AR - The problem

The problem becomes evident by late afternoon.

You have done your best to handle your business, but your worry about what happened this morning is overwhelming. It’s been hard to talk to your family and think about practical things.

You can’t focus. You finally get frustrated when over an hour has passed and Adella hasn’t texted you back. You are back at the Lodge. You bought a nice outfit for tonight’s date, and you’re about to get ready. It’s not cool to expect your partner to just… reply to everything right away, but with what happened today, you would think that she’d be a little more understanding of how freaked out you are.

You go to Adella’s room, but it’s empty. Her luggage isn’t there.

“Where’s Adella?” It’s not the most polite way to ask, but you aren’t in the mood.

Bee is in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Very few girls will eat at the Lodge tonight because they’d rather be in the city, but the ones here will have a gourmet meal.

“She checked out,” Bee replies in a businesslike way.

“Checked out? We don’t check out,” you say.

“She did. I can’t tell you more than that because I don’t know,” she says before you can ask more questions.

Right. She cooks and cleans. She doesn’t run this place.

You call Tiff.

“Checked out? That’s weird,” she says when you tell her what’s going on. “Let me make some calls.”

You go and sit in the main room on the sofa. The only other person there is Hana, using the big TV to play video games. She has a big arcade stick in her lap, and she’s slamming the buttons and wiggling the joystick. The men on the screen punch each other ruthlessly, then one of them rips the other one’s spine out. This is not relaxing. You get up, and Tiff is calling. You hurriedly pick up.

“OK, Riley. Looks like she’s out.”

“Out?”

“Out of FUTA,” she clarifies. “I’m sorry. I mean, I know you were dating. Or are dating. I don’t know exactly what’s going on. I think that maybe something personal came up?”

“What? Oh my god… Um, can you find out? I need to know,” you say.

“I can’t, Riley. I’m a coach, I work for FUTA. I can’t be getting into people’s business. It might be personal. There might be confidentiality issues. You should just text her, leave her a message. She’ll get back to you if she has something to say.”

“I already did that.”

“Riley… OK. I can’t have you having a meltdown. Listen. I was going to tell everyone this on Monday, but I’ll tell you now. FUTA is going to be pretty popular. We can already tell that from the interest that people have in the promos and stuff that we’ve done. You and the other players… this is show business. So there are going to be a lot of talent agents around looking to represent the players. If you have an agent or a manager, that is the person that you might be able to tap to do this kind of thing. You know. To get you something that you need. In this case, information.”

You try to be calm. “So I need to hire someone?”

“Riley, I think a lot of the players are just going to hire their old coaches. They’re basically your managers anyway, or they were at one time. You should call Michelle. She’s working part-time for FUTA, but I’m sure she’ll be willing to be your agent.”

“I don’t know how that works…” you say.

“They do all the hard stuff for you and they get a percentage of what you earn,” Tiff explains.

Oh. That sounds good.

“OK, I’ll call Michelle.”

This is crazy. You’re freaking out.