Belinda Lyle sucked on her lips to keep from responding. She felt far worse than a whore. Prostitution wasn’t an Olympic night sport event because a bed shouldn’t be a spectator venue. But each publically read column she now produced would be a result of her having taken his night sport shaft in barter for the swimmer’s words, and people could view it as so too.
Swimming Night Sport
“Okay.” Scott noted her tight mouth and smiled. “Whether you believe I could do it is moot. News editors aren’t going to purchase an article outlining a reporter’s view. What I suppose to be true comprises the marketable story, regardless of whether my belief is intrinsically sound or not.”
“I do concur with that assessment.”
“Then let’s finish this line of discussion for a Pulitzer caliber capstone on Belinda Lyle’s first piece on the previously evasive, but recently acquired, swimmer Scott Wagner.”
“Let’s do.” Belinda made a deliberate show of taking out her notepad and pencil.
“While Scott Wagner has an unshakable faith in his ability to competitively swim the 4X100 relay all by himself,” he spoke as if reading her prose, “then he can staunchly assert that three lesser swimming teammates would’ve only served to slow down his swimming finish. He can further envision how his excellent individual swimming performance would be harnessed to elevate inferior swimmers to gold medal stature they were incapable of attaining on their own personal swimming merits. To support his position, Scott Wagner has delivered a statement. ‘My would-be teammates may carp about how they might’ve taken first in swimming if I had joined them but without me, they only placed sixth. In baseball, a pitcher is not able to throw a ball, and then run down and catch it too. He needs a teammate and even if the catcher is not as talented as the pitcher, together they are a battery. A relay in any athletic discipline is not a team event. It is just a number of athletes lumped unnaturally together, who really should be prevailing or failing according to their own personal abilities – and drive.’ Period, and end of story.”
Swimming Night Sport
“The decision on where to place the punctuation is mine alone.”
“Granted.”
“And do you realize how conceited that article makes you sound?” In the confines of her mind, Belinda became conscious of a night sport demarcation line she had just stepped over. It was too late for her to change her mind about the night sport deal. She had just accepted his first payment in currency they had agreed was cash and her body now owed him sexual gratification and night sport.
“So be it.” Scott shrugged. “In any adventure requiring a choice between looking good or being loyal to my perception of truth, I will always opt for the latter.”
“Then in our team,” Belinda found herself saying, “my part is pitching the questions and your job is to bat back the answers, with as much spin and relish as you care to put on them. I’ll either field them and play them back to you, or allow them to float from the ballpark—at my discretion.”
“Have you propositioned any of the other female sport media?” Belinda the sport writer whispered when she and the swimmer were nestled together in the taxi’s back seat.
“You already know the answer to that one.” The swimmer intoned. “And from here forward, all I expect to hear from you are intelligent and purposeful questions.”
“Agreed.” Belinda thought for a spell. ‘Yes, it would’ve become public news overnight if this were the swimming star’s normal night pickup routine.’ “I do have a question that other sports journalists have continually asked without receiving a satisfactory reply from you. Why didn’t you compete in the four-by-one hundred swimming relay event?”
“I’m not a team player.” Scott spoke softly with his lips next to her ear, to keep the night driver from overhearing. The warm breath of his words fluttered her shimmering hair slightly and he felt the sports reporter quiver from the pleasurable vibrations on the nape her neck. “Water polo is a team sport and that’s why I don’t play it, even though I swim well enough to excel at that game.”
“You were accepted onto a nation’s Olympic swimming t-e-a-m,” she stretched the word out, “and that gave you an obligation that you didn’t meet.”
“I won a berth on an Olympic swimming squad on the basis of my having swum qualifying heats faster than anyone else the nation could field and I then proved my merit by taking first place in every swimming event that I entered. Had I considered swimming a team sport, I wouldn’t have tried out, for the same reason that I don’t go out for water polo.”
“What’s wrong with team sports?” The night taxi driver asked over his shoulder.
“If one enjoys playing in or watching a team sport, then nothing is wrong with them. But I prefer individual sports where my own performance is all I need to rely on. The swimming relay event bastardizes the solo pursuit of competitive swimming to create a mockery of a team endeavor. The end product is a farce that returns false results.”
“Four swimmers each race one quarter of the total distance and the combined time is measured against the other teams.” The sports reporter said. “How could that be a false result?”
