Read Online The Cut by Wil Mara - Free Book Online Page B

beautiful home for his mom and girlfriend, in some exclusive neighborhood. Nice cars and fine clothes and expensive jewelry. He would take Alicia to the best shops in the city and tell her to get whatever she wanted. He’d also stand on the sidewalk outside the house where they lived now and enjoy the sight of the hired hands loading the last of the boxes into a huge moving van, then watch it groan and belch black smoke as it bumped down that miserable street for the last time. He’d follow in his shiny BMW and not even glance in the mirror. With Alicia in the passenger seat and his mom in the back, he’d turn the corner, hit the Atlantic City Expressway going west, and begin to forget. Yes, it was true that the team was only going to pay him a pittance of just over eight hundred per week to be in camp (the vets would get just over twelve hundred), but he looked at it as merely a starting point. Hell, it was already more than he was making at the supermarket. But it would grow to much more if he could just show off his stuff.
    Then there was the flip side to his euphoria—the stubborn certainty that things wouldn’t work out. If there was one ugly truth he had come to believe with all his heart, it was that some people caught the breaks, and some did not. There was no profound reasoning for this; it was just the Way It Was. He’d recently read something about a woman who had won more than a million bucks in the lottery twice . The lottery board looked into the second win to make sure there hadn’t been any foul play. There hadn’t—she simply had what he liked to call “It,” that certain something, the X-factor that just made life work for some people. Whatever It was, he often thought he didn’t have It. Even a casual inspection of his life provided some evidence to support this.
    Then an idea occurred to him—maybe he could beat the odds anyway. If he tried hard enough, maybe he could overcome the lack of It and succeed regardless.
    Just maybe.
    With his heart pounding and his mouth dry, he made a right off Washington Avenue and entered the State University of New York at Albany. Following the printed directions supplied by the team, he found himself cruising along University Drive West. A little farther up and he came to a sign for the player parking lot. He checked the printed instructions again to be sure it was correct. Then he followed the arrows with another right, and the lot entrance appeared up ahead. He was actually a little disappointed—it was no different from any other parking lot he had ever seen. There were open fields adjacent to it, and the beginnings of a hardwood forest in the distance. Nothing spectacular or dramatic. This was the NFL?
    Reality stepped in when he reached the entrance and found it blocked by two candy-striped sawhorses.
    He parked his tired little Honda and got out. A cursory inspection of the area told him this was the right one. It looked like a dealership for the überwealthy, with a generous selection of Lexuses, BMWs, and Escalades.
    Daimon went over to one of the sawhorses and began dragging it out of the way.
    â€œHey! Get away from there!”
    A man materialized between two long rows of cars. He was small and stout, fairly muscular. As he drew closer and broke into a slow jog, Daimon noticed that his head was shaven almost to the scalp, the silver hairs more like whiskers.
    â€œWhat are you doing? Get the hell away from there!” He was dressed in khaki shorts and a Giants polo. He also had on white socks and sneakers, as if he were as athletic as anyone else.
    â€œI’m supposed to be here,” Daimon said, “for training camp.”
    The guard set his hands on his hips and looked him over. “Oh yeah? You don’t look familiar to me.” He glanced past Daimon and appraised his current mode of transportation. “And I’m pretty sure the players drive around in something better than