied. "The thing is, she was pretty impressed with J.C., too. Then she shows up here and sees a pool-full of women. She's really a nice person but she's a little overwhelmed by everything that has happened the last couple of days. She feels as though she's let everyone down. Just give her some time to come around."

"No problem," Brock said. "I'll mention to Jen and Randi that the skinny dipping is off the agenda. It's a shame, I think Al and Esmi were hoping for a wife-swap with the Bonds later. They were talking about trading kids and houses, too."

Chastity slapped Brock's arm lightly.

"Just don't be a jerk, OK?" she said. "I'm going to go in try to coax her to come out and join us. You just mention that she might be a little intimidated and that if she's quiet it isn't because she's a bitch or something."

"You got it," Brock said with another wink. "By the way, J.C. thought she was, quote, 'totally cool, ' unquote."

"Now I just have to convince her that he's not the same sort of complete jackass she thinks you are," Chastity said, returning Brock's wink. "If I get stuck inside, let me know when Tara gets back."

Neither Tia nor Chastity made an appearance in the backyard – and Meredith and Tara hadn't shown up either.

Brock was beginning to wonder if he should ask Al or Randi to start making calls to local TV stations. The next people through the door were the Bond boys, who came running outside to join their newfound friends, Maria and Faith Perez.

The Perez girls were used to be around people that other people found to be famous but they were a little awe-struck when they arrived and met Randi Raver and Chastity Durant. Faith was six years old and was positive she was going to be to soccer what her daddy was to baseball. Maria was two years older and owned every Randi Raver video and download that was available. Each girl had a poster over their bed depicting their hero – just as their father had saved every penny he found for a month to buy a poster of Bernie Williams, the centerfielder for the Yankees when Al was a boy in New York.

Once the novelty wore off – and once Faith and Maria figured out that their idols were actually normal people just like their parents – the girls had gone off to splash in the pool. Drew and Tate Bond were a year older than the Perez girls but they still got along well.

Still, Brock had kept a close eye on the kids to make sure they were safe and happy. He glanced around the backyard and it appeared that everyone else was safe and happy, too. So he turned the kid watching duties over to Al, Sam and J.C. and headed inside to talk to the one person who had not appeared happy, Tia Barnett.

Instead he found Tia, Louisa, Chastity, Meredith and Tara watching a DVD of the edited copy of the interview.

"Hey, I didn't realize you'd returned," he said. He didn't give either Tara or Meredith a hug or a kiss as he usually did in deference to Tia's tender sensibilities. "How did it go?"

"Oh, I just waited in the car," Meredith answered before anyone else could. "Luckily I'm my own biggest fan so I was fine. Thanks for asking."

Brock rolled his eyes and awaited an answer from someone else – anyone else. None came as the remaining group focused on the television. He was surprised at the quality of the product. He had expected something that looked a great deal like a late-night infomercial. Instead it looked remarkably similar to the same daytime talk shows that were probably playing on half the stations at that very moment. In fact, if he hadn't recognized the participants, he would have assumed he was watching one.

"Contrary to what the soccer federation would like everyone to believe, money was not our primary complaint," he heard Chastity say from the television. "Our primary complaints revolved around the working conditions imposed upon us. And yes, I purposefully used the term 'working'. We work 14 to 16 hours each day, six days a week. When we are not at work, the rest of our life is dictated by the coaching staff – from where we can eat to who we can date. The coaching staff even intercedes on what movies we can watch and when we can watch them. We have mothers who haven't seen their children, wives and girlfriends who haven't seen their significant others and daughters who haven't seen their parents in three months because the coach wouldn't allow outsiders into the complex and won't permit us to leave for more than an hour or two at a time.

"For the privilege of having our lives stolen from us, we're paid $12,000 a year and room and board. That's $1,000 per month – or $3,500 per month less than the last reserve on the men's team. We live in single rooms with a roommate. We eat what the coach decides is on the menu. We are expected to perform as professionals. We are expected to behave as professionals. Yet we are treated and we are compensated as though we are servants. We have had scheduled time away from training revoked at the last minute and with no notice. We have been cajoled and threatened into going to social events with our sponsors. We have allowed the U.S. Soccer Federation and its chosen representative, Coach MaryBelle Spencer, to usurp total control over every facet of our existence. That is the main issue we raised in our letter of complaint with the U.S. Soccer Federation."

"Will we go back without better pay?" Louisa posed from the television. "Absolutely not, the men's team allows its players to earn a salary from their professional teams while participating with the national program. Right now, that is not an option for most of us because there is no professional women's league in the United States. So we expect to be compensated in the same manner as other women's programs of our caliber. But regardless of what the soccer federation offers to pay us, we will not return until our primary concerns are addressed to our satisfaction."

"When we return, Louisa Bond and Chastity Durant will discuss sworn statements from other members of the U.S. women's soccer team and tell us what it will take to get the nation's best players back wearing red, white and blue next spring in the World Cup," Tara said from the screen before a colored bar appeared on the screen.

"That's where a commercial will be placed," she explained. "The final segment will be eight minutes long. The graphics guy enlarged the depositions so the readers could see the words while we discuss them. The network loved the bit at the end about how the soccer federation's treatment might prevent the 11 of you from agreeing to play again without wholesale administrative changes."

