Thank you to all who have stuck with this story so far.
It is amazing to me that so many people have read my chapters and given me nice comments.
Chapter Five
A few days after Halloween, I was sitting at my computer working when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Henry? This is Neal Goins over at the high school."
"The school? Is something wrong with Paige? Is she okay?"
"What? Oh, no no no. She's fine. That's not why I'm calling."
"Oh. Whew, you scared me." What I was thinking was, "You could've led with 'Paige is fine.'"
I was a little preoccupied and missed the start of the next sentence.
"... and she's planning to move in with her and look after her. So what do you say? Can you help me out?"
I was really lost now.
"Help you out how?"
"With the team, of course."
That really didn't clear things up for me.
"Say again?"
After a few more stumbling sentences back and forth, I finally got the gist of the story. Coach Taylor, who was over the girls' varsity basketball team, was moving back to her hometown because her mother had a stroke.
Practice already had begun, and the new season would get underway in two weeks, and Neal was looking for a new head coach.
"Why not get the JV coach to step up to varsity?"
"Have you met him? He's only a year out of college. He's a little young to be taking over a JV team, much less a varsity squad."
Then he added, "Plus, he's 23 years old. I really can't afford to have a horny young man hanging around 17- and 18-year-old girls. Can you imagine what kind of scandal that could create?"
I pictured Randi and thought that I could indeed imagine a scandal with a young woman.
"Listen, you coached these kids growing up, and you come to all the games. There's nobody that knows these girls like you do."
Yeah, one of them even saw my naked ass a few days ago, I thought.
"I can't offer you much of a salary. Say $2,500, maybe as high as $3,000 if I explain to the school board that it's an emergency."
"The pay isn't the problem," I said. "It's the scheduling I'm a little worried about. I take a five-day business trip every January. Big show, can't miss it."
"We'll work around that. Reschedule a game or two if we have to. We do it all the time for bad weather."
"My work goes into overdrive in March. What if the playoffs are going on?"