1.
We relaxed in the shimmering calm – birds chirping through the opened sliding glass door, a pound of pepper bacon sizzling on the double-wide frying pan, rain softly reverberating off the petals of my newly-planted Tropicana roses, Neon Indian’s “Era Extrana” piped throughout the house on my new top-of-the-line Japanese speakers. I had awoken at 6 o’clock sharp – enough time to squeeze in a morning run to prepare for a long, lazy day at home, doing what I do best.
Making breakfast.
Lala and I were both very adamant about the benefits of a large breakfast, to the point where the ritual often lasted over 16 hours from beginning to end. Not long ago, when we lived within the beltway, this was a ritual that eventually grew to include all comers, be them intrigued neighbors, local politicians, or the occasional lobbyist who needed a quick pick-me-up before heading over to the Congressional Budget Office for the latest schlock Medicare demonstration.
This all ended back in March of last year, when at 28 years old I became the youngest state ambassador in American history. It came as a shock to everybody involved, and the press immediately turned on me, going so far as to interview an old high school teacher of mine who once caught me urinating into the open moonroof of his Mazda Miata all those years ago. It goes without saying that the interview was riddled with generalities and vague references to my character. “I was under the impression that this is a young man who has a very limited moral compass”, “The only things he was concerned about was basketball and causing severe emotional harm to the blind shop teacher”, et cetera.
Nevertheless, the connections I made during those breakfasts I hosted in DC served me well in the long run, and I was never one to shy away from cronyism anyways. I made one quick stop back in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, and shared a long goodbye with my mother. We ate cheeseburgers, listened to some of our favorite Stones records, and reminisced about the days where she worried about if I could stay on the straight and narrow.
“Who would have thought, mom? Your son, the youngest ambassador in history!”
“Not me, that’s for sure!” she exclaimed with a lilting laugh, as we raised our glasses in the wind. “You know, I’d love to take credit, but I really have no idea what we did right.”
“I’ll tell you, straight up. Number one, you didn’t make me go to church. Two, you made me appreciate the wonder of the written word. And three, you brought me up supporting the Portland Trail Blazers. If you can survive that, you can survive anything!”
She looked down sheepishly at the linoleum of our old kitchen floor. “I just wish your dad was around to see all this for himself.”
Ah, yes… a sentiment that is echoed often in our face-to-faces, and in any other circumstance I would have taken the time to really talk about my dad with her, and everything that happened… but I was needed in the Cayman Islands. “Duty calls,” I told her before I hopped onto the private jet. Emblazoned with the stars and stripes, this was the plane that not only would whisk me away to the Caribbean, but provide my infamous return to the United States – eight months later and much, much drunker.
2.
And so we filled our stomachs and basked in the warm moment of our love and our dining room table, which was overflowing with heavy meats, blueberry pancakes, Mexican cheese, avocado salad, two whole crabs, two bottles of champagne, and at least five different kinds of homemade jam. “This is essential to the cause,” I pointed out as I came running over to the table juggling the jam. “It makes us human.” During my early morning run, I had taken a shortcut upon my return to the house. I nebulously ran through the wet fields of Rossi farms and tracked mud through the twists and turns of my neighborhood. I felt like a carefree teen punching the cold air in youthful gravitas.
It was the first day of the year, and we were peckish and exceedingly eager for a well-rounded meal. I was still getting used to being in America again. I hadn’t had much to do during the day, as I was slowly getting used to the idea that I was no longer involved in the murky waters of political ambition. I spent most of my waking hours on relatively inane tasks: combing through basketball statistics, reconnecting with my old high school friends, and installing an incredibly sophisticated speaker system that could be wireless controlled from any room in the house.
Wires: they eventually tangle and become a major headache. A nuisance.
I called Gerald Wallace that morning to wish him good luck in Los Angeles, where the Blazers were due to tip-off in a few hours. I accidentally called his home number first, and had to sit through a solid five minutes of his wife screaming at me for waking the baby. I apologized to Gerald about my callousness, and he told me he would smooth things out. “That’s what I do, Ty. At home with the family, on the court with my teammates… doesn’t matter where. I smooth things out.” We agreed that things were looking up, in no small part due to the Trail Blazers winning the first three games of the season against solid competition.
After eating, Lala stood at the sliding glass door overlooking the back garden. “So grey,” she remarked. “This city is depressing.”
“Listen: this is my city you’re talking about!” I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She was gnawing on a piece of bacon. There was greasy pepper coating her fingers. “Besides,” I said, “I don’t care for the sunshine.” It’s all I had for the last eight months and it was nice to have a short break from it. It drives you mad, sunshine. It makes you take life for granted.
We laid down on the couch and fell in and out of mid-day reverie. The day was drifting along lazily until the peace was shattered violently with a loud crash. The sound of glass exploding made me jump off the couch and into my study, which was littered with bits and pieces of the broken window. There was a brick on the carpet in the office, with a small manila folder carefully wrapped around its exterior with a thick green rubber band.
I looked at Lala with the eyes of an escaped mental patient. She stood shockingly still as I sprinted past her and bolted out the door. I frantically ran down my street, peering in between houses as I pounded the pavement. Around the corner, I saw a young Asian boy sitting on a tricycle. I ran up to him in my mad state and grabbed his head. “Did you see a man running?!?” I yelled into the boy’s face. His lip started quivering, so I released my grip. He started to cry and yelled for his mom.
“Dammit!” I screamed, as I ran back to my house. Lala was still in the study when I arrived, examining the folder that was attached to the heavy brick. She held the folder up to me with a shaking grip. AMBASSADOR HINDS, it said in block letters on the exterior of the folder. Wordlessly, I snatched the folder from her and nervously read the title page of the documents that were inside the folder.
Operation Bellybuster.
And just like that, my life was about to get very, very interesting.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