Brock was thoroughly impressed – not only with the production quality but by the articulate way the three women had presented the discussion. He had seen literally hundreds of interview attempts by his teammates where they had stammered and stuttered through even the most inane questions.

"So they're going to run parts of it?" Brock asked hopefully.

"They are going to run all of it!" Tara announced. "They took a look at it and decided to change their schedule. This is going to run – almost unedited – at seven p.m. on all the major SportsNet affiliates. My station in Indianapolis is bumping its nine p.m. rerun so it can air at the same time in my market. While we were discussing the possibility of me coming to work out here, the programming department was offering this to the SportsNet affiliates in all the major markets in the country. SportsNet South grabbed it in a hurry. That covers from Miami to Dallas. By the time we left, the only major market that hadn't snapped it up was SportsNet North Atlantic."

"So your Mom won't get to see it?" Brock asked Chastity.

"That's a Northeast affiliate," Tara cut in. "North Atlantic is basically Boston and points north. SportsNet Canada is even going to run it, although not in primetime."

"Wow!" Brock said to Tara. "That's amazing. So I guess you're going to be the next big thing out here, huh? I knew Indianapolis wouldn't hold you long. Well, I guess the rest of us can put our checkbooks away."

"What do you mean?" Tia asked. She had sat quietly throughout the viewing. She wished that she had been the one to think of putting something like the interview session together but she lacked the resources to make it happen.

Brock blushed slightly. He was certain Chastity had been around when he and Al discussed buying prime air time on local stations but she looked as confused as everyone else.

"Well, we, uh, we sort of talked it over while you were out, I guess," he stammered. "Some of us were going to contact the local TV stations and buy a half-hour block so this could run either tonight or tomorrow."

"Jesus, Brock, that would have cost a mint," Meredith said.

Brock shrugged.

"It was Al's idea," he pointed out. "We figured between him, J.C., Sam, you, Randi and me, we could afford it without going broke. Even if we had gone broke, it would have been worth it. The truth had to be told. Sorry, Chas, I thought you were there when we talked about it."

Louisa Bond was sitting and shaking her head. Her own husband had barely cared about how she was being portrayed by the soccer federation. It was particularly dispiriting to Louisa because of all she had given up in the past 15 years.

She and her husband were strangers. They barely knew and they barely tolerated the other on the rare times they'd been together in the past decade. The worst part was that Louisa was in the same situation with her children. She would play Mommy for a week or a month and then disappear from their lives for half a year. The boys were growing up and developing personalities of their own – personalities that their mother had no part in cultivating.

She felt a fresh flow of tears – not the first that she'd experienced in the past hours – when she looked at Chastity.

"You have some very special friends who care a lot about you," she said softly to the younger woman.

Chastity understood the look that had come to Louisa's face. It was one worn by almost every member of the national team any time a thought of what might have been crossed their minds.

"No," she replied. "I have one special friend who cares about me. The rest of these great people are his friends. And he'll never think about me again the way he used to. I've seen to that."

The rest of the group wandered outside. One, Merie, was pleased at the turn things had taken. She was naïve enough to believe that the viewers on television would take one look at the players and know the truth. She was also happy that she had been able to be a part of getting the truth out in the open.

The others, Tia, Louisa and Chastity, were more subdued.

Brock stood by while Tara extracted the disc from the DVD player and carefully put it into a jewel case for transport.

"So, you're coming to L.A.," he said. "I knew Indianapolis couldn't hold your talent."

"Maybe," she answered. "Today was a real eye-opener. SportsNet was really excited about the scoop but the hassle to get something on to a conglomerate is a pain. It's not like ASN, which is owned by one entity. SportsNet's affiliates are all independently owned. Even the L.A. affiliate has separate ownership. At WWIN, I would have just done this and NTN would have grabbed it. NTN owns ASN so they would have picked it up, too. Today, it took a thousand phone calls and a million headaches.

"The worst part was that they were more interested in J.C. than they were about the soccer story. They were excited as hell to be able to scoop the New York network boys they have in San Diego. They barely wanted to talk about the soccer story until they had confirmed that J.C. was sitting out the game and might be hurt."

She gave a grim chuckle.

"Your agent wouldn't talk to anyone but me and that really pissed the others off," Tara continued. "They just couldn't understand how a dumb Indiana farm girl could have contacts like I appear to have. One of them actually called me that when he didn't think I could hear. I'm not sure I want to work in an environment where you have to compete even with your allies."

Brock was surprised that Tara was disenchanted with the process. He had never thought journalism to be anything short of a cut-throat business – just as life at the top-rung of a professional sport was.

"That's what I found when I got to Cleveland last year," he said. "I expected the other guys who played shortstop to try to help me along. I know I always did that when they would bring a guy up from a lower team for a few days. But they wanted nothing to do with me. It was the same way here. There wasn't much competition out here. But the guy who thought he was going to be starting has been a total prick since I arrived. It isn't personal, I don't think. I'm just standing in the way of his advancement. It will be the same thing with you – probably wherever you go. You're good, Tara."