When the playboy quarterback of the hapless New York Templars is injured in a freak sexcapade, backup QB Quinn Novak picks up the ball and takes the team to the playoffs. There he attracts the attention of two other quarterbacks who’ve been rivals since high school, Mal Ryan of the Philadelphia Quakers and Tam Tarquin of the San Francisco Miners.<br><br>Quinn begins a volatile relationship with the narcissistic Mal and a loving one with the open-hearted Tam, keeping each secret from the other. What he doesn’t know is that the two have a complex sexual history of their own.

The Penalty for Holding

He shut out the image—remembering the words of T.S. Eliot, memorized in a Stanford English class, as he drifted off:


See, they return, and bring us with them.9


When Quinn woke, he thought for a moment he was in Jakarta again. The TV quietly carried the nature sounds and images that hospitals used to try to soothe—check that, control—patients. As his eyes adjusted to the darkened, antiseptic room—drawn curtains and blinds, monitors, metal beds—the old dread rose and leveled off. Then he flipped the channel, and all hell broke loose.


Chapter 20